Baltic Porter - Ale or Lager?

I am continually amazed at the continuing myth that evil big beer forced AALs on American consumers with monopolistic trade practices and advertising. Like nearly all consumer products companies, the successful brewers were well-managed and responsive to consumer demands. Consumers were demanding lighter lagers, and the brewers responded. In the 70's+, consumers responded enthusiastically to Miller Lite, and the race to even lighter lagers was on.

JMO, but as the well-managed brewers got bigger (and the not so well-managed brewers got smaller or disappeared), the result were high volume brewers who were not interested in niche markets. This left the opening for Anchor, BBC, et al to begin serving what has become the craft beer market.

 

I wasn't pointing "blame" in any one direction.

You could very well be right -- just about everything around me was AAL -- a few Bocks thrown in if you could hunt them down.

Those countries didn't already have brewers? No facetiousness intended -- I'd think a stream of brewmasters to other countries wouldn't have been welcome with open arms. But yeah, I can see the near beer production.

 

Unless it's brewed as an ale.

 

Well, Canadian and Mexican breweries already had brewers, but needed more because, for some reason, sales increased dramatically for some companies during the period 1919-1933. Mexico, in particular, seemed to have a lot of new breweries started by Americans during the period, too (Mexicali's Aztec Brewing Co., later of San Diego was maybe the most famous, since their history had the interesting twist of moving TO the US when Repeal came).

Have no idea the number of such expat brewers but I've come across many post-repeal ale brewers in the Northeast that worked in Canadian breweries during Prohibition, as well as lager brewers in California and Texas and elsewhere who brewed in Mexico.

Perhaps the most interesting - (top pic and caption from Grupo Modelo's 2000 Annual Report, honoring the originator of, apparently, the 1920s Corona and Modelo Especial recipes):

Though "German", Schmedtje worked for Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis before WWI (IIRC, he also owned a short-lived brewery in NYC after Repeal).

Another source of employment for the US-based brewmasters during Prohibition of course was making illegal beer. Seems that a loophole in the Prohibition laws which required brewers of near beer who brewed standard beer and then removed the alcohol were required to have Federal permits and their facilities open for government inspection did not require such permits or inspections for "cereal beverage" manufacturers who claimed with their process the beverage never went beyond the legal 0.5% limit. Supposedly a lot of illegal "high-powered" beer came out of those sorts of "former" breweries without Federal permits.

 

Below is a list showing the Porter brews made by a Swedish brewery between the years 1910-1920 which I thought might be of interest in this discussion. From left to right you have the year, date, style, kilograms of hops, type of hops, original gravity in % Balling, yeast pitching temp in Reamur (multiply by 1.25 for degrees celsius), hectoliter wort, yeast type and generation, date when barreled ("tunnades"), % Balling when barreled, temperature of lagering cellar in degrees reaumur ("källaren" or "the cellar"), racking date ("tappades"). The second entry and some of the following are complete, others lack some of the information but you should be able to make out which is which from the second entry.

As far as grist is concerned one of the only mentions is the brew in 27/7 1916 when it is written in the margin that 1000kg of bought malt was used along with 100kg of black malt and 100kg of caramel malt and 12kg of colorant. The total grist was 1600kg and the brewery inventory of that year lists pilsnermalt and lager beer malt, which were the two main products of the brewer in question.

Alot of interesting observations can be made across the different brews and years. For example the increased period of storage inbetween the first few brews and the next ones, pushing the storage time from a few months to over a year. Another interesting observation is the drop in pitching temp over time, yet the retainment of the same yeast type, with some variance over time. The brewery used a different yeast for their pilsener and lager beer, which was pitched at a lower temp throughout. WW1 essentially eliminated the brewing of the porter from late 1916 until 1919 when it returns with a lower gravity as per the new legislation which has limited the brewing of beer above 9.5% original gravity, "pilsnerdricka". The "pilsner" brewed in the same span meanwhile was brewed to between 2-4% Balling.

 

Think of it like this: We speak of “ale yeast” because it is the type of yeast generally used to ferment ale – not because everything it ferments is thereby ale.

 

Continued to refine their skills in their home basement.

 

Some also made ice cream. Stroh’s for an example.

 

Some of those brewers kept right on brewing normal strength beers, but off the books, particularly in the Chicago area where apparently Al Capone and his customers were quite friendly to brewers through Prohibition. Ken Burn's Prohibition documentary covered Capone's beer empire well (I watched it on Netflix recently, but it's available elsewhere too).

Yuengling still sells ice cream that according to the website, "...first began making ice cream back in 1920 when my great grandfather, Frank Yuengling, started a dairy business during Prohibition to help support the family brewery. Yuengling Dairy Products made incredible ice cream for more than 65 years..."

 

That's a "reborn" company (begun in 2014, the original Yuengling Creamery closed in 1985) owned by a different member of the extended Yuengling family:

"The dairy plant and the brewery eventually became separate companies, with one of Frank's sons, Frederick, leading the ice cream business and then a grandson, Frank Jr."
--- Yuengling- A History of America's Oldest Brewery, A. Noon

The current ice cream's manufacturing is contracted out to another company.

The original Yuengling's Ice Cream factory was directly across the street from the brewery on Manhantogo Street. You can still see the original building on Goggle Maps, complete with Yuengling's" and "Ice Cream" built into the facade - sure looks abandoned (broken windows, etc) though. Always wondered why the brewery didn't buy it.

First time I visited Yuengling, the dairy was still in business and it was really confusing when driving to Pottsville and starting to see "Yuengling's" neon signs in grocery and convenience store windows when I knew they didn't sell beer in those stores...

Yeah, I covered that a few posts later (#104) ...

In a 1926 "Universal Service" wire service story, former Prohibition Investigator Maj.Walter A. Green wrote:
"...now we have 374 breweries making near beer and 642 unlicensed 'wildcat' breweries turning out high powered beer whenever they dare and can.
"PA, NY, WI and OH are the principal wild-catting states… Chicago had the stage set to make Pennsylvania look like a Sunday school picnic peddling pink lemonade; then they fell to fighting among themselves – over the profits of booze."

A 1928 Colliers story quoted USBA's Hugh F. Fox estimating that 17.5 million barrels of homebrew was made annually based on the hop crop that was not exported or sold to near beer breweries. Others thought that estimate was too low, since breweries sold 438 million pounds of malt syrup in 1926 "....enough to make 810 million gallons... of beer" --- so ~26m bbl. Pre-Pro beer production peaked in 1914 at 66 million barrels.

 

That was my general insinuation in that post.

 

If a beer is fermented with saccharomyces cerevisiae (ale yeast), its an ale. If it's fermented with saccharomyces carlsbergensis (lager yeast) its a lager.

Brewing an ale and storing it cold for long periods which can also be referred to as lagering doesn't make that ale a lager. It makes it an ale that's stored cold for a long period. A kolsch is an ale, that is fermented at a colder temp giving it less esters and more of a crisp lager finish than a traditional warmer fermented ale. That same beer with a lager yeast will taste a lot crisper and the malt will shine through even more.

On the other hand, fermenting a lager with ale temps doesn't make the beer an ale. It's just a lager fermented warmer and therefore more esters are produced. This technique is used in "steam beer" where the final result has ale like ester qualities. California Common is a good example. However, using this technique on traditional lagers doesn't work out as well.

Ales are a lot easier and cheaper to make, hence their prevalence in the craft beer market. Lagers (when done right) take much longer and the lighter ones like Helles and Pilsner are tougher to make due to the fact that there are no yeast esters and truckloads of hops to hide poor brewing technique. Unfortunately most people think that lagers are just cheap light low carb beers (a battle I fight every day).

Baltic porters are historically brewed with lager yeast, but if using ale yeast, they should be fermented like a kolsch (and called an ale).

Without getting too much into the details, lagers developed in the colder regions and in Germany when brewing during the warmer months was outlawed. Lager yeast can survive cold temps that ale yeast can not. To add to the confusion, it is likely that some of the Alts and Kolsch styles were actually lagers when brewed in the winter months when beer was fermented spontaneously before yeast was discovered. This can probably be said about Baltic Porters too.

Check out the book "Lager" by Dave Carpenter that came out recently. It has a good history of how these styles all developed.

Now go drink some craft lager

Cheers,

 

Well, that is contrary to the current legal definition in the US:

Which was changed from the earlier post-Repeal FAA Act definition:

Nor was it the opinion of many brewers and brewing scientists in the US industry during most of the 20th century:

This standard (of not specifying yeast type in the legal definitions) does not differentiate as to the top and bottom fermation because the character of lager beer does not exclude the employment of top fermentation in its production.
--- Board of Trustees of the USBA, 1908

No sharp line of demarkation between beer and ale can be drawn on the basis of using bottom fermentation yeast for the former and top fermenting yeast for the latter.
--- Wahl Handybook of the American Brewing Industry, 1937

Some brewers in the US producing both lager and ale use only one yeast, a strain of S. carlsbergensis, for both beer types…ales producted in this manner are designated “bastard ales”.
--- Food and Beverage Mycology, 1987

More at Top and bottom fermenting yeast

 

You should keep in mind that although you are probably repeating information from many different credible sources, that does not mean that there is a truth to them that discredits the sources that state perspectives that contradict your post. The beer world is cloudier than the most opaque NEIPA.

 

Probably depends on the brewery. The beers were originally imported from England and would have been ales. Harsher temperatures around the Baltic would have meant even if they used ale yeast it would have fermented at lower temperatures. The differences between ale and lager yeasts are not always that great. Bamforth tells a story about a British brewery that had an ale and when lagers started gaining in popularity, they just renamed the beer a lager. This is what the 2015 BJCP style guidelines say:
Traditional beer from countries bordering the Baltic
Sea, developed indigenously after higher-gravity export brown
or imperial stouts from England were established. Historically
top-fermented, many breweries adapted the recipes for
bottom-fermenting yeast along with the rest of their
production.
. So while most Baltic Porters may be fermented with lager yeast, some may be fermented with ale yeast or fermented with ale yeast adapted to colder temperatures.

 

This is revisionist nonsense with a vengeance, it disregards and distorts the facts.
First of all, ales, beers (there is a difference) and lagers were all brewed before people even knew yeast existed. Yeasts were developed because of the brewing techniques used being simply the tools used to do the job.They do not define the outcome, that is putting the cart before the horse.
In no way would a brewer of a Baltic Porter have regarded it as an ale. Ale and Porter (which includes stout of course) were two entirely separate items. Different breweries, guilds and at one time barrel sizes.It was simply regarded as a Beer as it would have been if bottom fermented.

The status of lagers is quite clear. If a beer was lagered it became a lager. This was the law and definition in place (the place was what is now Germany) for a very long time.
I quote from Ron Pattinson who has forgotten more about beer than most people ever knew;
"
Lagerbier has a couple of meanings in German. Just how much the Homebrew Twats know about German beer is evident by the fact that they are clearly unaware of one of them. Here they are:

1. - beer which has undergone lagering, i.e. a long period of cold storage where the temperature is gradually reduced to around 0º C.
2. - a bottom-fermenting beer of around 12º Plato

Kölsch obviously falls into the first category. The primary fermentation is with a top-fermenting yeast, but it's then lagered at low temperature, pretty much exactly like bottom-fermenting beer should be."


For those whose knowledge of German is challenged, the writing says "Top fermented lager beer"

At one time as I mentioned, breweries were either Porter/Stout or Ale breweries.When Ale began to overtake Porter and stout in popularity , brewers began to make both. Hence all the signs which say "Ales and Stouts".

 

It would appear that Ron is not consistent in BA threads on what “lagerbier” means:

“Lagerbier is a strength band rather than a style. It's a typically German way of classifying beer.”

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/ale-vs-lager.161990/page-5#post-2275684

Cheers!

 

according to the Beer Judge Certification Program Blatic Porters are considered lagers

 

After considering the matter for a full 30 seconds decided I don't really care.

 

The BJCP guidelines exist for the purpose of letting homebrewers know in which category to enter their beers in competitions. They are not claimed to be authoritative,accurate or definitive for any other purpose.