The latest fad in the mega-brew market is "low-carb" beer. Michelob Ultra was the first beer to aim itself directly at the Atkins dieters, but since then Miller has discovered that its Lite beer is also quite low in "carbs" and Coors is hard at work figuring out how to market a "low-carb" beer of its own.

As you may or may not know, beer consists mainly of water, yeast, hops and sugar. Traditionally, this sugar comes in the form of malted barley, but the converted starch of any grain is acceptable. In fact, it is the use of grain rather than fruit that distinguishes beer from wine. Thus, sake ("rice wine") is technically beer and cider (made from apples or pears or whatever) is technically wine--though their alcohol contents and tastes generally cause them to be served the other way around.

No microbrewer worth his or her salt would make a beer with corn or rice. None of the large brewers (Anheuser-Busch, Stroh's, Miller, Coors, Labatt, Molson, etc.) make theirs without corn or rice (American brewers tend to prefer rice, while the big Canadian brewers more often go for corn). Rice and corn are much cheaper than barley, and they ferment much more cleanly. It's this latter property which is most important in the whole low-carb thing.

There are three elements which influence the taste of a beer: water, hops and unfermented sugars. Beers brewed with water that has a heavy mineral content (Bass is perhaps the most famous of these) do have a distinctive taste that cannot be replicated without approximating the mineral makeup of the water. Hops are a plant (quite closely related to hemp, actually) which add bitterness and also serve as a preservative. And the unfermented sugars come from the grains. Barley (and wheat, for that matter) sugars are relatively inefficient fermenters. When you taste a fine beer with a round mouthfeel and full body, you can be sure you're sucking down carb after carb of goodness. When you're drinking a beer that tastes like dirty dishwater, chances are the carb content isn't particularly high.

There are ways to increase the efficiency of the fermentation process. The major brewers have been developing these techniques for decades. After all, the more efficient the fermentation, the less corn or rice you have to use to get your beer to 3.2 percent or 4.1 percent or 5.2 percent or whatever percent alcohol by volume. If you want to avoid a "watered-down" taste (relative to other megabrews, that is), just add the slightest bit of barley to the mash.

Remember those "dry" beers from a decade or so ago? The beers were dry (without taste) because of the more complete fermentation. Just another by-product of the need to further refine the brewing process in order to increase profit margins.

More recently, "ice" brewing made a big splash. This technique (which involves specially-created strains of yeast, certain chemicals and temperatures just above freezing) does wring more alcohol out of whatever sugar is in the fermenter. This fact caused some users to claim that they drank ice beer because it had a higher alcohol content. But this simply isn't the case. Those beers are (or were, as many have disappeared now that the trend has faded) all around 5 percent alcohol by volume, which is the industry standard.

Anyway, calling these finely fermented beers "low-carb" is just another weird marketing idea from the folks at the mega-breweries to try and increase the number of people drinking beer. If you were to ask me how to increase the pool of beer drinkers, I would tell you to make a beer with a taste--and a good taste, at that. But the problem there is that there is very little likelihood of someone pounding a twelve of Rogue Dead Guy Ale in one evening. Why? Because you spend so much time tasting the exceptional beer that you don't slam nearly as much. On the other hand, as long as your toilet is functioning properly, it's not terribly hard to get through twelve (or more) cans of Busch in a sitting.

I know, I know, all the big breweries have all these "drink responsibly" messages. But they make their nut on the college kids who buy their intoxication by the case--a case a night on the weekends. I happen to own a Labatt brewing manual (don't ask how; they don't know I've still got it), and it says that the reason they use so much corn in their beer is that North American drinkers prefer an "easy-drinking" beer. "Easy drinking" is simply code for "beer bong material."

As for dieting and drinking scads of low-carb beer, I'd have to recommend against it. There's only one way to get that ab six-pack, and it's called pain. My colleague Chris Jungle hit it right on the head a couple of weeks ago. You've gotta sweat, and I mean sweat, if you want to bounce quarters off your stomach.

Me, I'm bouncing a kid off my stomach. And so that extra inch of cushion comes in real handy. I don't have any use for beers without taste. A little inefficiency in the fermentation process goes a long way. I'd rather drink one Sierra Nevada Porter (at room temperature, thank you) than a case of MGD. But that's just me.

Jon Worley last purchased a "macrobrew" back in 1994.