For a year and a half, the internet has been pretty well void of my sharing opinions on anything relative to Anheuser-Busch. Well, friends, that era has come to an end.
Yesterday, I left my job at Devils Backbone Brewing, an AB owned company. (More on that later.)
And today, it FINALLY feels safe to share something like this.
This morning, Anheuser-Busch and the internet gifted me this little gem of a video where the folks working for Bud Light Marketing forgot how beer is made.
“Some beers have a lot of ingredients – a lot of different ingredients. Our beer is brewed with 4 essential ingredients – barley, rice, water, and hops.”
Did we forget about yeast, Budweiser?
No worries… Yeast was only discovered a few centuries ago… We know you’re a bit behind the times.
Man… these guys really ARE “brewing the hard way”.
GUYS: YEAST. MAKES. BEER.
RICE is not “essential” to beer. You know what is though? Yeast. Yeast is.
A brewer is worthless without yeast. Without yeast, that liquid will never become beer.
What’s even better is that on Bud Light’s website is a small video entitled, “Is Yeast An Ingredient?” The video minimizes yeast’s role in beer, excluding it from what Bud Light calls the “Essential Four” ingredients. Why is it excluded? The video calls out its exclusion because it’s filtered out. Just like the barley… And the hops… And the damn rice.
My problem with the video is that it propagates misinformation.
The “Essential Four” ingredients are water, barley, hops, and yeast. Even a Cicerone Program Certified Beer Server can tell you that, Bud Light.
The video titled “Bud Light: Complex” (which in itself is a hilarious name) isn’t really about the beer though, now is it? It’s laughable that yeast would be entirely left out of this, so we know better than to take the guise of this marketing video talking about their brewing ingredients too seriously.
So what IS the video about then? Does anything here seem familiar to you?
Do you remember the Budweiser “Brewed The Hard Way” Super Bowl commercial from 2015? (I sure do! Check out my 2015 blog post on it! Budweiser’s Super Bowl Commercial: How Embarrassing) That video attempted to utilize scare tactics to discourage people from drinking beers with flavor. It all but said, “Hey, mustachioed hipster dude! Put down that sissy Pumpkin Peach Ale that you’re drinking in front of those girly flowers and drink a man’s drink.”
With all the backlash they got after that video, it appeared the folks at Budweiser smartened up and changed their tune, straying away from ads that made fun of other beers. Considering that at the time that ad came out, Anheuser-Busch had JUST purchased once independent Elysian Brewing, makers of a pumpkin peach beer, it was past time for them to change their tune.
But it’s clear that Budweiser’s tune of 2015 has migrated to be Bud Light’s tune of 2017.
The point of this new video is simply to make fun of other beer. This time, it’s done with a bit more of a reach than pumpkin peach could tackle in the flavor department.
Can someone please tell me who makes this beer served with a Swiss cheese wedge on it or in it? I can hear the Bud Light marketing team now, “Well guys, we dodged a bullet with that one. Surely, none of the breweries we’ve purchased put Swiss cheese in a beer! We don’t need another one of those pumpkin peach beer debacles!”
“Don’t stray outside the box”, I hear this ad commanding. “Oh, but while you’re out there, that’s where we left our yeast. Mind handing that to us? We’re gonna need it…”
webeerlongtogether.com 