Why You Should Never Drink Light Beer

Why You Should Never Drink Light Beer

There's nothing more disturbing in the world of beer than sitting at a reputable pub with a fine selection of international potables and hearing a nearby twangy voice inquiring "Ya'll got Bud Light in hur or what man?"  After a satisfactory  snide "No" from the offended bartender (it's like walking into a fancy French restaurant and asking for boxed wine), our good ole boy invariably slinks out and heads to the nearest Chili's for his watered down "beer" fix.  

 So why does Bubba the Lightie insist on light beer or nothing?  1) Is it the taste?  2) Is it the versatile portability of the can?  3) Are calories the reason?  Or maybe it's 4) "I just want to get drunk and drink a lot of it."  As I hope to demonstrate in this post, none of these arguments hold up.  In fact, there is NO good reason ever to drink light beer.  So with that bold claim, let's attempt to convert Bubba into a respectable beer drinker who can imbibe outside of Hooters with confidence.  Think of lighties as our Eliza Doolittles.

Repeat after me: "The Beer Over There Belongs Mainly in the Rear"

Fallacy 1: Light Beer Tastes Better

  Personally, I know this is completely false.  However, to be fair, I'll post some light beer ratings from Beer Advocate, which is a very reputable website for beer and pub ratings (all scores are out of 100 possible points and have been rated by over 1,000 people each).

Bud Light- 49 (Poor) Bud Light

Coors Light- 51 (Poor) Coors Light

Miller Light-  55 (Poor) Miller Lite

Keystone Light- 51 (Poor) Keystone Light

I could post more, but I think you get the point.  Light beer just does not taste good, and there's good reason for it.  When we describe light beer as tasting watered down it's because, well, it is actually watered down.  In order to lower the calories, and consequentially the alcohol, light beer brewers will dilute the beer with water.  Since the majority of calories in beer comes from alcohol (7 calories/gram), breweries will simply water down the post-fermented product in order to lower the alcohol and caloric content. 

To conclude this point, the taste of light beer simply doesn't stand up to real beers, because the latter isn't diluted with water.  Just like the taste of a Coke that's been sitting in a hot car with melted ice loses its taste, so does beer when it's been watered down.

Fallacy 2: Don't hate on Cans (You can take good beer anywhere!)

"He hates these cans!"

I plan on tackling this issue in a later post, but simply put, cans are no longer strictly associated with crappy beers such as Bud Light.  In recent years sparked by breweries like Oskar Blues, the craft beer industry has begun to shift towards offering their products in cans.  Sierra Nevada Brewing, considered a pioneer in the craft beer movement, has a great explanation on why they're making the transition:  Sierra Nevada Cans. Their reasons include portability, environmental, durability, and taste.  What they don't mention is that cans are much lighter than bottles, which saves the brewery a lot of dough in shipping costs. 

So next time you go fishing, instead of picking up a cheap domestic for your cooler, look for a nice Sierra Nevada Pale, Oskar Blues Mama's Little Pils, or a 21st Amendment Watermelon Wheat.  The fish will appreciate your impeccable taste in beer, and they might even voluntarily jump in for a sip. 

Fallacy 3 and 4: Does this Beer make me look fat? and Let's drink a 12 pack and get Drunk!

I'm going to combine reasons 3 and 4, because in my opinion, they're closely related.

Let me preface this by saying no one will become chiseled by regularly drinking a lot of beer.  A lower gravity beer typically has the same amount of calories as a can of Coke.  However, it just wouldn't be right if the jolly bar regular with the bellowing laugh had a svelte physique.  In fact, the word jolly almost always precedes the word fat.  However, what we frequent beer drinkers lack in abs, we make up for in good humor.  With that said, let's falsify this claim that light beer is somehow better for you.

The calorie and alcohol content of 12oz of the most popular light beers are:

                

Bud Light- 110   4.2%  .5 oz alcohol (26.2 calories/1 alcohol %)

Miller Light- 96  4.2%  .5 oz alcohol (22.9 calories/1 alcohol %)

Coors Light- 105 4.2%  .5 oz alcohol (25 calories/1 alcohol %)

Now let's compare these three, to three good, high gravity (high alcohol) beers:

Great Divide Old Ruffian Barley Wine- 308  12.7% 1.5 oz alcohol (24.3 calories/1 alcohol %)

Victory Golden Monkey Tripel- 285  9.5%  1.4 oz alcohol (28.8 calories/1 alcohol %)

Dogfish Head Immort Ale- 330 11%  1.32 oz alcohol (30 calories/1 alcohol %)

So we could either drink 3 Bud Lights for 1.5oz of alcohol and consume 330 calories, or we could drink one Old Ruffian and get the same amount of alcohol for 308 calories.  Or we could drink about 3 Miller Lights (288 calories) for the same effect as one Golden Monkey (285 calories).  

If our goal is to drink for the sake of getting drunk, you might as well drink real beer with high gravity, and save yourself 10 trips to the bathroom.  On top of consuming a lot less of it, real beer tastes a hell of a lot better than watered down crap.  

If all of this wasn't enough, there's also no economic sense in drinking light beer over real beer. A 6 pack of Golden Monkey, for example, costs about $11 ($1.80/bottle), while an average 6 pack of Bud Light costs about $6 ($1/bottle).  If we've established it takes 3x a Bud Light for the same effect as a Golden Monkey, then we will come to the conclusion that not only is it less logical to drink Bud Light for it's calories, but it also make less economic sense compared to buying a high gravity beer ($3 vs $1.80). 

So next time you see a Lightie upset that your favorite pub rightfully does not carry light beers, volunteer to be his Rex Harrison, and take him on as a beer conversion challenge  armed with these fun facts.  In no time, Bubba Lightie will look like this:

Pat yourself on the back, you've been reformed!