Quote:
Originally Posted by funnymantrip
In 1975 the Miller brewing company came out with the first light beer, Miller Lite, took the world by storm.
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Unfortunately this is wrong.
The first light beer was made by Joe Owades at the Rheingold brewery in Brooklyn New York in 1967. Rheingold, in a stroke of advertising genius, called the light beer Gablingers Diet beer. As you might surmise, this was not a great market success.
A colleague at Peter Hand brewery (Meisterbrau) in Chicago asked Owades for the forumation for the low calorie beer and he provided it ... back then regional breweries did not compete with one another.
Meisterbrau entered the market with a light beer called Meisterbrau lite around 1969.
Around this time, Miller was purchased by Philip Morris. Phillip Morris wanted to introduce new products into their new brewing company and looked around. They decided to buy the light beer formulation from Meisterbrau in 1971. They reinvented the reinvented beer as Lite beer from Miller around 1975, approximately 8 years after Rheingold had brought the first low calorie beer into the world.
Interestingly, Dr Owades also formulated recipes for Sam Adams Boston Lager, Pete's Wicked, Foggy Bottom and many other craft brew beers. He introduced dry hopping and krausening into American brewing operations. He was truly a visionary and a nice man (met him once in the early 90s), so I am obligated to set the record straight about light beer.