I remember going to Munich with a few friends once back in '05, went to this ancient and well known beerhaus, cliche band and all, got these liter mugs, we all sipped, put 'em down, paused, and finally one of my buds says "Does it taste like Bud?" and we all nodded. The classic US beers are mostly restricted pale lagers, because it was cheaper to make them that way post-prohibition, we don't really have any pre-prohibition beers. Anyway, you can and they did throw in a lot of corn and rice because they were cheaper then barley, no real flavor from using them, and so you could also slash costs a bit from using less hops. We didn't exactly have a lot of beer snobs from a generation of alcohol bans so there wasn't much bitching and the stuff was very cheap to make that way. The various micro-breweries all over the place do a more classic beer, for a higher price, more taste, etc. They knew how to make a 'better beer', but it was cheaper to make, way cheaper, had about the same ABV, and people bought it.