Sorry for the awkward title, but that was the maximum characters. So...
If you could improve the standard north american industrial lager (NAIL) in one step or one switch out what would it be?
please note: heineken or becks for example are not a north american industrial lager. both of these beers are all malt. to clarify i mean: coors, labatt blue, budweiser, pabst blue ribbon, miller, busch, etc. corn, rice, HFCS or other adjunct(?) in significant amounts, 4.5-5% ABV, really low hopping, brewed to a high gravity then diluted before packaging, mostly about marketing over actual beer itself. lager yeast used? etc.
let's try to keep the single change price-reasonable, so it's not like "dryhop with 2oz per gallon of c-hops". but increasing IBUs by 5 or 10 points with ultra-high AA hops is surely doable. adding 2% crystal malt, increase alcohol by 1% ABV so at least they get you drunker, same wort and everything but saison yeast. etc. even something like "change all these beers to dark beers by using 3% black patent/chocolate malt and caramel colour to darken a bit more to reach ~30SRM" is fine
my thoughts:
stop the high-gravity brewing. i remember some beers in east asia that were made by asahi (they make a zillion barely different versions of NAILs there) and were marketed as just having the feature of brewed to original gravity. and while not good, they were noticeably better on repeated tastings than the standard hi-OG brewed/then diluted flagship products.
?