VinePair Podcast

Introducing Taplines, a brand-spankin’-new podcast about the modern history of American beer, only on the VinePair Podcast Network. Each week, contributing editor and columnist Dave Infante will interview a different guest about a triumph, tribulation, or turning point in the evolution of the United States’ multibillion-dollar beer industry. This week, the Original Lite Beer from Miller hit American supermarket shelves in 1975 — and from then on, nothing was the same. To learn how the beer that we'd come to know simply as Miller Lite lit the fuse on the intense, decades-long campaign of corporate competition known to industry insiders simply as "The Light Beer Wars," we're joined by Maureen Ogle, historian, and author of "Ambitious Brew," a vital narrative history of the American beer business. Listen on for a tale of low calories, high stakes, and huge egos — and of course, a reappraisal of the iconic gauntlet August Busch III famously threw down to his Phillip Morris-backed rivals at Miller Brewing Company as they came for the King of Beers in the mid-70s.

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