- Bud Light is releasing NEXT, the first zero carb beer.
- The new beer is aimed at Gen Z consumers, who are more health conscious.
- Bud Light spent 10 years and made 130 prototypes before it created NEXT.
Beer drinkers will finally be able to buy a zero-carb beer when Anheuser-Busch releases Bud Light NEXT on February 7.
The beer giant said the new drink will have just 80 calories and no carbs, with four percent alcohol.
Creating a beer with zero carbs has long been a dream of the brewing world, Anheuser Busch VP of marketing Andy Goeler told Insider in an interview. NEXT has been in the making for nearly 10 years, and at one point the team was calling it the "impossible beer," Goeler said, with 130 prototypes over the years.
For a long time, the brewing technology to make a product like this just didn't exist, Goeler told Insider, but declined to provide details on the process used to brew the no-carb beer.
The final product is "clean and refreshing," with a "crisp," taste, Bud Light says. The company is hoping to appeal to Gen Z, a generation that "doesn't want to be weighed down," with heavier beverages, Goeler said. Though the beer has zero carbs, it is not confirmed to qualify as part of the trendy low-carb keto diet, and Anheuser Busch is not marketing as such.
The beer market is going through a transformation, analyst Chris Lombardo told Beverage Industry Magazine in 2021. Beer remains the most consumed alcoholic beverage in the US, but younger consumers are increasingly demanding more options, and have more to choose from in grocery store aisles packed with a variety of hard seltzers, iced teas, and canned cocktails. Consumers have slighted shifted towards more expensive, premium drinks, according to data from NielsenIQ.
Many of these younger customers are concerned about the stats of their drink of choice, Goeler told Insider. Bud Light appeals to many of those customers with hard seltzers, but NEXT is designed for customers with the same concerns who still want the taste of beer.
Cutting carbs has been a trend among dieters since at least the 1990s with the rise of the Atkins diet. More recently, Chipotle has success with low carb cauliflower rice appealing to customers following Keto, Whole30, and other diets.
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