Budweiser Beer

Origin: United States · Brewer: Anheuser-Busch InBev · ABV 5.0%

Often advertised as "The King of Beers", Budweiser has been brewed in St. Louis, Missouri since 1876, when Adolphus Busch and his father-in-law Eberhard Anheuser launched it as one of the first American beers designed for nationwide distribution. The name itself was borrowed from the Bohemian brewing town of Budweis (Czech: Ceské Budejovice), a reference that still triggers an ongoing trademark dispute with the Czech brewery Budejovický Budvar.

What's in the bottle

Budweiser is a 5.0 percent ABV American adjunct lager brewed from two-row and six-row barley malt, hops, water and a generous portion of rice - around a third of the grain bill. The rice is what gives the beer its dry, crisp character and pale gold colour. Anheuser-Busch also uses a beechwood-aging step in its lagering tanks; the wood does not add flavour but provides extra surface area for the yeast during a long, slow second fermentation.

Global reach

Today Budweiser is sold in more than 80 countries and is one of the half-dozen biggest beer brands on Earth by volume, with particularly strong performance in China, the UK, Brazil and Canada. It is the global brewing flagship of AB InBev and a recurring sponsor of the FIFA World Cup and other major sports properties. (The brand was previously known simply as "Bud" in much of Europe because of the long-running Czech trademark conflict.)

Trivia worth knowing

The famous Budweiser Clydesdale horses date back to 1933, when August Busch Jr. used a hitch of them to deliver the first post-Prohibition case of Budweiser to the White House. Anheuser-Busch was acquired by Belgium-based InBev in 2008 in a deal worth about US$52 billion, creating the AB InBev empire that now controls roughly a quarter of the world's beer.

Sources: Anheuser-Busch InBev company filings; corporate press releases; reporting from Reuters and the Wall Street Journal on the 2008 merger.