Montco bros say ripoff Bud waters its beer
Greenbergs say Bud products are weaker beer than advertised
Montco bros say ripoff Bud waters its beer
Joseph N. DiStefano
Montgomery County (suburban Philly) brothers Thomas and Gerald Greenberg have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that multinational brewer InBev's Anheuser-Busch, the U.S. brewer of Budweiser, Michelob and their industrial-beer cousins, has systematically exaggerated how much alcohol is actually in its brews, Bloomberg court reporter Sophia Pearson writes here.
The brothers, who say they've been pounding away more than a case of Bud derivative a week (between the two of them) for the past four years, say they've figured out that Bud doesn't really contain 5 % alcohol, as advertised. They convinced Philly lawyer David Senoff to file the suit.
"We know because Anheuser-Busch takes several readings in each line in each brewery 24 hours a day" and uses the data to water the beer down to, or below, the promised alcohol content, Josh Boxer, a lawyer for the Mills Law Firm, San Rafael, Calif., which is coordinating multiple weak-beer suits, told me. (No relation to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., he affirms.)
"We've spoken with former employees who have confirmed" that beer often leaves the plants with a little less than 5% alcohol, saving "tens of millions of dollars a year by substituting high-quality ingredients with the cheapest ingredients, which is water," Boxer added. The court documents can be viewed in PDF format at
