Artificial Sweeteners in Beer - Possible?

[DonRocks]

I just had a disgusting thought.

I'm currently having a very well-aged Fromage de Meaux, so perfectly ripened and lovingly stored that it could masquerade as having been made from unpasteurized milk.

Without naming names (because if I did, it would be an invitation to fry my ass in an all-clad lawsuit pan), I'm having this impeccably glorious cheese alongside a "beer" that, by itself, tastes, shall we say, like, well, like, one of these, except diluted.

This beer is so bad that it makes me want to sing "100 Bottles of Beer On The Wall," but before you take one down and pass it around, you call up Chris Cunningham and ask him to come over with a Metal Storm 36-barreled stacked projectile machine gun equipped with under-barrel grenade launcher.

On its own, this 64 calorie hydrophile could be used as a palate cleanser while trying to detect bottle variation within a single case of Evian; after a bite of this cheese, it's as if Myron, the guy from the New Jersey chemical lab, shot Splenda up your nostril during a teabag.

Before ten minutes ago, not once had this repulsive apparition ever invaded the serenity of my low-calorie fantasies; now, I can't think of anything else: could it be possible that industrial beers contain artificial sweeteners?

[thistle]

I really miss beer & cheese...7 hours, w/ no one posting about food, except for Lilith? I'm having both mental & physical withdrawal symptoms...

[aaronsinger]

On another fantastically fun food forum I frequent (not either of the links below) there was a thread discussing sour beers. Lindeman's came up, maker of many lambics. Someone mentioned that they add sweetener to their beers to enhance sweetness, as normally lambics are tart, a flavor in beer Americans are not exactly used to (although they seem all the rage in the craft beer world right now).

This thread discusses more. So does this article from an Arizona publication.

[DonRocks]

On another fantastically fun food forum I frequent (not either of the links below) there was a thread discussing sour beers. Lindeman's came up, maker of many lambics. Someone mentioned that they add sweetener to their beers to enhance sweetness, as normally lambics are tart, a flavor in beer Americans are not exactly used to (although they seem all the rage in the craft beer world right now).

This thread discusses more. So does this article from an Arizona publication.

I have a very slow internet connection at the moment, to the point where I don't even want to try to open your links. But I think it's assumed that Belgian "fruit beers" have sweeteners added, isn't it? Be they fruit juice, sugar, or whatever. When you're dealing with American Light Piss, however, I don't think people have the mindset that they're dumping low-cal chemical sweeteners in - the advertisements always seem to say "malt, hops, and purified water" or some such drivel that leads people to think that even industrial diet beers contain minimal ingredients. And I'm not saying they don't, but I'm at least questioning it at this point.

[aaronsinger]

I have a very slow internet connection at the moment, to the point where I don't even want to try to open your links. But I think it's assumed that Belgian "fruit beers" have sweeteners added, isn't it? Be they fruit juice, sugar, or whatever. When you're dealing with American Light Piss, however, I don't think people have the mindset that they're dumping low-cal chemical sweeteners in - the advertisements always seem to say "malt, hops, and purified water" or some such drivel that leads people to think that even industrial diet beers contain minimal ingredients. And I'm not saying they don't, but I'm at least questioning it at this point.

Fruit is an obvious natural sweetener, to me; it's added to many of those lambics both for added flavor and to counterattack the sour flavor of those spontaneously fermented beers. However, to me there is a big difference between adding fruit or fruit juice for added flavor and sweetness and adding an artificial sweetener that is 200 times sweeter than sugar, as Lindeman's does in adding 'Ace K' (Acesulfame potassium).

One aspect of that problem, and from what I understand is the reason it was discovered that Lindeman's lambics contained Ace K (and supposedly no other Belgians do), is that Belgian and/or European laws state that you have to list all of your ingredients on the label, whereas the American beer scene has no such laws. As for the big-market American beers, there is no way of knowing what they put in their beers to water them down, lower the cost, etc. There is also no way of knowing what craft breweries put in their beers, either. That's not to say that banning additional ingredients is the way to go; I find Belgian beers generally more interesting than German beers, and part of that is because of the German reinheitsgebot laws (though those aren't as strict as they once were).