Date Tested: July 30th, 2025

Competitors: Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, Cincy Light, Natty Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, Busch Light

Test Description: Blind Tastings: Ice chilled beer placed in nondescript clear plastic cups by a judge.

I can’t believe I didn’t do this one sooner. The American light lager. The choice of ball games, stadiums, barbecues, and garages from sea to shining sea. They were designed to be a lower calorie and more approachable version of the American lager made famous by Bohemian, Bavarian, and Belgian immigrants in the United States. They are easy drinking and strike an impressive balance of providing the means for intoxication while still being refreshing and highly drinkable.

Haters say they taste like water and are the epitome of American consumerism gone rampant. They will tell you these “beers” are brewed in soulless mega factories and not only pale in comparison to more skillfully crafted ales, but that their very existence squeezes smaller breweries out of the market. They will tell you, “you should try this Czech smoked black ale that tastes like peanut butter and costs $10 a pint.”

But they are missing the forest for the trees. They are blind to the fact that the middle-aged, middle class backbone of this country (and their high school children) have collectively recognized a more basic truth: No one cares where you found your yeast. People want consistency, availability, and cheap beer. They want to enjoy a cold can while they mow or a frosty bottle while they corn hole. And the brands competing here today check all those boxes.

Another interesting facet of this group of beverages is the fanatic following they endear. People seem to pick a brand sometime in their twenties and never let go. They pick their team and no amount of “but try this!” will ever sway them. A Bud Light man at 30 will be a Bud Light man in the grave.

And that brings us to this test. I am in my twenties, and it is time for me to choose my allegiance. A family trip to southern Illinois with some individuals I know to have very strong brand allegiance proved to be an opportunity too good to pass up. I picked up the five best-selling beers (Bud, Coors, Michelob, Natural, Miller) as well as the cheapest I could find (Busch Light) and a more expensive offering (Cincy light by Rhinegeist). As usual, the samples were administered blindly to contestants to taste at their leisure. The results, tabulated below, were all I could hope for.

Competitor #	Notes	Actual	Rating (/10)	Guess
1	Not much flavor but very crisp	Bud Light	6	Cincy
2	Crisp, Light, Refreshing. Tastes like how I imagine a light beer tasting - nice malt flavor	Cincy	7	Bud Light
3	Bread Taste, but in a good way. Very similair to competitor 2	Coors	7	Miller Lite
4	Absolutely flavorless but very crisp	Natty	6	Coors
5	Tastes like water	Michelob Ultra	4	Busch
6	Flavorless, no hints of anything	Busch	4	Coors
7	Tastes like water	Miller	5	Natty

I will mention the guessing part of the results first. I correctly identified zero beers. And everyone involved in the competition who considers (considered?) themselves fans of this genre of beer didn’t correctly name more than 1 beer. One competitor correctly guessed 5 of the 7 beers, and that person doesn’t drink any beer ever. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to derive any meaning from this data.

As for the ratings, I would categorize these beers into three groups: tasty and refreshing (Cincy, Coors); light flavor but crisp and refreshing (Bud, Natty, Miller); and flavorless with few refreshing traits (Ultra, Busch). Coors light and Cincy light were my clear favorites. I ranked them the highest, and they were, in my opinion, really the only two with any discernible taste after the first sip. They were actually very similar, and I doubt I could tell them apart with any reliability – they were each crisp, refreshing, light, and yet still had enough of a malt flavor to let me know I’m drinking beer. Conversely, the other competitors were all but flavorless, with Busch and Michelob Ultra being nigh indistinguishable from water when next to their peers.

The group results went largely the same way. Cincy Light received the most votes as the favorite, and Coors came in second. As with my notes, most who chose Cincy or Coors as their favorites had the other in second place. Michelob Ultra was by far the least favorite, except for one competitor who is exclusively a wine drinker and has had maybe three light beers in the last forty years, yet ranked it first. Take from that what you will.

Another interesting result is a life long, near daily miller lite drinker not only could not correctly identify his beer of choice but ranked it quite poorly. When confronted with this fact, one could sense great turmoil and unease in the competitor, as if they misremembered the date of their own birthday. Only time will tell if the results this competitor found will be enough to change decades of purchase history or if brand loyalty and muscle memory will win out.

It is worth noting that none of these were bad beers. None tasted off-putting, and none were beers I’d rather dump out than drink. The other side of this coin is that none were incredible beers either. Sure, Coors and Cincy were my clear favorites, but neither had me thinking, “Man, this is a tasty brew.” And really, this is a cool result. These results are, in my opinion, evidence of a commodity product. In other words, they are much more similar than they are different and likely all have significant overlap in ingredients and brewing methods. They are set apart and defined largely by geography, marketing, and branding, in a way that even cola or peanut butter, other products with similarly limited differences, do not match.

Nonetheless, I will be stocking my mini-fridge with Coors light when I feel like buying some cheap, American, red-blooded beer.