Expert: Ed Westemeier - 5/15/2007

Question
I'm from Iowa and last year i was in louisiana and they had bud dry at the grocery store.  A (older) guys i was with said they used to have that everywhere.  We got some and i couldnt really tell the difference between it and any other domestic beer from a big company.  What is it?  And is there alot of beer variation in beer distribution as regards mainstream beers?

Answer
Fashions in marketing the mainstream beers come and go, and this is a good example. After all, what else do they have going for them but good marketing?

The term "dry" as applied to beer originated in Japan about 20 years ago, and just refers to a standard pale lager beer that has been fermented down to the point that there are basically no residual sugars left in it (they have all been converted to alcohol and CO2). The result is a clean, crisp (but very thin) beer. As you noticed, you can hardly tell it apart from normal lager.

When American beer marketers noticed the success of this ploy in Japan, they copied it here. Big success for a while (Ice beer was a similar ploy), but then it lost steam.