by Brett Jamieson

Created on: September 26, 2008   Last Updated: November 07, 2008

Get more than one North American male aged 18 to 88 in a conversation with a six pack, case, or pint in front of them, and it is not surprising when the debate of "Regular vs. Light" becomes the focus of that conversation, even if just for a short moment before moving onto other subjects. However, this debate has surfaced simply to either serve a person's personal preferences, or their ego.

The truth is that light beer vs. regular beer has evolved out of the economic idea of creating product norms and marketing them to their specific market sectors. It is all a result of a marketing campaign developed by Miller to sell "diet" beer to Americans. If you weren't from North America, you wouldn't even be having this conversation at all. "Light" beer is not even sold anywhere but North America.

And the "light" beer that you buy at your local liquor store is nothing like a beer made outside the continent, or in any traditional way. Traditional beer is brewed over a span of 4-6 weeks allowing the full flavours, enzymes and chemical reactions to penetrate the mixture creating the final product, that usually does not exceed 6% alcohol. However, Light beer, is brewed over the course of about a week creating a mixture that is at approximately 25 - 30 % alcohol, at which point they water it down to the 4% alcohol content that light beer is known for and add chemicals to ensure a certain amount of flavour returns to the beverage.

You may ask at this point: Did you vote for the wrong side? Yes it seems like I should be saying that light beer does not taste as good as regular beer. However, I am taking a different perspective on this.

If you look at the North American market of beer production, it is quite obvious that regular beer is simply better tasting than light beer, because it is much easier to find a regular beer that has gone through the proper brewing process in North America than to find a light beer that has gone through this same process. If you look outside the North American market, you will find that there are many beers brewed without the "light" label, that are brewed to a lower alcohol content than others. For example, standard Carlsberg is brewed to 3.8%, even lower than a standard light beer, and in contrast to standard Stella Artois, which is 5.2%.

There are countless examples of this throughout the world, and the flavour in Carlsberg is no more lacking than in any other standard lager or pilsner brewed in the world. It is all about preferred taste in this case, and for some beers that brew both a lighter beer and a stronger beer (For example Staropramen 10 degree beer and 12 degree beer), I can say that I sometimes prefer the weaker or lighter product.

So if you were to argue that "light beer" (as it has been branded) is as good as "regular beer" than it would be an argument that lasts a millisecond. However, if you argued that lighter brewed beer is not as good as stronger brewed beer (or regularly brewed beer, according to North American norms), that would be a conversation that could last for hours!

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