The Brew Guru tastes Bud Light Golden Wheat

Psst, hey. Come here, wanna hear a confession? Closer; it’s a little embarassing. The Brew Guru loves the new Bud Light commercials.

You know, the ones with the smarmy, hyperactive pitchman prancing around and touting bizarre product mashups that are “tailgate tested, tailgate approved!” to a fake but captivated studio audience.




Now, the most recent spot, for the “Speakerbox,” is flat compared with the awesome first two featuring the “Grooler” and “Foozie.” And The Brew Guru fully understands that a probably small but significant part of the audience is not in on the joke, and others shrug them off as annoying. But therein lies their beauty: You have to respect the agency behind the campaign for pitching it and the brewing giant with its name on it for embracing an approach so simultaneously bitingly satirical and off the wall. Sure beats another doofus roommate gag or a “Transformers” tie-in.

When a funny-looking guy holds a footlong hot dog up to the side of his head and says “Ring ring, ring ring! It’s the future!” you’ve really tapped into the Bud Light-buying public.

Today’s brew: Bud Light Golden Wheat.

Style: Wheat ale.

Brewed by: Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis.

Availability: Ubiquitous. You don’t spend $30 million on marketing unless your product is easy to find.

What it’s like: It’s not the same style, but think a New Glarus Spotted Cow with about half the taste.

In the glass: Wheat beers can be so fascinating: delicate, subtle and complex, with layers of fruit and spice flavors sprouting from grains, wild yeasts and exotic additives like grains of paradise and coriander. It should surprise no one that something in a bottle labeled Bud Light fails to execute “subtle,” “delicate” and “complex.” Golden Wheat predictably takes the most obvious characteristics of the style – the funk, the citrus, the spice and even the hazy appearance – turns down the volume on them, and drapes them over a beer “with the personality of Bud Light.” (That last is straight from a press release, tongue not at all in cheek.) That personality, of course, is no personality. It’s bland, watery and – as long as you just want to drink your beer and not necessarily taste it – unobjectionable.

Backwash: Is Golden Wheat better than Bud Light? Yes. Does it even approach the quality of the craft brewery wheats that have driven a 300 percent growth in wheat beers since 2003? No. This is a defensive beer by A-B, one made to tap into that growth and allow brand loyalists to experiment with craft styles in their comfort zone, without jumping off the mothership. In that sense, Anheuser-Busch has a winner on its hands. From a beer enthusiast’s perspective ... well, just sit back and enjoy the commercials.

1½ mugs (out of four)

The Brew Guru tastes Budweiser American Ale, or, This must be what they wanted but I can't imagine why

When it comes to up-front declarations of beer snobbery, it doesn’t get any less subtle than a non-twist-off cap. The beer you deign to drink declares, before it has even graced your palate, that you require help consuming it. “Find an implement, caveman. Evolve or remain parched.”
It’s a pomposity that can be tolerated for a beers above a certain threshold – for The Brew Guru, it’s about $6 a six-pack, maybe $7. Anything below that – except brews way below, i.e. returnable bottles – reeks of false airs.

Today’s featured beer puts on a lot of airs: atop, outside and inside the bottle.

This week’s brew: Budweiser American Ale

Style: The Budmasters claim they’ve created an entirely new style, but if it looks like an amber ale, swims like an amber ale and quacks like an amber ale...

Brewed by: Anheuser-Busch Inc., St. Louis.

Availability: It’s a Bud. If the answer here isn’t “everywhere,” someone isn’t doing his job.

What it’s like: Samuel Adams Boston Lager if it were brewed by Bud.

Inside the glass: This foray into a microbrew style by America’s biggest macrobrewer is a significant departure from its Bud labelmates. It’s all malt, meaning it lacks adjuncts like corn or rice, and it boasts Cascade hops – the backbone of many great American pale ales. And it toes the line, appearance-wise: a lovely rusty, caramel-malt amber and a creamy head. But get closer to the glass and it falls flat. A thin aroma foreshadows a similarly thin flavor. There’s a fleeting ale bitterness, but it’s gone before anything really registers because it’s riding on a flimsy grain chassis. The macrobrewers clearly believe the benefit of watering down the malt body is drinkability, in terms of “less filling.” Never mind whether anyone will actually want to drink more.

Backwash: The Brew Guru doesn’t believe that the beer minds at Anheuser-Busch couldn’t make this beer what it purports to be. They could craft and mass-produce a beer to please microbrew fans, but at some point a compromise was made. It may have been to keep costs down. Or perhaps because they don’t really want the microbrew drinker, but instead the macro drinker who aspires to micros. If the latter is the case, it’s a misguided decision – for that consumer, American Ale is just a gateway beer to similar but better choices like Sam Adams or Goose Island Honker’s Ale. Either way, American Ale won’t fool any real microbrew fans.

1 mug (out of four)