Beer Styles: Lager Origins

Even though lagers are the more recent type of beer, most mass-produced beers today are lagers in one form or another. Let's examine why.

Beer has been produced for millennia. However for most of that time, brewing was a seasonal activity, confined to the cold months. Before pasteurization, before refrigeration, before anyone even knew about microorganisms like yeast, let alone understood what they did, beer had to be brewed during the time of year when the heat wouldn't cause it to spoil quickly. Local water and local strains of yeast determined in large part how a beer would turn out. Beer makers in Germany discovered the process of lagering fortuitously. In order to be able to have some beer available in the warmer months, some German brewers stored some of the beer brewed at the tail end of winter in mountain caves (Ger. lager), packed in snow and ice. What they didn't realize was that the beer would continue to mature while stored in this manner. And although they didn't know about the role of yeast in brewing, they were in effect breeding hardier, bottom-fermenting yeast that eventually made for more stable beers. This style of beer became known as a lager, typified by the use of bottom-fermenting yeast that was able to ferment at lower temperatures. Despite most modern lagers being light-colored, lagers of this era tended to be darker, probably as a result of the high heat used in the malting processing. Several different styles of lager emerged from this new method of brewing. One is the style that we now know as Oktoberfest. In keeping with the habit of summer lagering, the last beer of the winter batch was set aside in March to be cracked open again in October, these Märzens are the backbone of the yearly Munich Oktoberfest. Bocks are beers that, rather than being laid down in March, are generally consumed in March, brewed with a higher alcohol contact, their ostensible purpose was to provide sustenance throughout the Lenten season. Bocks generally are a bit hoppier than average, and are charecterized by a robust malt profile and tend to be a little sweeter. In my opinion there's a dearth of bocks these days. The mainstream, run-of-the-mill lagers were divided up into two main varieties: helles (light or pale) and dunkel (dark), although the helles came along later, after the advent of the pilsener.

In 1842, in the town of Plzen in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) the first golden lager was produced. Since most beers, both lagers and ales, of that time tended to be dark brown in hue, the appearance of a pale, clear beer was quite unique. The golden color was in large part due to a new method of heating the malt - indirect heat, which prevented a darkening  and smokiness of the brew that direct heat caused. The water was unusually mineral-free (soft) which contributed to the clarity of the beer. The brewers in Plzen and surrounding areas also were very free with hops, giving the new style a bitter edge. This style became so popular that many of the brewers who eventually emigrated to America specialized in it once they set up their own breweries in The States. The Plzen style, or Pilsener became the dominant style of the major brewers and was what most Americans thought of as "beer" through most of the 1900's, although the mass producers eventually modified their beers to be less hoppy and added adjuncts (grains other than barley) to produce a more consistant product.