Pilsner Vs Lager: What's The Difference?

In the Czech Republic the terminology of Bohemian Pilsner is reserved for the beer brewed in Pilsen:

"Bohemian Pilsner vs. Czech Pale Lager
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare

For people who don’t live in present day Czech Republic there is a long history of referring to the Pale Lagers brewed there as being Bohemian Pilsners. For example the terminology of Bohemian has a long history with American breweries labeling some of their beer brands using “Bohemian” well over a hundred years ago. One example is Pabst which branded one of their beers as “Bohemian” and this was a bestselling brand for them during the timeframe of the mid-1890’s to sometime in the early 1900’s. The Czechs view Bohemian Pilsner as being an appellation so only the Pilsner Urquell beer would be referred to as Bohemian Pilsner by them. For this type of beer brewed outside of Pilsen the Czech’s would use the term of Světlé Ležák (translates to Pale Lager) and they would provide an additional detail of 12° which delineates the original gravity of the beer using the Balling scale. The Czech breweries also typically produce a Pale Lager of a lower original gravity (and hence lower alcohol content) of 10°. During one brewery tour the tour guide referred to their 10° beer as being “a worker’s beer”.



https://www.morebeer.com/articles/Pilsen_Beer

Cheers!

 

I was just kidding about the pipe/air gun thing (to the best of my knowledge).

Just having a bit of fun here.

Cheers!

 

You can always throw the yeast into the fermenter and then pump the beer on top of the yeast. I don't know if anyone uses this process or not, or if it's a good or bad procedure, but that's what I thought of when reading that article.

 

Perhaps @bulletrain76 can provide some insight here? How do you folks pitch your lager yeast at Firestone Walker? Do you know of any breweries that place the lager yeast in the fermenter first and then transfer the wort on top of the yeast?

Cheers!

 

FWIW I follow a common procedure when brewing ales and lagers (except for the difference of wort temperature). I transfer the wort to the fermenter, aerate/oxygenate the wort, and then add (pitch) the yeast on top.

Cheers!

 

Oh I know. I was relieved when I saw you make the joke

 

All yeast is treated the same: pumped into the wort pipe from a yeast tank as the wort is being pumped from the chiller to the FV. The whole "bottom fermentation" thing is just something people came up with because lager yeast doesn't form as much krausen on the top of the beer during fermentation compared to ale yeast. With all yeasts, the vast majority is evenly distributed in the beer during active fermentation. The only yeast sitting on the bottom is dead or a dormant early flocculation.

 

That would indeed appear to solve the problem in a simple way lol.

Though if that were the convention one might guess the distinction would have ending up being called "yeast first" vs "yeast last" brewing!

 

But the joke will be on me if some BA posts that Brewery X uses a pipe/air gun to pitch their lager yeast.

I can't remember how many times I have composed a post making fun of some strange beer type (e.g., a Fluff & Pixie Stix beer) and before I hit "Post Reply" I decide to do a web search to find that some brewery(s) has actually made this sort of beer. All kinds of weird/crazy stuff going on in brewing these days!!

Cheers!

 

OK, I just actually went through the Mashed article and it's just completely wrong and the author obviously has no idea how beer is brewed and is poorly transcribing info from elsewhere. The whole "top" vs "bottom" dichotomy is anachronistic and inaccurate and just needs to go away at this point. It only confuses people and has no significant scientific meaning compared to the actual differences between the two fermentation methods.

 

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Lagers aren't a substyle of pilsner?

Man. I'm gonna sip on a doppelbock ale while I puzzle over that.

 

There are a 'gazillion' things in error in that article.

I personally will just relax and await JK's corrections.

Cheers!

 

I'll pass on that one - too many and too easy. No challenge at all.

In the Sunday Comics section when I was a kid, the "What's Wrong with This Picture" cartoon's caption specified "12 mistakes" not "there are an infinite number of errors..."

 

Yeah agree, we can think this is silly, but now that more places are pumping out lagers, check the IG comments on a post about this weeks "crispy boiiiiiiiis." Lots of people don't know the basics.

 

I'm sure that they meant Miller Lite.

 

Can't be a very well researched article.

No Consumer Reports. My favorite investigative journalism for Cars, Dishwashers, Life Insurance, Shingles, Tomatoes and of course, Beer.

Edit;

I did suffer through all 2,000 words of that catastrophe of an article. And you know, aside from Ales spoil easier than Lagers (GTK!) and the whole thing about the application of yeast the author does not answer the fucking question until the very end, and does not do a very good job of it either!

I think the point of this article is do not accept every writing assignment or at least stick to topics you know. OK?

 

Or maybe the 'answer' is for the publisher to obtain a more competent editor?

Cheers!

 

Well they kind of get it right at first...

"Yet, upon tasting, a lager and a pilsner prove more difficult to separate. That is because the difference between a lager and a pilsner is almost nonexistent. A pilsner is a specific type of lager, so it has all the general characteristics of lager, but it is still unique enough to have its own subgroup."