Word: brewing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Reported by Douglas Brew and Evan Thomas/ Washington
...companies are winning their beer battles because making and marketing the amber drink has become an enormously expensive enterprise. The most efficient way to brew beer is in huge modern breweries that can cost $250 million or more to construct and many millions of dollars more to operate. The best way to market the resulting product is by setting up a national advertising drive and an efficient, but costly nationwide distribution network...
...reality, lower-calorie beer boils down to less brew for the money. Not only do most light brands carry premium-brand prices, they contain less grain and more water. In spite of the dilution, such beers are not all that much lower in calorie content than normal beers. Observes newspaper Beer Columnist Steve Byers of the Milwaukee Journal: "The calorie difference between a light beer and a premium beer is five potato chips. Why get a worse taste and flat beer for five potato chips...
Perhaps the most glamorous small brewer is Anchor Brewing Co. of San Francisco, which was saved from bankruptcy in 1965 by Frederick Maytag, the great-grandson of the washing machine company founder. Maytag has developed a national following for his Anchor Steam Beer even though only 25,000 bbl. of the brew were produced last year. The beer, now available in 19 states, including Massachusetts and Georgia, is much praised by savants for its distinctively European taste, which imparts a somewhat heavier bouquet than is common among American brands...
Ultimately, of course, it is the consumer's taste that counts, and after two or three refills even the most discriminating elbow-bender may grow a little fuddled. A 1978 report to the Federal Trade Commission concludes that a person's ability to tell one brew from another probably "declines drastically as the quantity of beer consumed per sitting increases." In short, it is the first few sips that make the difference, since the more a beer drinker guzzles the less he seems to know what brand he is imbibing...