|
Lager Tradition - I have been thinking about this for a long time, and was even debating it with James at Potrero the other day, so I thought I would finally try to hash it out in words. The debate was about lagers - why they have always been so traditional, why nobody seems to take them over the top like we have done with ales, and why they aren't as popular among beer drinkers as ales. Part of my commercial brewing career was spent brewing lagers at Gordon Biersch in San Francisco, so I know a little bit about lagers. When I started, I really didn't care for lagers. It took me about a month to learn to appreciate them, and a bit longer to like them. But very often after work, I would ride to Magnolia or Potrero for an IPA. The first issue with lagers is that they are an extremely old style of beer. The first beers made were undoubtedly ales, but the Germans were able to isolate different yeast strains and lager yeast was born. But with these old styles, comes old and inferior ingredients. The grain used was terribly undermodified, requiring step mashes and decoctions. The noble hops used today are extremely bastardized versions that produce low alpha flowers, and have poor stability. And when noble hops finally arrive in an American brewery, they are badly oxidized and stale. The yeast is a bottom feeding creature that lives at 45 degrees. It produces a massive amount of sulphur and diacetyl, and takes a month to dissipate. Today, ingredients are much better, and much fresher than many years ago. Barley is very highly modified - only requiring 20 minute infusion mashes to achieve excellent utilization. Many American hops are very fresh and have been bread to resist staling. Lager yeast is...well, still the same. So the big question is why do lager breweries continue to make the same beers Germans made several hundred years ago? Why are only traditional ingredients, recipes, and methods used? Why haven't new styles emerged or others been 'tweaked' in the same manner as an American IPA? To argue one side, tradition is all the reason one would need to continue brewing these styles. Traditional techniques create beers that are slightly different than those brewed with modern techniques. I've brewed many decocted beers, and I can tell a difference. The recipes are tried and true. Noble hops are noble. To argue the other side, so what!? Step mashing highly modified malt can sometimes be a bad thing. Decoction requires far more time and energy to do. Noble hops are not the best hops available. Old recipes and styles are old. Why not take advantage of modern brewing techniques, high quality, fresh ingredients? Pilsener is one of my favorite styles of beer. I didn't know that until I had a good pils. I've had plenty of bad ones, so I thought I didn't like it. I brewed dozens of pilseners, but didn't like most of them because the corporate recipe wasn't anything special. Bottled imports most often don't travel well. I think Pilsener Urquell and Bud-Var suck. But something like a Potrero pilsener is one of my favorites. And that's because it was "California-ized". "American-ized" is not a good enough distinction. That almost implies something like BudMillerCoors - or at least that's what they tout themselves as. The point is that breaking from the traditions is sometimes a good thing. California IPA's are one of my favorite styles. California Pilseners could be my favorite too. And maybe it won't be until lagers are California-ized, that they will become popular among serious beer drinkers. Maybe it's only German lagers that beer drinkers in America don't like. In fact, I've had some decent lagers that aren't German style. Moonlight Brewing Company makes "California Beers", not British, not German. Their lagers are pretty good. But I think it's only because they don't feel the need to follow the traditions of the Germans. And like I said earlier, the recipes are old. People's tastes change constantly. IPA's today are far different from only 3 years ago. But the lager recipes never change. They are outdated and don't cater to beer drinkers' changing tastes. So my conclusion is that as California brewers, we need to follow Moonlight's example and brew California beer, not German beer. But we also need to remember our brewing roots and ancestors, and keep some of the tradition alive. Some techniques discovered by the Germans help produce very high quality, great tasting beer. But the most important thing to remember is to make good beer. What good is all the tradition and history if the beer isn't any good? |