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Trends come and go: Craft Beer, Hard Seltzer, Canned Cocktails, and more. In the world of beverage, the currents are constantly shifting, but one drink has an irrevocable grip on America: Light Beer. Good old beer flavored beer may take a hit from new competition, but brands like Miller Lite and Michelob Ultra constantly sit at the top of sales volume lists, even with the fall of Bud Light and rise of Modelo's Flagship.
But which light beer is best? Let's find out.
Methodology - Light Beer Ranking
Taste preferences vary significantly between consumers, but across a large sample we should be able to get a somewhat representative picture of the populations preferences. For this ranking, we will combine data sourced from multiple beer rating sites with an internal Castle & Cairn house ranking to create an overall beer quality score. The starting population of beer brands will be those that are explicitly branded as "flagship light" or beers with less than 100 calories from non-craft producers that are nationally available (as proxied by those stocked by Total Wine). We will further eliminate beers for which there is not a large enough sample size due to time in the market (arbitrarily less than 500 ratings). To calculate our final composite score, each beer will be ranked per source and then a weighted average weight will be computed. Higher weights have been allocated to the presumably more reliable forums with a residual 40% coming from our in-house ranking. We feel good about the plurality of the score coming from the in-house ranking for a number of reasons:
- All Beers Tasted on a Level Playing Field - The house critics have tried all of the beers in the lineup which provides a better baseline for gauging the beers relative to each other.
- Appreciation of the Style - Some people do not enjoy light beer and may lump most of the category together as being "bad", compressing the spectrum of ratings provided. Light Beer as a style may appear to be simple and uninteresting at first, but there is a large amount of challenge in making a beer with so few calories that has a reasonable amount of flavor.
- Attempted Objectivity - The house rating includes attempts to correct for individual biases. Said differently, a well executed beer should be scored well whether the specific taste profile resonates with the given taster. Beers are assessed on strength of primary flavor, mouthfeel, and presence of off notes.
External Data Sources
- Untapped (10% of score) - A phone companion for accumulating beer ratings. It is very widely used and has the largest review base by far of the three sources. I track every distinct beer that I drink in its library.
- Rate Beer (25% of Score) - A combination publisher and review forum, rate beer tends towards more well traveled beer drinkers. They have some proprietary re-ranking algorithms that level set between different styles and reviewers but for simplicity we will take the overall raw score. (Update: As of January 2025 Rate Beer has been shut down - Rest in Peace Sweet Prince)
- Beer Advocate (25% of Score) - Founded in 1996, Beer Advocate is by far the oldest of the three organizations but has less of a mobile user base. They have a magazine, blog, and forums. This source also tends towards more passionate/discerning consumers.
Known Issues
- Newer brands/products experience a bit of a honeymoon period during ratings. Those first to try something new are typically already fans of those brands, so it may take longer for the scores to go down over time. We see the same things with IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes; getting to the equilibrium score takes some time. We'll note where this is the case.
- Lime is often served with Mexican imports and provides a flavor boost that may inflate public ratings. For this process, we'll assume that the lime is a valid part of the drink (most places automatically provide it and it is specified in the manufacturer's guidelines).
- Craft Innovation in macro craft brands such as Blue Moon light Sky or Sam Adams light does produce more flavorful products. Ratings of these brands also benefit from a peripheral positive brand contagion from their respective flagships. They typically are targeted at a different market segment and do not offer high unit count packaging. To level the playing field, we removed these.
Findings Light Beer Ranking Tier list
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| Light Beer Tier List from TierMaker.com The above graphic shows the final ratings using the weighted average composite score composed of internal and external ratings, broken into four rating tiers. Beers are ordered by decreasing rank from top to bottom, left to right. You can view the raw data in this Google Sheet. Numerical Weighted Average Rankings:
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Analysis of Light Beer Rankings
Imports did very well across the board with all making the top 50%. All three Mexican style beers made the top ten as well, and Modelo Oro (which we disqualified for not having enough reviews) would have scored in the top place overall. As we mentioned above, serving light beer with lime is a low calorie way to massively increase the flavor. If we look at Bud Light Flagship (2.34) versus Bud Light Lime (2.64) as a convenient proxy, we can see a lift of .3 of 12.8% in average user score just for the addition of lime peels and lime natural flavor. This is massive as the total range for Untapped user scores across all 20 contestants was just 1.13 points with an interquartile range of half a point. Michelob Ultra Golden, Amstel Light, and Heineken light are some of the lowest ABV beers outside of the super calorie options (Miller 64 and Bud Select) and split the calorie difference from that alcohol into less overall calories and a more room for flavoring compounds versus other competitors. One of the surprises for me was Heineken Silver which joined Genesee light as being the only beers with major differences in the house and external ratings. I expected a little bit of flipping around the middle of the pack (real differences around the median are usually small), but Silver seems to resonate with consumers at the moment. It is a relatively new product and Heineken has done a lot of marketing around the cold-lagered beer engineered to compete directly with Miller Lite and Michelob Ultra from a calorie and flavor perspective. On the low end, Miller 64 and Bud Select 55 were universally hated. There just isn't enough there from a flavor perspective. Bud Light Next actually performed better than expected given that it is zero carbs and 80 calories, really more of a beer flavored seltzer with slight citrus notes. I think the uniqueness paid off there. Overall, the ratings turned out very well. The weighted composite score largely agreed with the unadjusted external value but did help to create some distance in otherwise close matchups.
Did we get something wrong? Do you see it differently? Make your own version here. Cheers!
If you are so inclined, here is the house compiled tier list:
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| Castle & Cairn Team Tier List |