Four beer myths – Is Bud watered down? Does Bud have fewer calories than Guinness? And more…

With St. Patrick’s Day approaching, our thoughts are turning to beer. In particular, there has recently been a big fuss about Budweiser beer. A recent lawsuit alleged that Budweiser has been watering down its beer to save money. The suit says that the label on a can of Budweiser alleges a 5% alcohol content, when it is actually 4.7%. But the plaintiffs didn’t actually test the beer – instead they’ve been asking for internal documents to prove their case.  So to resolve this question,  NPR did test the beer, and discovered that there is no truth to the suit. The labels were spot on. Now, as to whether the beer tastes watery? Well, we’ll leave that question up to you.

And while we’re on the question of beer misconceptions, we thought this article from Meniuism, Beer Myths That Won’t Go Away, was also quite interesting. They debunked three beer myths:

• You can’t judge a beer by its color. You may be surprised that Guinness Stout – a dark beer if there ever was one – is, in fact, relatively light in alcohol content, with only 4% by volume. In fact, a pint of Guinness has less calories than a pint of Bud, (170 vs. 200).
• Will beer go bad if improperly stored? – Probably not – nor does it have to be kept chilled.
• Do beer ads mean anything? Not really. As the article states “Miller claims their beer is “triple hop brewed,” when nearly every modern style of beer calls for three hop additions during brewing. Likewise, there is no such thing as “hot filtered,” so the claim that a beer is “cold filtered” is redundant and fairly meaningless.”

So the bottom line is choose your beer for taste and flavor. And with almost 2,000 craft breweries now open in the U.S., and more than 800 in the U.K., there’s a lot of fun to be had in exploring the diversity of the new beer world.