Third Wave Lagers

The new world wasn't much for beer for the first 250 years Europeans lived here.  The barley and hops weren't spectacular, and we had liquor instead.  That changed when Germans started immigrating in huge numbers in the middle of the 19th century and brought their tasty lagers with them.  I have a wonderful little history book called Brewed in the Pacific Northwest that lists scores and scores of breweries founded between 1850 and 1900, and nearly every one of them was helmed by a lager-brewing German.  It turned the US into a beer-drinking country (per capita consumption went from about 3 gallons to 16 gallons annually).  Call it the first wave of lagers.

That first wave was a monster--and indeed is still with us.  It was so successful, in fact, that in its pure dominion it sparked craft brewing.  Ultimately, that movement would be known far more for ales, but at the outset a lot of the earliest micros made lagers.  It wasn't really obvious in the mid-1980s what people would be drinking, so places like Stoudt's, Penn, Capital, and of course, Boston Beer all made lagers early on.  This wave was marked by breweries making full-flavor, all-barley German styles.  This was lager's second wave.

By the 1990s, it was clear that most of the craft action was happening with ales (Sam Adams notwithstanding).  This was especially true on the west coast, where it was nearly impossible to sell lagers.  All-lager breweries like Saxer and Thomas Kemper went bust.  Widmer, in the midst of a brewing retrospective, spent a decade trying--and failing--to move lagers.  Breweries attempted to smuggle lagers into people's fridges by adding lots of hops, directing attention away from the fact that they were lagers--anything to try to change their rep.  I was pretty sure it was never going to work.

But then, lo, they finally came to drink lagers.  Full Sail was clearly the West Coast's big groundbreaker with Session and the LTD line, but there are lots of lagers out there now.  Fort George has turned 1811 Lager into a co-flagship, and equally ale-y breweries like Ninkasi, Lagunitas, and Firestone Walker have successful lagers.  You can see that a trend has reached some kind of watershed when breweries start hopping on a bandwagon.  Nothing against Pyramid, which has an underrated line of beer, but it is not a brewery known to be on the leading edge of innovation.  When they released IPL earlier this year, it seemed to confirm the mainstreaming of lager.  This is the third wave of lagers.


Midwest and East Coast Lagers?
I have a pretty good sense about how this all developed on the West Coast, but I'm less clear about what's happening elsewhere.  In the next week or two, I'm going to start working on an article about third wave lagers, and I'd like to fill in the story nationwide.  For readers on the far coast and midwest, are you seeing third-wave lagers in your markets?  If there is a trend toward lagers, which beers helped popularize it?  Which breweries have led the way?  We are always unduly influenced by our own experience, so I don't want to assume that the West Coast is leading the way on lagers--but of course, it may be so.  Disabuse me of the notion if disabuse is needed.

Fort George 1811 Lager

Post updated!

There's this funny beer style--actually, I'm not prepared to acknowledge that it is a style--called "pre-prohibition lager." I have no data, but it has the aroma of a "style" that was probably a broad and changing spectrum of different examples brewed in different places at different times. But through the inevitable process of calcification, it has come to stand for this wide rane. Or I could be wrong--but a fifteen-minute spin around the intertubes doesn't dissuade me.

The key features of this style, such as it is now retrospectively characterized, are the use of corn (apparently rice is a permissible, but less-tasty, variant) and pretty assertive hopping. The sources I've seen suggest noble hops would have been used, but this seems the weakest of the contentions--it was more an assumption than a finding. (As always, folks like Bill Schneller can weigh in to correct gross errors on my part. We're all used to gross errors on my part.)

Whatever the historical precedent, though, this is a very good description of Fort George's 1811 Lager, which I tried for the first time on Tuesday. If you want to immediately predispose your customers against your beer, here are two suggestions: 1) brew a lager; 2) add corn. Cardinal sins!

I hope customers are so mesmerized by the shiny blue cans that they ignore the prominent word "lager" and don't read blogs like this. Because, if they manage to get the beer into their glass, they're in for a treat. Despite people's expectations about canned lager, this is quite a lively and assertive beer. I'm not sure what the hops are, but noble sounds about right--or maybe Sterlings or a mixture of nobles and bastard American varieties like Mt. Hood. In any case, it's zesty and spicy, but buoyed by a lovely, summery sweetness. As is de rigueur for an Oregon beer (nod to Stan Hieronymus), it is as cloudy as November Portland skies. And, although it is packed with flavor, the volume doesn't blast at IPA levels, so it has that moreishness you want from a summer tipple. Great beer.

There are far too few crisp, hoppy lagers in this town, and I am delighted to learn that Fort George has added another--"pre-prohibition" or not.


Update. Two tweets from the brewery, which I'll post in order so you can see that my own failures of fact are not entirely unprecedented.

FortGeorgeBeer Fort George Brewery
@Beervana Thanks for the good word! BTW - The hops used are Galena and Czech Saaz.
3 hours ago

and then:

FortGeorgeBeer Fort George Brewery
@Beervana Correction on the 1811 hops ... Saaz and Centennial. It's right on the can!
14 minutes ago

That's a brewery after my own heart. Or brain.

Full Sail Limited Edition Lager (LTD Series)

With Limited Edition Lager, Full Sail extends its foray into lagers and overwrought x-games language. It is the first of their "Livin' the Dream" series (aka LTD), and the packaging--not so much the bottle, but the sixer box--drips with, like, gnarly rippin' verbiage, dude. It is the least palatable aspect of the brewery's new direction, but I've always been happy to ignore what the marketing department's doing and go straight for the beer. So let's do that.

Tasting Notes
It is an impressive-looking beer. A striking russet, and clear as a winter night. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't russet. It has a characteristically lager-y aroma, like a marzen, sweet with a touch of aromatic noble hopping.

There are two pronounced flavors in this beer, candy and spice. The initial impression is of sugar--it's perhaps the sweetest beer I've ever tasted. Candy sweet, though, not thick and malty like a barley wine. It is fairly effervescent, and I also get a cola note, which makes the whole affair taste, at first blush, like a Pepsi. But then the hopping comes in, and pretty robustly. It's peppery-spicy, and it doesn't balance the cola so much as draw your attention away from it. The finish remains sweet, but the hops do stay with you.

At first I thought it was going to be a fairly standard lager, something like a big marzen (it goes 6.4%). But this is entirely novel. I tend not to appreciate lagers as much as my wife Sally, so I studied her reaction and took a few quick notes. Said she: "I really like it. It's eeeeasy drinkin'; sweet and tasty. Hey, it even says easy-drinking on the label."

I'm not going to knock myself out looking for this beer, but I think it may appeal to some of the same people Session appeals to, but draw them further into the quicksand of good beer--from which, I hope, they will never escape. If it does that, well, that'd be rippin' gnarly, dude.

Stats
Malts: Caramel, chocolate, wheat
Hops: Czech Saaz, Hallertauer
Alcohol by volume: 6.4%
Original Gravity: 16 degrees Plato
Bitterness Units: 26
Other: A "secret sauce" (brewery's words)
Available: Everywhere, until the Spring when LTD 02 will be released.

Rating
Good.