Mid Strength Craft Beer - Can You Dig It?

[capsicum]

Love em.

If it tastes good then if it's not going to give me a hangover then that's a bonus.

Jeez how things have changed since I have a baby... Getting drunk used to be the aim of drinking, now it's to be avoided usually. Screaming baby in the early hours and an unsympathetic wife will do that.

I remember when mids or light beer was 2/3 the price of its full strength siblings. Not these days.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

if the price point was reflective of the malt/hop bill that went into them.. everything gets reduced (maybe volume increase?) except for the price point.

There are arguments on boths sides of this.

On the one hand the idea that the malt bill is substantially reduced doesn't necessarily stack up, often the actual malt bill for a mid strength beer is very close to that for a full strength but the FG* is substantially higher, this is in an effort to have remnant malt solids cover some of the mid-palate suckout that the lower ABV generally gives. In the case of the big blue beast in the 90's the low / mid strength beers usually had more malt in them than the standard range (not that it's hard to have more malt than CD).

On the other hand for the big boys where excise is a huge percentage of the eventual wholesale price of the beer the price differentials should be larger: I can see no no good reason for Rogers' to be 90% of the price of LCPA when the excise payable is ~65%.

For little guys where woeful packaging efficiencies and expensive distribution are large elements of their generally higher costs, the small price differences make more sense.


* Yes, even when considering real extract, I am aware that the lower ABV increases apparent extract.