>Beechwood aging does not add flavor, but avoids an off-flavor, according to
>what A-B people told me.

The bud ads I saw some years ago, it seemed perfectly obvious to me,
were intended to mislead gullible consumers into thinking that beer
was "aged" (presumably for a long time) in those big beautiful barrels
we see in pictures of wine cellars, made only of expensive beechwood,
to impart that delicious bud flavor.

I often used those ads when discussing false advertising, and my
college-level students invariably responded in that misled way, when I
showed a slide of such an ad and asked them 'What does that ad tell
you?"

They were staggered to hear me read about "beechwood aging" from a
book on beer-making; and then I added that by dividing the figure
stated in the ad as the tremendous amount of beechwood A-B bought per
year, by the amount of bud produced in a year, it came to about two
ounces of wood per "quarter" of beer--about the amount of wood in a
No. 2 pencil.

So much for Truth in Advertising!

vince norris