Developer of recipe for light beer dies

[Gifted Gourmet]

obituary from the New York Times

Dr. Owades became involved with brewing by way of his research into the properties of yeast and the starches found in malt. He was looking for and found an enzyme that prompted yeast to digest all of the starch. His discovery resulted in a beer without residual carbohydrates and with fewer calories, or what became known as light beer. Such a brew using his enzyme was first mass-produced by Rheingold Brewing, his employer at the time, which marketed the low-calorie brew under the Gablinger's label. Years later, after the Miller Brewing Company bought Gablinger's, it became Miller Lite. His process for making low-calorie beer gave rise to many successful specialty brands from new and independent smaller breweries.

Anyone who enjoys light beers will have a good understanding of his contribution to the industry upon reading this.

[Mayhaw Man]

obituary from the New York Times

Dr. Owades became involved with brewing by way of his research into the properties of yeast and the starches found in malt. He was looking for and found an enzyme that prompted yeast to digest all of the starch. His discovery resulted in a beer without residual carbohydrates and with fewer calories, or what became known as light beer. Such a brew using his enzyme was first mass-produced by Rheingold Brewing, his employer at the time, which marketed the low-calorie brew under the Gablinger's label. Years later, after the Miller Brewing Company bought Gablinger's, it became Miller Lite. His process for making low-calorie beer gave rise to many successful specialty brands from new and independent smaller breweries.

Anyone who enjoys light beers will have a good understanding of his contribution to the industry upon reading this.

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I had the good fortune to meet Joe not long after I went into the beer business in the late 80's. He was a very nice guy and like many people in the beer business, very outgoing and free with information to young hippie brewers like myself and many of my newly in the business colleagues. He was truly a gentleman and a very interesting speaker every time that I heard him speak (which was many times over the years)

It's kind of ironic that Joe has dies just as a byproduct of his research has died as well. Without Lite Beer, it is very unlikely that Monday Night Football would have been the early success that it was.

[pennbrew]

Anyone who enjoys light beers will have a good understanding of his contribution to the industry upon reading this.

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True enough, however his contributions to the industry far exceeded the development of light beer. I had the pleasure of working with him at 2 different breweries (in fact he was responsible for me getting my job in Pennsylvania). He was a font of endless brewing wisdom and knowledge, which he freely shared.

He will be missed.

---Guy

[jsolomon]

He did truly live up to what Charlie Papazian meant when he always said, "Relax, don't worry..."

The brewing community will miss him.

God bless you, Dr. Owades. You made our world better.

[Blair P. Houghton]

Astonishing. I never knew that Miller Lite is what became of Gablinger's...

[eje]

Little more detail in the obit from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Joseph Owades -- brewmaster, created light beer

[jesskidden]

There sure were a lot of mistakes in all these articles about Owades. I'd first heard about his death on NPR, which interviewed Brooklyn Brewery's Garrett Oliver. Oliver claimed that Owades worked for "Gablinger's Brewery"- but one would thing that HE would know that "Gablingers" was just a fake name, a "dba" of Leibmann/Rheingold of Brooklyn.

In addition, he said that Owades then "gave" the recipe to a fellow brewmaster at Meisterbrau, which marketed it as Meisterbrau Lite. (Meisterbrau's brands were later bought by Miller around 1970, which is where Miller got Lite).

Yet, Meisterbrau Lite predates Gablingers by several years (1964 vs. 1968).

The NY Times claims that "Miller bought Gablinger's", but that never happened, as far as them owning the "brand" (perhaps they bought the recipe for Gablinger's, but why would they if they already owned Lite, which is claimed to have been the same recipe?)

(One of my favorite beer "what-if's" however, is the fact that Meisterbrau actually had Ballantine of Newark (dba Feiganspan) contract-brew their "Lite" for the East Coast market. If only the "Lite" boom had happened then (rather impossible without the money and advertising know-how of Philip Morris, but...), perhaps Ballantine could have held on longer and we'd still have a good Ballantine XXX Ale, still have a Ballantine India Pale Ale and, hell, let's wish for a continuation of Ballantine Burton Ale (let's see, we'd be drinking a "brewed in 1984, bottled in 2005" version these days, I guess.)

And then there's THIS sentence from the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Rheingold Beer, which was the first and last beer to be brewed in New York City, resurrected the brand several years ago, hiring Mr. Owades to re-create the flavor he invented some 40 years before."

Waaaa? The "first" beer brewed in New York City? Wouldn't that have been brewed circa 1632 when the West India Company build a brewery in New Amsterdam?

And the "last"? I guess this refers to the moving of the contract-brewed "new" Rheingold out of Matts in Utica, to a micro in Brooklyn, but, c'mon.