"At Last: Craft Beer. Done Lite."

By JASON + TODD ALSTRÖM

del.ico.us | digg it! | reddit!

print | email | 2 Comments

Or so says the website for the new line of light "craft beers" from Miller Brewing Co., the Miller Lite Brewers Collection (MLBC), in the most recent attempt by a large brewer to capture some of the success of small American craft brewers. Aside from poking fun at some blonde female stereotypes, the website focuses primarily on comparing the new lineup of brews to other popular "light" offerings—Fat Tire, Blue Moon, Michelob Amber Bock, Sam Adams Light—with a Joe Six-pack attitude. They also have some sellout independent filmmaker named Dave Seger "exploring" the beers in a faux-documentary. It's so embarrassingly obvious. His roommate is also a Miller employee. What a shill.

Anyway, the basic concept is to combine craft beer-style flavors with all of the so-called benefits of drinking a lower-carb, -calorie and -alcohol beer, but how they taste is most important to us.

Miller Lite Amber

Pale amber color with a crystal clear clarity; a bit lighter in color than expected but still within the range of the Amber Beer style. Topped with a white lace with some cling to the glass, but not much of a head overall. Caramel or toffee aroma? It's so faint you can't pick out much, but it's there, clean nose nonetheless. The body screams, "light beer!" Very smooth with enough crispness to go around. Faint tone of caramel flavor, toffee right around the corner. Hopping is minimal at best, with only a mildly sharp bitterness and a nearly nonexistent flavor. Clean, dry finish that drops a bit of carbonic acid-like character on the palate.

Though drinkable, there's not much flavor. This is not craft beer, but rather a light beer with a pinch of flavor added.

Miller Lite Blonde Ale

Clear and golden, a lot darker than expected and off the mark for the style. The head simmers down to a thin white lacing that does not stick much. Slight oily hop aroma—we wonder if hop extracts were used. A little grainy in the nose and not much else. Very smooth and crisp with an obvious light beer body. It has a hop flavor with a watery herbal tone and a bitterness that never reaches to where it wants to go, or at least where it should go. Malt flavors give a quick shot of sweetness, then it's a dry grainy character for the duration. Clean finish.

Drinkable, yet boring, half decent at best. But it's one of the most flavorful light beers we had, even though that is not saying much.

Miller Lite Wheat

Thin white lacing with minimal retention; pale yellow-beige color dons a thick cloudiness, yet there is no sediment on the bottom of the bottle. The orange aroma comes off like organic household cleaner rather than a wedge on the side of the glass. Crispness is there, and it's light-bodied, though a slight dextrin within makes it seem a bit bigger. Watery orange flavor, similar to a diet orange soda. No real hop character to be found. Faint wet cracker maltiness fades quickly into the bone-dry orange finish.

Blindfolded, this could have been mistaken for a watered-down diet no-name orange soda. Miller would have been better off filtering this, killing off the orange flavor (they insinuate online that some has been added) and adding a bit more wheat. Not undrinkable, though clearly on the path that strays away from being a beer.

All are 4.2 percent alcohol by volume with nearly identical packaging—how homogeneous.

These are not craft beers. This is Miller saying they are.

FOR MORE INFO: MILLERLITEBREWERSCOLLECTION.COM

FOR MORE BEER EDUCATION: BEERADVOCATE.COM

RESPECT BEER.