Review 23 hours ago

We tried 6 of America's top-selling light beers, sight-unseen — one clear winner emerged

Think you can taste the difference between these classic American light beers? We gave it a try — here's our definitive ranking.

Over the past half-century, light beer has been on a journey. While producer Rheingold launched Gablinger’s Diet Beer in the late 1960s, the category as we know it was popularized in 1975, when Miller Brewing Company nationally released Miller Lite. Miller employed a marketing push that avoided “diet” terminology and instead emphasized sports and machismo, aimed to establish “light beer” as a legitimate style that happened to have fewer carbs and calories.

The gambit paid off, and soon taglines like “Tastes Great, Less Filling” became embedded in popular culture. During the decades to follow, major breweries from Coors to Anheuser-Busch and beyond released their own light beers, and the style took over the mainstream. By 2001, Budweiser’s Bud Light variant was outselling the flagship beer it was based on, eventually becoming the U.S.’s top-selling beer for more than two decades.

The fierce brand loyalty instilled in light beer fans is somewhat ironic for a category that, when everything is done right, is intended to taste largely nondescript. That isn’t meant as a dig at the category — despite ups and downs over the years, light beer’s relatively consistent place as the top-selling beer style in America goes to show that a large number of drinkers really do want to enjoy something easy and simple most nights of the week, not a complex IPA that tastes like resin and fruit punch. There’s nothing wrong with a beer that just tastes like beer.

But with Michelob Ultra becoming the best-selling beer in America by volume in 2025 (not just the best-selling light beer), Bud Light losing its top spot, and light beer fans firmly dug into their camps of brand favorites, we began to wonder: If you really didn’t know what you were drinking, would your go-to light beer still be your favorite?

How we selected the beers

Like our other taste tests, beer brands were concealed to the tasters. We selected the six highest-selling macrobrewed light beers in the U.S. — simply put, we weren’t aiming for the best beers in the world, but the ones Americans drink most consistently. We only chose beers that are actively marketed as “light beers,” which generally means they are lower in carbs and calories than their brands’ flagship products rather than simply light in body and flavor.

How we tested

Samples were poured into unmarked cups and served in flights, and our nine reviewers sipped and evaluated them on aroma, flavor, body, and overall enjoyability. Admittedly, this was one of our harder taste tests to perform, as the variation between light beers was subtle at best, and at times downright indistinguishable.

Still, the results were rather interesting. A handful of tasters found themselves giving lower scores to the beers they thought were their favorites, and our top scores went to a light beer that no one had named as their brew of choice in our pre-tasting survey.

Without further ado, these are the best of some of America’s top-selling light beers, based on our sight-unseen taste test.

Best overall: Miller Lite

Not a single person named Miller Lite as their preferred light beer before our test, or said they regularly choose it when reaching for a case before a cookout or beach day. But the numbers don’t lie, and “The Original Lite Beer” outscored the competition when our panel didn’t know what they were tasting.

Miller Lite is a bit maltier upfront, which gives it some definition the others lack. The carbonation held strong leading to a super refreshing brew that absolutely disappears the second you’re finished drinking it. Basically, everything a good light beer is trying to be.

“It’s almost got something like citrus notes, which is nice,” said Editor Amelia Schwartz. “Sharp bubbles and ends on… nothing.”

“Refreshing, crisp, fruitier,” said Social Media Editor Bianca Trinidad. Senior Photo Editor Doan Nguyen agreed, calling it “well-balanced.”

Runner-up: Bud Light

The longtime champion of light beer, Bud Light came second in our ranked tasting. Debuting nationally in 1982 and overtaking Miller Lite in sales in the mid-1990s, Bud Light claims to have approximately 24-25% fewer calories than classic Budweiser. The brand emphasizes a simple, four-ingredient recipe. Love it or hate it, there’s no arguing that Bud Light helped bring light beer to the center of the mainstream, and its decades-long dominance shows that average consumers are happy to enjoy it by the caseload.

Several of our tasters, like Associate General Manager Sean Flynn, logged subtle citrus notes, but the overwhelming response centered on its clean finish and sheer drinkability. Associate Editorial Director Ashley Day called it “smooth and inoffensive.” In short: simple, basic, and generally pleasing.

Schwartz perhaps summed it up best: “Tastes like nothing, but I would chug it!”

A close third: Coors Light

While Miller and Budweiser emphasize reduced calories and drinkability, Coors chose to focus on craft, technique, and its Rocky Mountain heritage when releasing Coors Light (aka “the Silver Bullet”) in 1978. Phrases like “cold lagered,” “cold filtered,” and “cold packaged” are still used to promote the brand, and television commercials from the 2010s promised a magical world where taps could be drilled into a snowy mountainside to extract pure Coors Light, then served to none other than Ice Cube.

Executive Wine Editor Ray Isle clocked it as “a very classic U.S. lager,” putting it near the top of his ranking. Nguyen noted a slight creaminess compared to some of the other selections, while Day observed stronger effervescence and a lingering head when poured. For Schwartz, it was “100% chuggable.”

To be completely transparent, many of these beers — particularly numbers two through four in the final ranking — scored a hair’s breadth from each other, a testament to the interchangeability and consistent profile of most macrobrewed light beers. Brands were similar enough that you probably won’t have any problems switching from one to another, though it was worth putting them through the paces to see which stood out. That said, as always, drink what you like, even if you didn’t know you liked Miller Lite.