Michelob ULTRA

Finish a big-city marathon in America and the beer waiting near the finish line is, as often as not, Michelob ULTRA — a 95-calorie light lager that sells itself less like a beer and more like running shoes. The pitch works: Kantar ranks it the world's No. 5 beer brand in 2026.

Anheuser-Busch created ULTRA in 2002, at the exact peak of the Atkins-era low-carb craze, borrowing Michelob — a premium name it had used since the 1890s — and attaching it to something new: a lager engineered to be the lightest credible thing on the shelf. Rivals read it as a diet fad. The fad kept growing for two decades.

It became AB InBev's cleanest North American growth story — one of the few big U.S. beers still expanding while the wider market shrank — with a marketing budget spent on marathons, golf, and pickleball rather than party ads. Brand Finance pegs the brand at $3.95 billion, with the momentum still pointing up.

Looks like ginger ale, drinks lighter: pale straw, aggressive bubbles, a body so lean it borders on sparkling water with a grain accent. What flavor there is arrives as light toasted cereal and a citrus-adjacent hop flicker, gone in seconds. That vanishing act is the design brief — 95 calories, minimal carbs, and no aftertaste to slow the next sip.