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May 15, 2007 11:59 pm US/Mountain
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How Much Alcohol Is There In Beer?
by Alan Gionet
DENVER (CBS4) ―
Ask them at the Grizzly Rose if they know how much alcohol is in their beer and their answers are likely to come back as varied as their beers. "Twenty eight percent?" said one man. "Seven percent," said another. The fact is, beer can have from the miniscule amounts in so-called non-alcoholic beer on up to well over 20 percent. But most have an alcohol percentage you can count up with the fingers on your beer hand -- around four or five percent.
Coors Brewmaster, Ph.D. Keith Villa told CBS4 us how it works.
"The more malt you put into a kettle," Villa said. "Pounds of malt, you just keep putting more and more in the more potential alcohol you get out."
The malt is used to create a slurry.
"What you're doing is making a sugary solution called wort," Villa said, "This wort is then fermented by yeast. The yeast eats the wort and makes alcohol."
Stopping that process can reduce it. The higher the sugar content of the wort, the higher the alcohol is likely to get.
Coors Light has about 4.15 percent alcohol by volume. Coors banquet beer computes at 4.91 percent. America's biggest seller, Bud Light has 4.2 percent. Budweiser has 5. Miller Lite's widely publicized alcohol content is 4.2 percent and it's Genuine Draft, 4.7.
Things get confusing when you get to dark beers. Many think they have more alcohol. Not true. The chocolaty colored Guinness Draught sports only about four percent. That's less than Bud Light, Coors Light or Miller Lite.
"That is one of the classic misperceptions about beer strength," said Eric Warner, co-owner, or "Lead Dog" as he likes to title himself of Flying Dog Brewery in Denver.
"The strength in beer comes from how much grain you put in, not the color of the grain," Warner said. "Alcohol actually has, contributes a flavor and a lot of times what you're doing in the brewing process to create more alcohol, you're going to get more flavor out of it as well."
Warner said there seems to be demand for higher alcohol beers right now and his company is responding with some heavyweights.
"As the category of craft beer keeps evolving, people want to try newer bolder products," Warner said.
And what about the 3.2 beer sold in convenience stores and grocery stores in Colorado?
"The irony is that a regular version of a domestic beer is not that much higher in alcohol in content than the 3.2 version," Warner said.
The reason is that Colorado may have a 3.2 law, but it's a measurement of alcohol by weight, not volume as most beer makers measure it. Beer weighs about 20 percent less than water, so the measurement by weight is about 20 percent lower. A 3.2 beer actually has an alcohol content by volume of about four percent. Many brewers simply dilute their beer to get within the limits.
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