If you watched the Super Bowl, you may have also seen the Bud Light commercial throwing the “adjunct” gauntlet down in front of Coors and Miller. Coors and Miller use corn syrup in their beers. Corn syrup is an adjunct in beer.
First let’s explain what adjuncts are. Adjuncts are anything added to beer that are not one of the four main ingredients, water, hops, malt and yeast.
Light calorie beers from the large breweries focus less on flavor and more on mass production and consumption. They cut flavor and sometimes cost with adjunct cereal grains like rice and corn. An adjunct is nothing more than a non-malt source of fermentable sugars.
This is not to say Light Beers are bad beers. They are technically hard to brew.
I see Budweiser firing the first shot in this “circular firing squad” as being silly not “dilly”.
Sure, you can throw rocks at Miller/Coors for not following the German brewery laws, but Budweiser/Inbev is living in an extremely large glass brewery. They use GMO rice in their products. Is any of this bad. No, unless you have a problem with GMO products or Corn syrup.
These adjuncts have been used since the middle 19th century to give us the light flavor American lagers that everyone drank up until the “Beer Renaissance”.
Here at the Lost Colony Brewery we use nothing but Hops, Malt, Yeast and Water. You will not find adjuncts here. We are all natural and all non-GMO. Why?
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
Now let’s sit back and watch the big kids fight.
