Beer Brewed Under The Name “Budweiser”

In 1876, Anheuser-Busch began making a beer in St. Louis under the name “Budweiser.” Adolphus Busch, Eberhard Anheuser’s son-in-law and business partner, used the name at a time when Budweiser could still be understood as a geographic or style designation connected to Budweis, the German name for České Budějovice in Bohemia. The beer became a central American lager brand and later one of the most disputed beer names in the world. The Budweiser name connected Anheuser-Busch’s American lager to the reputation of Bohemian brewing, and it eventually led to long-running trademark conflicts with breweries from České Budějovice, including Budweiser Budvar. The beer also exemplified an American adaptation of pale lager through rice adjuncts. Busch and his brewers developed the beer for wine and liquor merchant Carl Conrad using rice alongside barley malt. Across American brewing, rice and maize supplied starch while diluting the high protein content of domestic six-row barley malt, helping brewers produce paler, lighter-bodied beers with improved clarity. These techniques were developed before Prohibition and served brewing and market goals as well as economic ones; adjunct brewing was not simply a later cost-cutting departure from an all-malt American past.