What is a Lager Beer? Beer Fun Facts
What is a Lager Beer? Beer Fun Facts Lager (German: storage) is a type of beer that is fermented and conditioned at low temperatures. Pilsner pale lager is the most widely-consumed and commercially available style of beer in the world. Bock, Dortmunder Export and Märzen are all styles of lager. There are also dark lagers, such as Dunkel and Schwarzbier. While cold storage of beer, "lagering," in caves for example, was a common practice throughout the medieval period, bottom-fermenting yeast seems to have emerged as a hybridization in the early 1400s. However, in 2011 an international team of researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claimed to have discovered that Saccharomyces eubayanus, a yeast native to Patagonia, is responsible for creating the hybrid yeast used to make lager. The average lager in worldwide production is a pale lager in the Export or Pilsner styles. The flavor of these lighter lagers is usually mild, and the producers often recommend that the beers be served refrigerated. However, the examples of lager beers produced worldwide vary greatly in flavor, color, and composition. In colour, helles represent the lightest lager at as pale a colour as 6 EBC. The darkest are Baltic porters, which can be as dark as 400 EBC; darker German lagers are often referred to as Dunkels. The organism most often associated with lager brewing is Saccharomyces pastorianus, a close relative of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In strength, lagers represent some of the world's most alcoholic beers. The very strongest lagers often fall into the German-originated doppelbock style, with the strongest of these, the commercially-produced Samichlaus, reaching 14% ABV. Lagers in certain countries often feature large proportions of adjuncts, usually rice or maize. Adjuncts entered American brewing as a means of thinning out the body of American beers, balancing the large quantities of protein introduced by six-row barley. Adjuncts are often used now in beermaking to introduce a large quantity of sugar, and thereby increase ABV, at a lower price than a formulation using an all-malt grain bill. Not always used to reduce prices, adjuncts may actually cost more than malt in many cases.
