Does light beer have less alcohol in it then regular beer?

Question

I heard light beer has 3.5% of alcohol while regular beer has 5.0% roughly. Is this true?

Answer 1

Check the label -- some light beers have less alcohol, others just have less calories but the same alcohol level.

Answer 2

Yes, good question. When I turned 18, I lived in Ohio. If you were between 18 and 20, you could order what they called "3.2 beer" and this was, as the name suggests, beer with only 3.2% alcohol. The problem was that nobody liked it and the only ones who drank it were people from 18-20 because we couldn't (legally) get anything else. Regular beer has between 6-7% alcohol.

Fast forward to the time when America got "health consious" about food. The beer companies decided to do away with 3.2 beer after the Ohio state laws passed a law that 19 and 20 year olds could drink regular beer and 18 year olds could not drink anything with alcoholo. (Big Bummer for new students going to College. Glad I was already 19). Miller developed Lite Beer which was marked as a more healthy beer with "great taste - less filling." 3.2 beer was the same product as Lite Beer simply morphing the marketing to fit the times.

Later, the Federal government decided that only 21 year olds should drink and imposed the law that if the individual states did not raise their drinking ages to 21, then federal funding for highway repair would be discontinued. Hence all states are now, I believe, 21 and over only. Added: This paragraph must be incorrect because I noted that another post stated that Oklahoma only had 3.5 beer and someone else noted that other states may also have 3.5 only. Sorry for the error

Interesting issue.

Answer 3

Yes. Light beer has less calories mainly because it has less alcohol. Every gram of alcohol has 7 calories. Every gram of carbohydrate has 4 calories. Light beers typically reduce both the amount of carbohydrates and amount of alcohol by having a beer with a higher concentration of water. But most calories in beer come from the alcohol content. By increasing the concentration of water the concentration of alcohol is reduced so light beers achieve less calories per bottle than regular beer. The majority of calories in beer come from the alcohol, not the carbohydrates, which is a common misconception.

Answer 4

I have seen the labels with alcohol content on Budweiser and Bud Light. It was a 1.5% difference. I would assume that it is probably similar throughout the industry,. As a bartender, I could always watch people put away the Michelob Ultra...now we know why.

Answer 5

Check out the beer calorie guide. A rough comparison is calories to strength of the beer.

http://www.united-nations-of-beer.com/beer-calorie-guide.html

Answer 6

no light beer has fewer calories and carbs. beer in oklahoma is 3.5% because of some law they have about alcohol and not selling anything higher than that.

Answer 7

Any brand of light beer has less alchol than it non-light brand.Light is relative based upon the brand.

Answer 8

no. one glass of wine has the same aalcohol as a bottle o beer so what do you think about light beer?

Answer 9

Certainly not. It has just as much octane.

Now, there are certain states where all you can buy is 3.2% beer, but that isn't called "light beer" - it's called "horse ****".

Answer 10

Yeh thats why they call it light beer