by Jishi Santos

Created on: September 08, 2008   Last Updated: December 07, 2010

Does light beer taste as good as regular beer?

It is like asking the question does light milk taste as good as full cream milk and the answer is obviously "No". It is like many genuine products from the past that for reasons of health or safety have been modified in some way or another . Mind you it is a marketing ploy too. The more fear you put out there in the world about health and safety you are going to create a huge consumer market.

Our son is the southern sales manager for a home grown beer company that started in Sydney and has now become international. The company is Barons Brewing and has sales in America as well as Australia. He brings all sorts of beer when he comes to visit and I have tasted quite a few in my time. The company is trying to create quite a few different recipes for their beer and one very popular one is Black Wattle. It is the first in a new class of beer flavored by Australian Native, roasted wattle seed. It is a rich, amber color and has a base malt flavor of toffee and caramel. The wattle seed rounds off the flavor that hints of chocolate, mocha and hazelnut. It is a full bodied, full flavored beer, smooth with a silky finish and best enjoyed with beef lamb or game meats. Now if that hasn't got your mouth watering, I don't know what will and from experience it lives up to all those flavory comments. But all you light beer drinkers, sorry, it only could be produced as a full old fashioned beer to get all those delicious flavors and it is 5.8% alcohol volume. To me this is a big plus for a full beer. Another they have which has 4.9%alcohol volume is their lager and it is award winning for this flavor. Czech Saaz and New Zealand hops and Australian and German malts. So both these you would miss out on if you were a light beer drinker.

Australia is well known for it's internationally marketed Fosters Lager and Victoria Bitter and for years these were drunk at full strength by the older generation and the taste was good according to their comments, as I have spoken to quite a few of them about it. In the countryside of Victoria there is a strange macho attitude which would stop any would be tough guy from taking up light beer. Any who have, invariably made the comment that it tastes worse than water. It would be like asking a seasoned whisky drinker to accept his whisky at 15% alcohol volume. He would just laugh at you, especially if he was a Scotsman.

There are many promotional tastings in supermarkets that have a liquor section these days and having witnessed some I have noticed that the overwhelming response to light beer is that it may be safer but doesn't taste half as good. It only stands to reason that it's quality and not quantity that counts. For the drinker of light beers is fooled into a zone where he thinks that he can drink more, but invariably he loses control and drinks more than he should have and gets drunk. On the other hand the seasoned full strength beer drinker knows that he is drinking quality liquid and paces himself as it costs him a bit more. By the end of the night he is happy at the good taste he has enjoyed and is able to walk out the door straight. It is no good saying to the policeman, "But it was only light beer constable," it wont cut any ice if you are over the limit. Talking of ice it is sometimes a good idea if drinking a beer to put a block of ice in it to dilute it. Oh no, says the full beer drinker, it just wont taste the same and that is the story of light beer, it just doesn't taste the same. So the answer to the question is as said at the beginning, "No"!

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