I must admit, it does seem a bit odd to write a post about lager for a North American audience, where, according to most sources, lagers make up the bulk of sales. That said, I’m a bit of a beer newbie, and so I’ll write this for those people who don’t drink beer, or who do, and just don’t think about it, plus for those one or two folks in far off lands who drink nothing but fermented orange juice. Everyone else, take some comfort in what is likely to be an acute brevity of words.
Lagers derive their name from the German word for ‘storage’. This derivation is much more utilitarian than most alcoholic nomenclature: the process of ‘lagering’ beer is simply to store it somewhere cool for some time before serving it. Thus, such beers were ‘lagered’, and so were known as ‘lagers’. It should be noted that saying lager too many times in a row causes one to ponder on the sounds of the word and replaces any meaning with a focus on the syllables. I don’t recommend it.
There is one other (nearly) universal trait to lagers, and that is the yeast. Often thought of as a spontaneously appearing strain (initially, anyway), lager yeasts are united in the temperature and location of their fermentation. Lagers ferment at lower temperatures than ales (the other major category) and they sink to the bottom of the barrel, as opposed to ales, which tend to float.
As one might suspect, lagering beers was not the easiest thing to do before artificial refrigeration. Further, because of the need to keep lagers cold to protect flavor, transporting lagers great distances usually would not work, except in the dead of winter, when no one wanted to travel anyway. It is not surprising to hear, then, that lagers are a relatively recent development in beer consumption. With the advent of industrialization though, lager beer quickly took the developed world by storm.
One thing this corvid found interesting is that ‘lager’ is not a specific type of beer, but rather a style of production. Lagers can range from dark to light, and have all of the attendant flavors you expect to come with the color of the beer. Because of the natural flavor suppressing effect of cold temperatures, lager beers tend to be smoother than similarly produced ales, with extreme flavors muted. Lagers also tend, and I handle that with kid gloves, tend to be less hoppy.
Please feel free to share your favorite lagers in the comments. I’ll endeavor to locate a batch and try it, and I’ll make my regular house guests try it as well. To borrow again from the Poxy Boggards I leave you with a Valentine’s themed toast:
May your pockets be heavy and your heart be light.
May good luck follow you, morning and night.
May pretty girls follow you to your door,
And may you never want for more.
(Apologies to the ladies out there, unless those reading do want ‘pretty girls’ following them to their door, in which case rock on! No judgments here…)
Caw!
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