Beer Forum

The "King of Beers". Ha! What a joke. If Bud is the king of beers, I'm a monkey's uncle. This watered down pig swill isn't fit to drink. I've had it in bottles, kegs, and cans, and it all was terrible. Who drinks this shit? The aroma, if you can call it that, is of rice & burned corn. They use rice & corn (says so right on the label) because rice & corn are a lot cheaper than malted barley. No hop aroma or taste for that matter to speak of. A fizzy, light straw colored nightmare in a can. It tastes of rotten vegetables, and it'll give you a hangover that would kill any ordinary horse. They should ban this stuff, because it is one nasty beer in my book. I personally never developed a taste for mega-swill, thank God. Save your money, buy better, not Bud.

Triple Freak, I am confused about the price of rice. Where I buy my malt, they have 50 lb. bags of flaked rice. The price is $60.00. The 2-row is $40.00. Big difference. What is the price difference from where you live?

3 Dogs

The problem is that brewing rice isn't the same as table rice. Brewer's rice is flaked, as you've already noticed. When you're a big brewery like Bud, you buy rice by the trainload. They flake or mill it themselves.
Now, table rice is about the cheapest grain on the planet, simply because so many places grow it. Since you can't flake your own rice (it takes a special process) you pay for the privilege of them doing it for you.
The price difference is uniform.

There is no corn in Budweiser, hops, yeast, rice, water, and barley malts only.

What you're tasting is dimethyl sulfide, a compound that tastes like boiled corn or cabbage. Basically, there's a sulfur compound in the grain, S-methyl-methionine, that's formed during germination. This sulfur compound, when mixed with heat, turns into DMS. Most of this DMS can be released out of the beer during a vigorous boil, but some always remains. As long as the wort is heated to ~155F or higher, you'll get DMS extraction.

DMS can also be produced during fermentation, but it's usually "scrubbed" out. High levels of DMS can be indicative of a wild yeast infection. It's like drinking water that has been host to boiled corn for weeks. Nasty stuff.

So why do you taste it in macro lagers, and not micro brewed ales? Well, high protein malts have high levels of SMM. During kilning, the SMM begins to disappear, some being transferred into DMS. At this stage, the DMS isn't a factor, because it will be removed in a later process. So malts that are kilned for longer and higher temperatures have far less SMM. Also factoring into this, is that micro brewed beers typically have more flavor to cover up the off flavors of DMS.

Corn gets a bad rap as a brewing grain, thanks to big time brewers who use it to cheapen the product. Much of the nasty flavors that people blame on corn is actually DMS. Corn is a much milder and sweeter flavor than DMS, and is quite pleasant in small doses. Quite frankly, flaked maize is a wonderful adjunct for cream ales and many other subtle style beers. I've had several homebrews that utilized the adjunct, with absolutely great results. Brew up a couple beers with small amounts of corn, and you'll soon be very good at telling the difference between DMS and actual brewing corn.

And in response to the question on the prices: A-B, SABMiller, and Coors use corn and rice because the Guv'ment subsidizes the use of corn and rice, and not barley. So, it's cheaper for them, not so much for you. My knowledge in this is pretty limited though, wish I had some more info on it for you. This is in addition to what TF has said about processes involved of course.

Legumes are even cheaper than rice, especially green peas and kidney beans. If AB could figure out how to make beer out of those, they would.

Yummy Green Pea Pale Ale.

can you malt peas and beans?

any viable seed can be malted