The History of Pale Lager

Around the ol' Brewhouse we get lots of questions about the definitions of terms like lager, ale, beer, and so on. Some of you may know that ales and lagers are the two basic families of beer. You may also know that over 90% of the beer sold in the US is of the American Pale Lager variety.

At Mr. Beer, half of our standard Beer Mixes are named as ales and the other half as lagers. But all of the Beer Mixes arrive with an ale yeast. What gives?

Well, before we answer that question, lets take a look at some selected events in the history of beer. That may help us sort out this confusion. You may have heard that beer has been around for a long time. Indeed, the oldest written record found so far has been an ancient Sumerian script called The Hymn of Ninkasi. Ninkasi was the goddess credited with teaching mortals to brew beer. This document has been dated at about 4,000 BC.

Early humans may have fermented other sweet things prior to making beer, such things as honey, tree sap, grapes, and even some kinds of milk. Beer was much more difficult to discover because grain by itself doesn't ferment into alcohol. It has to first be malted to bring out the starches. Malting involves germinating the seeds until they each send out a little rootlet, then drying the grains with a heat source to stop the seed from growing into a full plant. Then, by warm water steeping the dried grains, now called malt, a sweet liquid can be extracted as the basic ingredient in the beer. We call this liquid "wort" (pronounced: wert).

Well, we are pretty confident in saying that the yeast that fermented those early beers was a wild yeast that lived on airborne dust particles and in the walls of the fermenting vessels. Some primitive beers were fermented by taking the extract into the mouth, swishing it around with saliva and the micro-critters living in the mouth, then spitting the business back into the pot. Who could have possibly figured this out?

Since there was no refrigeration in Sumeria, we also presume that these yeasts lived and flourished at warm temperatures. In other words, early beers used wild ale yeasts in a process misleadingly called spontaneous fermentation.

Now, fast forward to about 1400 AD. Beer has now been brewed for about five and half millenia. Beer built the pyramids, great castles and canals. The best beer was brewed by monks in what is now Germany. The reason for this seems clear: because they could read and write. Literate brewers were able to make records of their brews and gradually improve the efficiency and reliability of their beer. Improving the efficiency meant that they could brew the strongest beer, too.

About this time, some of the brothers figured out that they could store their strong beer in barrels in tunnels or caves. They found that the beer, if left there for several months, would smooth out in flavour and would also be better preserved. Beer left at room temperature would spoil rapidly due to spoiling organisms and poor sanitation. Thus, with cave storage, the first lagers were created. They were all dark in color.

It is likely that the first lagers fermented entirely at room temperature and where then dormant in the cool of the caves. Over time, however, yeasts that fermented at the temperature of the caves evolved. Such yeast, which presumably began as an ale yeast, mutated into a new species, now called lager yeast. The monks may have helped natural selection in the process by noticing that some beers came out of the caves very strong and dry, and not at all sour. This was better beer, so it was believed that certain barrels were the factor. Even though beer was getting more consistent, yeast, being a micro organism, was not known to be the reason for fermentation until 1860, when Louis Pasteur described how yeast fermented beer. It wasn't until 1886 that a pure lager yeast culture was available. That's amazing, considering that the first lager beers had been produced four hundred years earlier.

Around 1840 three very important inventions merged to create the first pale lagers. The first of these was the invention of pale malt by the Czechs. Up until this time, all malt was somewhat brown, due to the methods of kilning the sprouted barley with direct heat. Malt that was pale seemed to lack necessary flavour. The Czechs developed a new way to kiln the barley and wheat and ended up with tasty malt that made a golden coloured beer.

Second, using the cooler temperature fermentation developed by the monastic brewers, the Germans and Austrians were producing a range of lagers. When they began using the pale Czech malt with their naturally hard water, some very crisp, very pale lagers resulted.

The third important factor was the invention of clear glass. When all the beer was brown and served in pottery mugs, people didn't give much thought to what the beer looked like. Suddenly, within just a few years, brewers of the region were making bright golden lagers that were very attractive. They needed to be seen while they were drunk. Tall, graceful glassware was created to show off the beer. Since the first of these beers were produced in Pilsn, in modern day Czech Republic, the blond lagers were called Pilsners. The German spelling is a tad different, so in Germany they were called Pilseners. At Mr. Beer, we recognize the tradition of beautiful, pale lagers with our Mr. Beer Pilsner Glass.

When immigrant brewers from southern and eastern Europe came to America in the nineteenth century it was these great beers they most often sought to re-create. The first lagers were produced in the US in the 1840s, about the same time the Czech brewers were inventing the pale lager. If you are into the history of beer in America, you will know that many of these early pale lagers had the word Champagne in their name. That should tell you a lot about their appearance and dryness.

There were attempts to bring over a lot of other styles from the old country, but few caught on. The sweet lagers of southern Germany proved to be too rich for many tastes, especially in the hotter regions of the country. One style which was brewed quite a bit in America during this time, however, was the bock beer: a stronger, darker lager originating in Germany.

Also during this time, Americanized brewers began to use corn for part of the total makeup of starch in the beer. This went against the grain, you might say, of German brewers who were used to brewing all malt beers. Corn is not malted, but boiled for brewing, and its use ran contrary to the training of the German brewers. But the 6-row barley of America had much more protein than the 2-row barley of Europe and all malt beers here turned out very rich and not as pale and refreshing as desired.

Most every brewing grain is cheaper than barley, and barley can be difficult to grow, so it made sense that these brewers incorporated this natural, American ingredient. Nowadays, malt and malt extract is often made from 2-row barley, so the need for corn as a diluent is much lessened. Commercial pale lagers still rely heavily on a blend of 6-row barley and corn or rice, however.

As eye-catching as pale lagers were to look at, and as different was their flavour, they still took four decades to exceed the sale of ales in the States. Only around 1870 did they take the lead. At that time there were over four thousand breweries in America. That number dropped after the 1880s, when the rail reached across the Nation. For the first time and beer could be shipped farther than the reach of a team of horses. From the Gay Nineties to the Roaring Twenties there were still over two thousand breweries, but the anti-alcohol movement finally succeeded in achieving the outlawing alcohol in 1920. Spanning 13 years, from 1920 to 1933, alcohol became an illicit drug in America.

Smaller breweries, often run by family interests, were unable to use their breweries during this time and for the most part, went out of business. Larger breweries, which had already grabbed market share by distributing with refrigerated rail cars, kept producing malt for foods and non-alcoholic beverages. Some engaged in illegal brewing and some got tied up with the Mob. When Prohibition was lifted in 1933 only a handful of breweries had survived, and these were, in general, the breweries producing large volumes of pale lager with large distribution areas. The use of corn, and later rice, gave big brewers an opportunity to produce the cheapest beer around. When drinkers didn't care so much about what they drank, they would buy the cheapest thing going.

One of the "little" glitches that took place after Prohibition was repealed was that the Federal regulations were not properly changed back to their pre-Prohibition words. In fact, though the home making of wine was re-legalized, it wasn't until 1979 that making beer at home was again legal!

We're sure you know of someone's Grandpa who made beer between 1920 and 1979, but it was, in fact, illegal. The law to once again allow homebrewing was signed by President Jimmy Carter (who's brother endorsed Billy Beer) and a whole new appreciation of beer swept the country. By 1981, there were still only about three dozen breweries left in the US, but that number would jump to around 2,000 in the late nineties and stabilize at over 1,500 by 2001.

Finally we are on the path to beer variety once again, an American tradition since Colonial years. The beer lover can find a great choice in the stores, at brewpubs, and, of course, they can brew their own.

And what of American pale lager? Well, the sales of the big three major lager producers in the US now claim over 90% of all beer sales. The remainder is made up by domestic craft beer producers and premium imports. A cold, crisp, golden lager on a hot day is still a beautiful thing, but so is the chance to brew any beer you want with a Mr. Beer Home Microbrewery.

Cheers!

Brewmaster Matt
 

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