The hot new thing in craft beer? Good old-fashioned lager

it originally meant beer served at the Bierkeller (which, yes, were usually built atop beer cellars carved into the sandstone hills).

 

hmm fun how words move across languages and ages.
This just occurred to me, I had a wonderful unfiltered 'frankonian lager' on tap a couple months ago from a frankonian brewer whose name I can't remember. It had all the yeasty flavors of a hefeweizen without the wheat aspect that I generally don't enjoy in beers. You might be as likely a person as any to have a good guess as to what it was. The beer's name had something about monkey going on. I haven't been able to find it on the database here or with google searches but it was a damn fine 'kellerbier' served a good handful of timezones from the 'keller'

 

was it a monk, and not a monkey? moenchsambacher maybe?

 

The first craft beer was a lager

 

nah it was definitely some play on monkey. I feel like the MONK might have been in all caps on the menu but I'm not certain. twas not my first beer of the day. It was good enough that I will be coaxed by the next few beers that bill themselves as 'unfiltered franconian lagers' should I encounter that again

 

For what it's worth, I've only made note of it because (I think I mentioned this earlier) when it's crystal clear it's at its best (not all beers, just this particular Pilsner by them).

On my first six pack, and this one was cloudy.

 

But was it? Sure it - assuming "it" is Anchor Steam Beer - was fermented with a bottom fermenting [lager] yeast, but by the common (<pun) brewing method used and by definition it was not lagered. The US brewing industry didn't consider steam beer a lager beer:

But that was also before beers were commonly strictly divided into two broad groupings defined primarily only by the type of yeast used. But even Maytag, in the early days of the craft era, made the distinction.

Like many other aspects of beer - "it's complicated". *
(That's also sorta why I find it interesting.)

* Complicated, but not pretentious because...
“It’s very hard to get pretentious about beer. You can become knowledgeable and start to talk with a highfalutin’ vocabulary. But you can only go so far with beer, and I’ve always liked that.” --- Fritz Maytag

 

Probably Weissenohe Red MONKey Keller, though it's not listed on their web site, so maybe it's retired.

OTOH, they still have the Green MONKey beers with different hop ingredients. They also have a Keller Pils, but I think the majority of their products are only available in Franconia.

 

Ding ding ding we have a winner. I'm fairly certain it was the red MONKey. Thank you for finding that. I'd love to try some of those green monkeys as well. Very lovely beer

 

Have you come across any mention of the temperature at which they kräusen the beer at? I was wondering how it compares to the temperature used for Budweiser which is apparently 50F and apparently does not utilize a ruh aging step anymore. Apparently the kräusening step for Anchor takes 10 days or two weeks, which is also the entirety of the aging process.

 

Ya know, I was just reading something about that in an article about the brewery in Amateur Brewer No. 8 (Summer 1981) Fred Eckhardt wrote about a tour of the old brewery in 1973:

 

I hope to see more craft lagers available. I like lager as much as ale these days. I have a pilsner or helles in my fridge at all times.

Good point. While I am overjoyed to see pilsners coming out of many modern breweries, you rarely ever see doppelbock, maibock, schwarzbier, etc.

 

Either way, you can't discount Sam Adams

 

Have to come to the Midwest and check out breweries like August Schell, Sprecher, and Lakefront. Sprecher's Black Bavarian has been a consistently good Schwarzbier for 35 years or so. Lakefront has some great lagers along with a great Maibock each spring. Schell makes a great Maibock and they brewed a Schwarzbier a couple years ago based on an old Kulmbach recipe that was outstanding.

I'd also mention Capital, but they seem to be having difficulties lately. They used to brew some of the best Maibocks and Doppelbocks.

 

You may be interested in knowing that recently a number of breweries local to me have Dark/Black Lagers available:

Workhorse Brewing

Black Lager (5.5% ABV)

“This mahogany-colored lager is built upon the foundation of two German brewing traditions: Pilsner and Dunkel. We've taken a recipe heavily influenced by toasted malts and married it with the spicy and floral hoppings of a Pilsner. Extensive lagering yields a beer rich in malt character shored up by pronounced hop flavors and aromas.”

Baltic Porter (8.0% ABV)

A balanced grist bill comprised of English and German specialty grains set the tone for this malt-driven lager. Malty-sweet flavors from the toasted base malts quickly yield to the more rich and heavy notes of deep cocoa and roasted coffee. A long, lagering phase tempers this beast into a smooth winter warmer.

Sly Fox (collaboratively brewed with Stoudts)

Black Lager

Collaborative Black Lager

12.5 OG30 IBUs5.5% ABV

Hazies be damned! We’ve been brewing since before craft beer was cool, and our latest release embraces the punk spirit of those early days. We teamed up with some original beer rebels at Stoudts Brewing to bring you a beer that bucks the trends. What’s more punk rock than a black lager in a labeled 16oz. can? We don’t know. But we do know that this beer feasts on the souls of line mules, spits them back out, and laughs in the face of haze bois everywhere.

Sterling Pig

Le Cochon Noir

Lager

ABV: 5.2%

Hops: Mt. Hood

Availability: Rotational

The brew formerly known as “Pata Negra”, Sterling Pig’s Le Cochon Noir Schwarzbier is bold and robust. A medley of roasted malts gives this dark lager a flavor profile of chocolate and subtle notes of coffee. This combination of flavors makes for a remarkably smooth and satisfying product that is perfect for any season.

And on a non-local note, yesterday I drank a Czech Dark Lager at the Suarez Brewery taproom (Livingston, NY).

Cheers!

@rotsaruch

 

Woah, very nice! Great to hear!

 

I'm having a good Lager...Stone Tropic of Thunder. Not too much of an old fashioned Lager.

 

I figured this is as good a place as any to quote this post from @M-Fox24 in the Notch thread in the New England forum. Doesn’t get anymore traditional than this...

***NEW BEER RELEASE***
Join us at our Salem Tap Room on Sunday, February 23 for the release of - Pitch Lined Pils!

Four years in the making, Notch is proud to announce the release of our latest project - Pitch Lined Pils - a truly unique, one-of-a-kind beer not seen in the United States for many years. Pitch Lined Pils is brewed with a technique that is currently non existent in the US and still used by only the most traditional of breweries in the Czech Republic - lagering in pitch lined wooden barrels. Unlike how wooden barrels are typically used today, beer was originally never intended to interact with the wood of a barrel. For hundreds of years, wooden barrels were simply the only method of kegging, lagering and dispensing beer available. The original method of lagering Pils in the Czech Republic, pine resin and paraffin (pitch) was used to coat the inside of a barrel. This pitch was added to keep the beer from touching wood but also to help keep out bacteria and oxygen as well as assist in holding carbonation. With each brew small amounts of pitch would naturally wear off into the beer until the barrels would need to be reconditioned and the pitch added again. This unwitting addition of the pitch to the beer was thought to add subtle but unique flavors. However, as wood gave way to stainless steel this technique was put aside and these unique flavors lost.

At Notch, our mission is to brew and serve Czech lager in the traditional methods using traditional processes - double and triple decoction brewing, open fermentation, natural carbonation, long lagering times in horizontal tanks, serving beer via Czech side pull faucets with appropriate foam. Our continued dedication to this mission led us to exploring lagering in pitch lined barrels and the effect it may have on a beer. With barrels sourced from Berwick Brewing Co in Berwick, PA and pitch acquired from the original Pabst brewery in Milwaukee we set about pitching and conditioning our barrels. Once they were ready, we took our Czech Pils, The Standard, and filled the barrels with what would become Pitch Lined Pils.

We find Pitch Lined Pils to be incredibly clean with a deep complexity. There is a hop bitterness is upfront but overall very clean, spicy, pleasant and resinous with a malt forward, yet balanced, mouthfeel and a dry finish.

@jesskidden @herrburgess

 

Will you be attending this release? I would be interested in knowing if you perceive a 'pitch' effect in these beers.

I had the opportunity to drink two glasses of Pilsner Urquell beers that were lagered in pitch lined barrels during my visit to the Pilsen.

One was from the lagering barrel in the cellar of the Pilsner Urquell brewery:



The other was at a Na Parkanu Pub in Pilzen:



If you get a chance to try the Notch beer I would be interested in hearing you thoughts.

Cheers!

P.S. More details about the pitch used in the Pilsner Urquell barrels: “Pitch is made from resin of evergreen trees, primarily pines, plus parafin and oil. Pilsner Urquell uses resin from the United States (some of this was imported over 40 years ago and they’re still using it), Canada and China in our own unique and secret recipe.”

 

Hey, I was just talking about that in a now locked thread.

Well, in between wood and stainless, there was glass-lined steel and then aluminum and concrete, too, as far as lagering tanks went in the US. Pitch was used in the US on wooden, straight steel and the early aluminum kegs into the post-Repeal period but lots of brewers' wooden tanks were often coated with more "neutral" materials, like enamel, lacquer, shellac and varnish - which were also easier and safer to apply to lagering vessels that were very large (hundreds of barrels in volume).

There's got to be a story behind that - the Pabst brewery closed in 1996 and, as I understand it, isn't even owned by what is now the Pabst Brewing Co. The former brewhouse is a hotel but likely any left-over pitch* would have been housed in the Cooper Shop or similar building.
*Wonder what the "Best by" date on that stuff was.