King of Beers Toppled?

Quick, what's the top-selling beer in the world? Budweiser? Bud Light? Miller Lite?

All wrong. Snow, a brand made by SABMiller in a joint venture with China's CR Snow, has surpassed Bud Light to become the largest-selling beer worldwide by volume.

At least, so says SABMiller in a statement to Bloomberg News on Thursday. Reuters reported two weeks ago that Bud Light was still tops, based on data from Plato's Logic, which tracks global beer sales.

So it's not quite clear. "Sometimes the Chinese numbers can get a little tricky," said Peter V.K. Reid, publisher of Modern Brewery Age. It might simply be the difference between measuring by tons or, as is more common in the West, by case volume.

Neither SABMiller nor Bud-maker Anheuser Busch made anyone available to solve the quandary on Thursday.

Even so, the fact that a Chinese beer unknown to most Americans is in contention for the top spot is nothing short of remarkable. Per capita beer consumption in China has doubled in the past 10 years, according to Bloomberg. And it will only keep growing as the middle class continues to swell.

Beer experts believe that, if Snow is indeed No. 1, it would be the first time, at least in modern brewing history, when a non-American brand was the world's top seller. InBev, which subsumed Anheuser Busch on Monday in a $52 billion merger, is by far the world's biggest brewer, with about 25 percent of the global beer market.

In China, though, InBev is trailing, even with Busch. "SABMiller has trounced A-B in China," says historian Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer.

Which is somewhat ironic, given that Busch entered the Chinese market in the late '70s, when Miller Brewing "thought it was a waste of time," Ogle said. But over the years, she said, Busch "sort of dropped the ball."

That has changed in the past few years, since August Busch IV took over the brewer and reaffirmed its commitment to China. "But that has been too little, too late," Ogle says.

A combined InBev-Busch will be a formidable competitor in China, however, even though it is somewhat yoked by antitrust regulations. InBev has several stakes in and partnerships with Chinese brewers. And it now has Busch's 27 percent stake in Tsingtao, China's No. 2 beermaker. InBev's strength in the northeastern provinces will be complemented by Busch's strength in the southeast, according to the Financial Times.

Snow, by the way, isn't a favorite among Western beer connoisseurs. The reviewers at Beeradvocate gave it an average grade of D. "A watery, unimpressive taste with too much carbonation and a metallic aftertaste," said one reviewer, who gave Snow a D-.