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Hypocritical Bud Light Super Bowl Ad Takes Jab at Coors for Using Inferior Ingredient

In recent years, craft beer was the easy target featured in what appear to be Budweiser’s increasingly desperate and misguided Super Bowl attack ads.

A 2015 Budweiser Super Bowl ad collectively mocked and stereotyped craft beer drinkers as hipster-y, fussy, and pretentious nudniks for drinking the likes of “pumpkin peach beer”, while in the same breath Budweiser’s ad self-praised its corporately mass-produced brand for allegedly being brewed “the hard way”, seeming to imply that other breweries (craft or otherwise) were, well, lazy.

Budweiser’s attack ad backfired when the craft beer community pointed out the apparent hypocrisy of Bud’s corporate parent company, AB InBev, for attempting to blast craft drinkers for sipping brews like pumpkin peach beer, while at the same time AB InBev sold pumpkin peach beer from its then recently acquired Elysian Brewing Company.

Still smarting from the rock-to-the-head slingshoted from the craft community, the Eye of Sauron that is Bud has now shifted its gaze to Coors.

In keeping with the now eye-rollingly predictable campy Monty-Python-and-The Holy-Grail theme, Bud Light’s 2019 Super Bowl ad depicts a large wooden barrel of corn syrup being mistakenly delivered to the Budweiser kingdom/brewery. After being advised that the barrel-o-corn syrup must belong to Coors in the ad, ‘King Budweiser’ then benevolently attempts to return the inferior ingredient to the Coors brewery only to learn that Coors already received its shipment, at which point the corn syrup is then rightfully returned to the Coors Light brewery.

The 2019 Bud Light Super Bowl ad finishes by assuring its viewers that Bud Light is “brewed with no corn syrup”, apparently implying that corn syrup is a cheap and/or inferior product.  Here, “inferior” could be meant to imply (wrongly) that corn syrup used in brewing somehow contributes more to obesity when in fact corn sugars are perhaps just as easily, if not more so, converted to alcohol during the fermentation process as rice sugars.

Speaking of which, what Bud’s Super Bowl ad fails to point out is that its own beer (Budweiser and Bud Light), is also brewed with a comparatively cheap adjunct, namely rice.

But not just any rice.  Bud has been reported to be tainted with an experimental and genetically engineered rice strain, according to Greenpeace.

While it’s true that corn-based products have been subsidized by the U.S. government for many years and could therefore be considered “cheap”, so has rice.

Ignoring for the moment the apparent hypocrisy of Bud calling out Coors for being brewed with supposedly inferior adjuncts, it should be noted that many beer styles, including the currently popular IPA, are traditionally brewed with adjuncts, such as corn sugar (in order to increase alcohol content while drying the beer out).

In fact, though it was formerly excluded as a craft brewery due to its large scale, the oldest continually operating brewery in the U.S., Yuenglings (established 1829), was recently reclassified as a craft brewery because it brewed with traditional ingredients, in this case corn.

Adjuncts, such as beet sugar, have been used in the most highly regarded Belgian beers for centuries.

Long story short, adjuncts do not a bad beer make.  And for the most part, when it comes to beer, sugar is sugar, whether it comes from rice, corn, or beets.

So what’s the message to the crack advertising team behind the recent slew of Bud’s Super Bowl misfires?

In the immortal words of Ice Cube: Chickity check yo self before you wreck yo self.

Meanwhile, this writer offers two words of encouragement to Budweiser as it continues to lose market share: 

Dilly dilly.


Author: Hi, I’m D.J. Pander.  I like beer. I also like having a job. Please share if you like.

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The Beer Style Origin Quiz

The Beer Style Origin Quiz is designed to measure an individual’s knowledge about the origins of various beer styles through a series of questions of varying levels of difficulty: Normal, Challenging, and MENSA-Level.

At the end of the quiz, the individual’s score is tallied and a “Beer IQ” is calculated.

It’s recommended to begin with the “Normal” Quiz, and then proceed from there, however all three levels are provided below.

Good luck.

The Beer Style Origin Quiz (NORMAL)

The Beer Style Origin Quiz (CHALLENGING)

The Beer Style Origin Quiz (MENSA-LEVEL)


Hi, I’m Dan: Beer Editor for BeerSyndicate.com, Beer and Drinking Writer, Award-Winning Brewer, BJCP Beer Judge, Beer Reviewer, American Homebrewers Association Member, Shameless Beer Promoter, and Beer Traveler.

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Results on Legislation Aiming to Legalize Shipping Booze via USPS, the “Road Beer”, and 64 oz Growlers

Congresswoman Jackie Speier submits bill to legalize USPS shipping of beer.  Again.  And again.

On July, 29, 2015, California Congresswoman Jackie Speier submitted a bill to make it legal for the USPS to ship alcohol including beer.  So what happened?  Well, the bill known as H.R. 3412 United States Postal Service Shipping Equity Act, died in Congress like its predecessor, H.R. 1718, an almost identical bill put forward by Speier that died in 2013.

Jackie Speier

But you can’t keep a good bill down.  The new iteration of the USPS Shipping Equity Act, now called H.R. 4024, was introduced to Congress on October 11, 2017, and Skopos Labs, an A.I.-powered research platform, gives this bill a reassuring 4% chance of being enacted.  So they’re saying there’s a chance…

Montana lawmaker seeks to bring back the ‘road beer’

In January of 2017, lawmakers mulled over a bill that would bring “road beers” back to Montana.  House Bill 206 was designed to lift the open alcohol container ban for passengers in a motor vehicle on Montana highways, though drivers would still be restricted.

So did it pass?

Sure enough, on April 28, 2017, the Montana legislature gave HB 206 a pass.  A hard pass.  It’s unclear whether Montana will ever catch up to other states that allow for passenger road beers such as Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri, Virginia, and West Virginia, or even the freedom-rich state of Mississippi that allows a road beer not only for the passenger, but one for the driver too.
Road Beer

One man fighting the good fight: Florida bartender sues state of Florida over 64 oz growler ban.

Back in November of 2014, bar owner Guy Piasecki and his lawyer sued the state of Florida over a law that prohibited the sale of beer in containers larger than 32 ounces or smaller than a gallon.  In other words, it was legal to sell beer in 32-ounce and 128-ounce growlers, but not the common 64-ounce size.

Growler

A bar owner thought this law was stupid, but how would the state of Florida weigh in?

As of July 1st of 2015, it could be said that Guy fought the law, and Guy won.  Indeed, filling 64-ounce growlers with beer is now legal in Florida like it already was in every other state.


Hi, I’m D.J. Pander.  I like beer.  I also blog. Follow me on Myspace.

 

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