Can craft brewers make good light beer? Our tasting pits them against Bud, Miller, Coors, more

CHICAGO - It's official. Craft beer is better.

Or, at least craft beer is often more nuanced and interesting than Big Beer and made with better ingredients that extract superior results.

There was no other conclusion after reassembling our panel of brewers from last summer's macro beer tasting to taste 15 light lagers blind. Five of the 15 could be considered craft beers; four of them finished in the top six.

The three brewers - Jim Cibak of Revolution Brewing, Matt Gallagher of Half Acre Beer Co. and Brian Pawola of Pollyanna Brewing - eagerly signed on for the tasting. Each declared a love for any beer that's light, refreshing and well-made, no matter who makes it.

The wrinkle to the tasting, they were told, was that the classic brands - like Bud, Miller and Coors - would be doing battle with similar beers from craft breweries.

Though light lagers have traditionally been the domain of Big Beer since the 1970s, craft breweries have increasingly waded into the realm of easy-drinking accessibility. After decades of staking their claims on piney and bitter, sour and sweet - everything that Big Beer wasn't - craft brewers have taken a recent turn toward what is sometimes known as beer-flavored beer. No onslaught of hops. No cascade of sugary ingredients. No lip-pursing sourness. Just easy-drinking refreshment.

You know, like Bud, Miller and Coors.

I assembled 15 beers that could reasonably be called "light lagers." Some have "light" (or "lite") right