Pale lager
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pale lager is a family of very pale to golden coloured beers with well attenuated body and noble hop bitterness. The brewing process for this beer family developed in the mid 1800s when Gabriel Sedlmayr took pale ale brewing techniques back to the Spaten Brewery in Germany and this technique was picked up by other brewers, most notably Josef Groll who produced Pilsner Urquell.
The majority of beers made around the world are of this type, often using cereals such as rice or maize as adjuncts to lighten the body of the beer. While immensely popular, such adjunct-based beers are often ridiculed by beer cognoscenti as being flavorless and unimaginative.
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[edit] Description
Pale lagers tend to be very clean tasting, crisp (due to acidity from the CO2) and firmly carbonated. Flavours may be subtle, with no traditional beer ingredient dominating the others. Hop character (bitterness, flavour and aroma) ranges from negligible to a dry bitterness from noble hops. There tends to be no butterscotch flavour from diacetyl, due to the slow cold fermentation process.
[edit] Variations
There are several types of pale lager, including:
- Pilsner—The original pale lager, developed in what is now the Czech Republic; most pale lagers with the name Pilsner have an evident noble hop bitterness and/or aroma.
- Dortmunder Export—A softly hopped variation originally brewed in Dortmund in 1873.
- Helles—A softly hopped variation brewed in Munich, originally meant to compete with the increasingly popular Pilsner. A stronger version known as Wiesen ("meadow-style") often replaces Märzen-style beers at Oktoberfest.
- American-style Lager—The first American Lager was brewed in the Old City section of Philadelphia by John Wagner in 1840 using yeast from his native Bavaria. Modern American-style lagers are mass-produced, thirst-quenching beverages, meant to be drunk very cold, which came to dominate U.S. tastes after the end of Prohibition. These are usually made by large breweries such as Anheuser-Busch. Lightness of body is a cardinal virtue, both by design, and since it allows the use of a high percentage of less-expensive adjuncts such as rice or corn. Indeed, light versions of American lagers are very popular in the United States, lower in food energy and even lighter in body and taste. This style defines beer for many North American beer drinkers—the proverbial "cold one". Prominent examples include Budweiser, Miller High Life, Coors, and Molson Golden, which is Canadian.
- Dry beer, a Japanese style, based on American lager, but designed to minimize aftertaste. Usually very light-bodied, with an extremely mild hop character.
- Spezial is a stronger style of pale lager, mostly brewed in Southern Germany, but also found in Austria and Switzerland. Spezial slots in between Helles and Bock in terms of flavour characteristics and strength. Full-bodied and bittersweet, it is delicately spiced with German aroma hops. It has a gravity of between 12.5° and 13.5° Plato and an alcohol content of 5.5 - 5.8% ABV. The style has been in slow decline over the last 30 years, but still accounts for around 10% of beer sales in Bavaria.
[edit] Premium lager
Premium lager is a name sometimes used by brewers for products they wish to promote; there is no legal definition for such a product, but it is usually applied to a flagship product. Anheuser-Busch also uses the terms "sub-premium" and "super-premium" to describe the low-end Busch beer and the high-end Michelob.
The term also has popular or colloquial use outside of the industry (particularly in the United Kingdom) to describe lager of greater than 5% alcohol. Notable examples of beers frequently referred to in this context are: Stella Artois, Grolsch, Grain Belt,Kronenbourg 1664, Carlsberg Special Brew and Carlsberg Export, Tennent's Super, Hahn Premium and James Boag's.
Such higher-strength lagers are sometimes referred to in British popular culture as (Continental) Fighting Lager in reference to their unproven association with public disorder and binge drinking[1][2]
[edit] References
- Noonan, Gregory J., Mikel Redman and Scott Russell. Seven Barrel Brewery Brewers' Handbook. Ypsilanti, Michigan: G.W. Kent, Inc., 1996. ISBN 1-887167-00-5.
