There’s nothing wrong with liking to have a cheap beer every now and then. Yes, they taste awful. But who cares! What they lack in flavor, alcohol percentage and desirable qualities they make up for in cheapness.
If you try to argue that your cheap beer is good, I can tell you right now that you’re wrong.
I can also tell you that your cheap beer probably isn’t a beer-y as you thought it might be.
I don’t want to get into the technical stuff about what is and isn’t a beer, but if you consider hops or barley a necessity in beer, then you probably aren’t drinking beer.
Fake Hops!
Your favorite cheap beer might use fake hops.
I’ll give you some backstory to start this out.
Ever notice how so many of those bottles of beer you drink are a dark brown color? This is because sunlight changes beer. If you leave a beer out in the sun too long, the hops in the beer will start to react, causing your beer to “skunk.” As the name implies, skunky beer does not taste good.
By using darker bottles, these breweries can stave off skunkiness for a little longer.
Then there are breweries that use light bottles, like Miller or Newcastle. These are great sunny weather beer, and the breweries know that. But how do they get around the problem of the hops skunking?
Easy – they use fake hops, known as tetrahops.
This synthetic hop extract prevents your cheap beer from skunking the way a normal beer would.
“But Thomas, Corona uses real hops! Their beer doesn’t skunk AND they use a clear bottle!”
You poor Corona drinker. Corona suggests you should half a lime into every beer to help mask the grossness that is skunked Corona (yet another reason why Corona is not a good beer).
In fact, don’t trust any beer company that wants you to add stuff to their beer. If the beer needed it, they probably would have added it when they brewed it.
No Barley!
Barley is a pretty important part of beer…but it also might not be in your beer.
Basically every cheap beer cuts corners and replaces barley with corn or rice (both of which are significantly cheaper). You can find this tactic being used by AB-InBev and Coors Brewing Company.
At the very least I guess it is good that they’re using real ingredients. Not that real ingredients necessarily taste better than synthetic ones.
So there you have it! A little bit of a lesson on both skunked beers and what you’re really drinking! At the end of the day, all that matters is that you drink beer that you like.
As long as it isn’t Corona.
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