Budweiser

• 1. Introduction

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  Budweiser traces its American origins to 1876, when Carl Conrad and his partner Adolphus Busch returned from a trip to Bohemia and decided to recreate a lager style they had tasted there. The beer they launched in St. Louis, Missouri, borrowed its name from a German adjective meaning "of Budweis" - a city in what is now the Czech Republic where beer had been brewed since 1265. What they could not have predicted was that this borrowed name and borrowed style would one day sit at the center of one of the longest trademark battles in commercial history. Who owns the right to call something Budweiser? Why does a can sold in Germany carry a different brand name than the same liquid sold in Texas? And how did a rice-brewed lager become the most heavily advertised drink brand in America?

• 2. The Name Nobody Owns Outright

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  České Budějovice, the Czech city formerly known as Budweis, had been producing beer under that geographic identity for more than six centuries before Adolphus Busch ever visited. The Budweiser Budvar Brewery, based there, has fought Anheuser-Busch across dozens of legal jurisdictions over the right to the Budweiser name. Neither side has won globally. In most of the European Union - with the notable exceptions of Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and Spain - the American beer must be sold as "Bud" rather than Budweiser, because the trademark belongs to the Czech brewer in those markets. In the United Kingdom, a different outcome emerged: both the Czech Budvar and the American Anheuser-Busch product appear on shelves under the Budweiser name simultaneously, distinguished only by their logos. The result is that the same company, selling the same recipe, operates under two different names depending on which border it crosses. The beer reaches more than 80 countries, yet in a significant portion of them its own name is unavailable to use.

• 3. What Is Actually Inside the Can

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  Up to 30 percent of Budweiser's grain bill is rice rather than barley malt alone - a fact that has drawn criticism from brewing purists but is central to the flavor profile Anheuser-Busch has maintained for decades. The brewing process runs through seven distinct steps: milling, mashing, straining, the brew kettle, primary fermentation, beechwood lagering, and finishing. The beechwood step is frequently misunderstood. The chips are boiled in sodium bicarbonate for seven hours before entering the tank, which strips away most of their flavor compounds. Their purpose is purely functional: they give yeast more surface area to rest on and keep yeast in suspension longer. This extended contact time allows the yeast to reabsorb off-flavors such as acetaldehyde and diacetyl. The tanks themselves are horizontal rather than vertical, which accelerates yeast flocculation. Anheuser-Busch also uses a krausening process, re-introducing fresh wort into the aging vessel to restart fermentation. In July 2006, the company brewed a version using organic rice for sale in Mexico, but never extended that practice to other markets.

• 4. A Century of Advertising

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  In the early 20th century, Anheuser-Busch commissioned a play-on-words song called "Under the Anheuser Bush," recorded by several early phonograph companies. The advertising ambition never shrank from there. In 1969, the company launched Bud Man, a Superman-influenced advertising character who later served as one of the inspirations for Duffman on The Simpsons. From 1987 to 1989, Bud Light ran a campaign built around a dog named Spuds MacKenzie. Then came the Budweiser Frogs, the lizards impersonating the frogs, and the "Whassup?" campaign. The Budweiser Clydesdales - a team of horses - became one of the most recognized advertising images in American television. By 2012, Anheuser-Busch was spending $449 million per year on Budweiser advertising in the United States alone, which represented a third of the company's entire domestic marketing budget. During Super Bowl XLIX, the brand ran an ad called "Brewed the Hard Way" in which it described itself as "Proudly A Macro Beer," a deliberate contrast with the craft beer movement. On the 7th of October 2016, the Budweiser Clydesdales appeared at Washington University in St. Louis ahead of a presidential debate, and a special batch called Lilly's Lager was brewed exclusively for the occasion.

• 5. Sports, Sponsorship, and the Slogan War

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  The slogan "The Beer of Kings" belonged first to the brewers of Budejovice, who had used it since the 16th century. Adolphus Busch adapted it into "The King of Beers," and Anheuser-Busch now holds the trademark to both phrases in the United States. The company's sports partnerships have been similarly aggressive. In 2010, Bud Light paid $1 billion for a six-year licensing deal with the NFL. Budweiser pays $20 million annually for Major League Baseball licensing rights. The company served as Official Beer of NASCAR from 1998 to 2007, though starting in 2016 its NASCAR focus shifted to the Busch brand. On the IndyCar circuit, Budweiser sponsored a consecutive line of drivers from Mario Andretti in 1983 all the way through Richie Hearn in 1999. NASCAR sponsorships ran through Dale Earnhardt Jr. from 1999 to 2007, Kasey Kahne from 2008 to 2010, and Kevin Harvick from 2011 to 2015. Between 2003 and 2006, Budweiser backed the BMW Williams Formula One team. Anheuser-Busch also became an official partner of Major League Soccer, the Los Angeles Galaxy, the Premier League, and the presenting sponsor of the FA Cup.

• 6. Cans, Containers, and the Patriotism Question

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  Budweiser began canning its beer in 1936, largely as an effort to rebuild sales after Prohibition ended. The new packaging drove a sales increase that held until the start of World War II in 1939. Since that first can, Anheuser-Busch has issued 12 major design changes, not counting temporary special editions. The cans have traditionally featured eagles and the American color palette of red, white, and blue. A 2011 redesign stripped some of that traditional imagery in response to a large decline in sales that threatened Budweiser's position as America's best-selling beer. The company framed the update as an appeal to young male American drinkers and as a move toward international expansion; Budweiser had entered the Russian market in 2010 and was growing in China. On the 10th of May 2016, Advertising Age reported that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau had approved new Budweiser labels replacing the brand name with the word "America" on cans and bottles from the 23rd of May through the November elections. Patriotic slogans including E pluribus unum and "Liberty and Justice For All" replaced standard text on the packaging. Outside the United States, of the 15 Anheuser-Busch breweries operating internationally, 14 are located in China, where Budweiser ranks as the fourth-leading beer brand by market share.