My fellow Americans

Rice is cheaper than barley; that's why they use it.

Phil

CITE! PROVE IT!

I'm seeing cwt pricing showing Louisiana rice at 17.28 per cwt, Montana malting barley at 11.00 per cwt. Considering how much the price of malting barley has shot up in just the last year, rice is still no great bargain to brewers, and the folks at Oregon's SakeOne who make Momokawa certainly aren't getting any great price break, either.

A-B doesn't just buy plain ol' rice either. Brewer's rice must be grown to spec, just like high-quality malting barley, and that drives up the price further. Brewer's rice is *not* used because it's cheaper!

As far as Phil's "not something that you would see a true German brewery do," give me a frackin' break. Belgian breweries routinely do things in brewing that would give some German brewers apoplexy. German brewers themselves used to do all sorts of interesting and imaginative things until the Bavarians insisted that it was their way or the highway, back when the country unified in the latter half of the 19th century. One region's brewers have been given special dispensation to revive a style of beer that had effectively died out, and that style most assuredly does *not* conform to any Reinheitsgebot (or similar) brewing practices.

It's an infantile argument mechanism at best. Argue the *facts* and we might see something. Argue opinions, and all we get is lame attempts to substitue opinion for fact.

Prove what? That rice is cheaper than barley? Or that Budweiser uses it?

Phil

You've made two claims and provided evidence for neither.

A) Rice is cheaper than barley.

Demonstrated to be false elsewhere in the thread.

B) Rice is used because the company wants to cut costs

This is somewhat dependent on the above unless the people making the decision are idiots. Even if we stipulate that they are, you haven't backed up your claim that cost is the motivation rather than a light, consistent product.

Look up the word 'adjunct' and get back to me, okay?

Phil

Phil

Yes, please prove that. Current prices, in comparable measurement units, have been provided elsewhere in the thread. Rice is not cheaper.

Look up how much the Belgians and the English use adjuncts and get back to us, mmm-kay.

The problem is not adjuncts; it's how they're used. Furthermore, the use of adjuncts by Bud, Miller, etc. is not a cost-saving measure (as already demonstrated by prices). It's because they are brewing for a particular flavor profile, and you just cannot brew something as mildly flavored as that type of lager using 100 percent malt. Adjuncts are necessary for that flavor profile.

You may not like the beer, but that doesn't mean there aren't reasons for formulating the recipe the way they do. And it's got nothing to do with being cheap.

-Steve

Wikipedia is a very handy resource.

It is far from authoritative.

In the case of current commodity prices, it's flat-out wrong in your cited article.

-Steve

Wikipedia?? Come on, if that's the only source you have it's like saying "I overheard this guy on the bus ..."

Personally, I can't even drink Bud. I think it's nasty. But My *opinion* is not fact. Neither is yours. AB is not evil. Disney is evil, Wal*Mart is EVIL, but AB doesn't violate anti-trust laws or try to reclaim the public domain to keep themselves in business. What they do is produce a beer that a HUGE number of people enjoy, and they also produce a number of "craft beers" at their big plants as well as supporting other craft/micro brewers. They actually *like* the competition, as it makes them have to improve their own products to stay competitive.

If you don't like thier beer, don't drink it. But you don't have to spit on the people that do.

Tom

I think you have it backwards. Budweiser didn't decide to use adjuncts to develop a particular flavor profile. Its flavor profile is a result of using adjuncts.

Phil

With the exception of the above-mentioned prices, I haven't heard anyone citing any information to back up what they're saying. And I don't even know what type of rice is referred to here. Barley prices aren't mentioned, but everyone's willing to agree that barley is less expensive than corn.

And if you don't like the wikipedia citing, here...

Phil

So now that you've lost the "rice is used because it's cheap" argument, you're diverting attention and waving your arms while crapflooding the newsgroup with "helpful" links to Wikipedia, in a feeble attempt to make that your authoritative source.

Damn, Phil, you *really, really* suck at this. You always have, and now you're sucking at it just so very spectacularly, and jerking spasmodically at the same time.

Adjuncts in beer have multiple purposes. Sometimes, they are a cheaper source of convertible starches or fermentable sugars. And sometimes, they are used to get a specific flavor profile. And apparently sometimes, they're used as an excuse to crapflood a Usenet newsgroup with tedious, repetitious references that really don't bolster your argument at all.

You know, you're right. You, for instance, haven't cited anything - not a single damned solitary item of current pricing - that backs up what you're saying. Thanks for pointing that out.

You don't? If you're going to blather on about adjuncts, don't you think you should at least bother reaserching the facts first?

Barley's damned close to corn at current prices, actually, and once again, you've got the discussion neatly wrong. The discussion has been centered around Anheuser-Busch and its principal brand, Budweiser, and that brand's use of rice in brewing. It's a fact that employing rice as an adjunct is not a cheap way to go, but I'm pretty much fed up with doing your research for you, and you're too damn stubborn to actually bother looking it up, instead of crapflooding the newsgroup with repeated web references to what adjuncts are.

So what?

Let me know when someone cites a source that says I'm wrong, one that includes a URL. Then you can say I suck.

Until then, you can blow me.

Phil

snipped-for-privacy@my.sig (TARogue) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@gore.tarogue.net:

Yes they have and no they don't.

Steve Jackson wrote in news:V9l6k.27893$8q2.22494 @trnddc02:

And they created the flavor profile and forced it on the American drinker by first paying bars to only carry their product, then by buying out other breweries and then making only their beer.

Wow, Phil. You can post links! Good for you! Do you want a cookie?

What's the purpose of posting the same link over and over? To show how the Belgians suck for using adjuncts? To say what shitty breweries Fullers and Harvieston and Lees are for using adjuncts?

Or just the hope that if you repeat something often enough, maybe people will start to believe you?

BTW, go taste a pre-pro lager such as those that have been brewed by Craftsman, Victory, Capital and others and tell me that the use of adjuncts automatically creates a dull flavor profile.

Again, you mistake the existence of adjuncts with the way adjuncts are used.

As for whether the adjunct egg came before the flavor profile chicken, nobody outside of A-B is ever going to know. But there's little secret that the brewers' recipes have evolved over time. And one would have to think that since rice isn't cheaper than barley, they weren't doing it just for the hell of it.

By the way, you want links for price info (other than the "authoritative" wikipedia)?

"Between 1982 and 2004, the average monthly price of feed barley in the United States was 86 percent of the average monthly corn price." -

(Btw, the same article states that in recent years, malt barley costs about 70 percent more than feed barley, which still leaves corn more expensive. So much for using corn as a cheap alternative.)

The previous figures I cited for corn vs. rice came from the Chicago Board of Trade.

So, please, post that adjuncts link again. It'll so prove that you're right in spite of the numbers.

-Steve

No, I want you to grow up.

We're notv talking about the belgians. We're talking about AB.

Phil