FEATURE | BEER
Cave beer
CHRIS KELLER
Almost a decade ago , while I was working as a brewer at Saint Arnold Brewing Company in Houston , I was tasked to design a beer that would go straight to production . Our owner Brock Wagner would yearly go to Germany and Czech Republic to select hops and on this last trip he ’ d had what he described as a “ religious experience ” while drinking an unfiltered Pilsner Urquell in the home of pilsner itself : Pilsen , Czech Republic . Brock wanted to recreate what he had there : an unfiltered Czech ( or Bohemian ) pilsner , the world ’ s first pale lager . A proper Bohemian Pilsner has a rather simple recipe with soft water , German pilsner malt , and Czech Saaz hops , but what helps to make it great are some techniques used in production including decoction ( the method of removing a portion of the mash , bringing it to a boil , then adding it back ) and the cold , steady fermentation of a lager . I was at that time working on a decocted lager so I jumped at the chance . Having one of your recipes go to production is a great honor , and this was to be my first . Yay , lager time !
Lagers and ales are not only two separate families of beers , they ’ re two different species of yeast . Ale yeast has been used for thousands of years , ferments rather quickly at warmer temperatures ( generally around 65-72 ° F ), and has a fruity flavor that can be more or less pronounced depending on the yeast strain and other factors ( pitching less yeast in a hefeweizen for instance tends to produce banana-like flavors in the beer , more yeast yields more of a gentle clove flavor ). Lager yeast has been around only a few hundred years , ferments slowly at cooler temperatures ( 48-52 ° F ), requires six weeks to six months of conditioning ( hence the name : lager is the German word for storage ), produces a drier , less sweet beer , and leaves little to no flavor , letting the hops and malt shine by themselves . One reason most craft beers are ales is because of the storage time required to produce them ( time is money after all ) and another is lagers are not very forgiving . Small flaws that would be hidden in an ale tend to become very pronounced in a lager .
Pilsner may have originated in Pilsen , Czech Republic but it was designed by German brewer Josef Groll . The people of Pilsen had had enough of the swill their local brewers were passing off as beer ( they went so far as to dump 36 barrels of the stuff in front of the town hall ). The Germans at this time were making great beer and Pilsen wanted German-style beer , so to appease the public , in 1839 the town hired Josef and German architect Martin Stelzer to design a German brewery to brew a German lager ... with a little Czech influence . Three years later Pilsner was born . A pale and refreshingly clean lager with a distinct hop flavor and aroma .
Germany is well known for their engineering and lager brewing came about directly as a result of this prowess and indirectly as a result of their brewing laws . In 1516 Bavarian law limited the ingredients to malt , hops and water . This worked great to make beer better ( you didn ’ t have to worry about anything like poisonous mushrooms or chicken blood in your beer ), but there was still bad beer going around , particularly around summertime . In 1553 Duke Albrecht the Fifth issued an edict limiting the brewing of beer strictly between September 29 and April 23 . As cooler fermentation prevailed , brewers sought cooler places to ferment . Caves were especially treasured locations , and when caves were unavailable cellars were dug , filled with ice from nearby lakes and rivers , and the ground above kept shaded . While this was happening , something known as “ The Little Ice Age ” was dropping temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere further cooling the fermentations . Ale yeast couldn ’ t keep up with the temperature drop and due to these conditions a new hybrid yeast was formed : Saccharomyces Pastorianus , otherwise known as lager yeast . A brewing renaissance was , well , brewing !
While the Germans were “ caving in ,” the English were perfecting malting techniques which were producing the palest malt ever seen in industrial brewing . Previously malt tended to be dark and smokey thanks to the woodfired heat needed to dry the grain , now coal and coke were fueling the heat and in the early 19th century an iron drum device revolutionized the malting industry by using hot air to dry the malt instead of direct heat . Word of this new pale malt reached German lager brewers and in no time the caves were brightened with the new pale lager brews .
Lager became the modern , popular beer and ales were becoming few and far between . German and Czech brewers could now be found all over Europe and the Americas , and the advent of refrigeration in the late 1800 ’ s meant lager could leave the caves and be brewed in state of the art refrigerated breweries and vessels . This increased lager ’ s prevalence in massive proportions . Not only could lager be brewed year round and in climates previously too hot for brewing , but it could be transported all over the world without spoiling . By the end of the 19th century , 98 % of all breweries in the world were brewing lager .
Prohibition shuttered over 4,000 breweries in the United States and when it was finally repealed , only the largest breweries in the country were able to reopen . The lager they were brewing was a mere shadow of its flavorful former self , but after over a decade of no beer , Americans were begging for beer and beggars truly can ’ t
22 | PALESTINE MAGAZINE | SPRING 2022