# Lager vs Ale



## TimT (3/1/14)

Kvestion, your Honour: why did Lager beer become the default beer in Australia?

The conventional explanation seems to be that lager is better for our climate: lighter, not as heavy or sweet as ales (which are apparently European winter drinks). That doesn't make sense to me. A lager can have just as much body as an ale, there are plenty of pale ales, and if we didn't like the sweetness of ales in our climate, why have we retained other sweet foods (lamingtons?)

Here's my go at an alternative explanation:
Snobbery - lager was an elite continental drink. Because it is harder to ferment well, it is arguable that only the 'best' makers could produce it.
- 19th century imperialism and patriotism - association with the royal family (whose German origins were well known, though became less well known after the world wars for obvious reasons).
- Competition - it suited the larger, better funded brewers to promote a beer that was more difficult to produce than ale.

Sure there's a few other reasons....


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## indica86 (3/1/14)

Is the standard aussie pish actually lager? The bitters sure ain't bitter.


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## sp0rk (3/1/14)

In my view the major reason is to do with the 6pm closing laws
The easier drinking lagers could be smashed down 6 at a time before having to wander back home to a nagging wife and kids
ever since then, most blokes have drunk what dad drank and the culture of drinking easily skullable lagers has flourished


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## Ducatiboy stu (3/1/14)

Coopers Lager never really took off....


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## Ducatiboy stu (3/1/14)

But.....most beers are Draughts ( tap ) or Bitters. Not many actually say "Lager"

Tooheys New
Carlton Draught
Reschs Pilsner
XXXX bitter & gold
West End draught
VB


And they are not really lagers by definition
They are mainly fast brewed something.


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## indica86 (3/1/14)

And the likes of VB, Melbourne Bitter - what are they actually?


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## Glot (3/1/14)

Mostly pale lagers as far as I know. They tend to suit our climate and our culture.


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## indica86 (3/1/14)

Glot said:


> They tend to suit our climate and our culture.


Pale and piss weak imitation?


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## mje1980 (3/1/14)

Ales can be dry and sessionable. They can also be turned around pretty quick.


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## Not For Horses (3/1/14)

Vb is brewed with a lager yeast but at ale temps (17 I think)


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## Spiesy (3/1/14)

Didn't this happen everywhere?

England, USA, Australia...

Sure, craft beer is fighting back in all of these countries that have a tradition as strong beer drinking countries, but the mass-consumed style is still that of the "international mass-market lager"


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## Spiesy (3/1/14)

Ducatiboy stu said:


> But.....most beers are Draughts ( tap ) or Bitters. Not many actually say "Lager"
> 
> Tooheys New
> Carlton Draught
> ...


Correct me if I'm wrong, but "draught" is not a style - but a method of serving, which kind of defies logic that you can buy "draught" in a can or bottle.

And I'll wager that ALL of the above beers you have listed are closer in BJCP guidelines to a lager than an English Bitter.

Some purists may disagree, but I consider a Pilsner a style of lager.


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## TimT (3/1/14)

Another reason I thought of, ales are much easier to be brewed on smaller scales, at homes or small businesses (house beer at a pub). Big brewers distinguished themselves by brewing fancy lagers and promoting that in a way that appealed to Australia's sense of what was 'refined' (ie, expensive, difficult) beer.

Governments also encouraged this. Six o'clock swill, temperance - and, at one point, they cut back the number of pubs in Australia to meet some randomly-defined quota. Result: smaller pubs that might have brewed good ale tended to disappear. The big brewers kept their head down and didn't get closed down by government - and survived while other small-time brewers didn't.

I think it's an frequently observed cultural trend - when people settle in a new country, they'll soon develop a very distinct way of doing things, related to how they did things in the old country, but refined somehow. (For instance, the Australian accent picked up a number of aspects of British colloquial speech, but also quickly became flattened out.) It seems this has happened with beer, too.


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## Ducatiboy stu (3/1/14)

Spiesy said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong, but "draught" is not a style - but a method of serving, which kind of defies logic that you can buy "draught" in a can or bottle.
> 
> And I'll wager that ALL of the above beers you have listed are closer in BJCP guidelines to a lager than an English Bitter.
> 
> Some purists may disagree, but I consider a Pilsner a style of lager.


To the mega swillers....Draught is a style.

Yes, Pilsner is a lager....but to a mega swiller its Reschs.....and only Fosters is a lager, cause its printed on the label.

Next time you're in the Pub on a friday arvo and ask Bruce the tradie what he thinks of his Tooheys lager I will bet his reply will be " **** off mate...its New."


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## Dunkelbrau (3/1/14)

Anyone seen those tooheys old "quiet ale" ads?

Their website says it's a lager..


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## manticle (4/1/14)

Spiesy's point about the prevalence of pale lager everywhere is pertinent.
We probably stopped drinking bitters etc as a fingers up gesture to our colonial overlords.


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## Gelding (4/1/14)

All valid but the real reason I believe is because lager is more fizzy and colder vs typical English "pulled" pint.

Though less flavoursome, just as alcoholic for the most. And its stinking hot mostly in Oz. Not quite like the grey, cloudy overcrowded Blighty.


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## manticle (4/1/14)

So why is lager also popular in Germany?
And Poland?
And the UK?


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## squirt in the turns (4/1/14)

manticle said:


> Spiesy's point about the prevalence of pale lager everywhere is pertinent.
> We probably stopped drinking bitters etc as a fingers up gesture to our colonial overlords.


Agreed. This is hardly a phenomenon unique to our fair "stinking hot" land (what's up with that, anyway? I reckon we're in denial about the fact that half this country has bitterly cold winters).

Most of the beer drinking world got swept up in the lager craze within a few decades of the Czech lager revolution. OK, parts of Europe and America have a much stronger and longer beer heritage than us, but a lot of that seems to have slipped away (the current resurgence of "craft" beer notwithstanding). Coming from the UK, I reckon the average punter there doesn't give a **** about the difference between lager and ale, and is as likely to be found drinking a Carling, Stella or Kronenbourg as an Aussie is to be drinking a VB, Hahn or Tooheys. Although arguably Australian breweries have put their own spin on the homogenised pseudo-Euro light lager thing.


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## Cocko (4/1/14)

_"Good morning Worm your honour
The crown will plainly show
The prisoner who now stands before you
Was caught red handed showing flavours
Showing flavours of an almost human nature
This will not do.........."_


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## Rambo (4/1/14)

Not sure the average joe in Australia would know the difference between a lager and ale. If a customer in the uk wants a lager they will ask for one, specifically... Though if they want an ale, they will ask for a beer.

I have always wondered about why lagers are the generic beer in Australia (and other countries) given the extra time and energy needed to produce them.


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## Gelding (4/1/14)

manticle said:


> So why is lager also popular in Germany?
> And Poland?
> And the UK?


Hey Manticle

Germany, Czech and Poland I would expect soft water quality is the main reason. We all know what water quality leads itself to the beer style that is most naturally brewed.

Lager in the UK, ok... but lets face it, pulled bitters are their signature.

Australia with its young heritage is probably mostly influenced by climate

G


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## dent (4/1/14)

> We all know what water quality leads itself to the beer style that is most naturally brewed.


Nah, I disagree. Germany favours lager whether their water is hard or soft. 

How many brewers can really tell the difference in their water quality? It sure seems to me they look to water long before they look to faults in the rest of the brewing process, as if there might lie some magic bullet that will cure all antedecent faults. I know I sure did.


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## Spiesy (4/1/14)

Many years ago countries would have developed a preference for certain style based on their quality and type of water - but that time has passed.

These days you can adjust the brewing water, and you'll find German Becks brewed under license in Australia, Japanese Kirin brewed under license in Canada and everything in between (with varying results). 

The simply fact is that the world is awash with pale lager, and has been for some time. It has eroded beers that gave a country its cultural identity, to a large degree. 

Why? I think it's because these beers have a very neutral flavour profile, and the big breweries are of the belief that this flavour profile appeals to the masses. So with one broad stroke they can mass produce, mass market and make mass profits.

Perhaps, they see pale lager as I describe Corona… there's nothing to not like about Corona, but there's nothing to like about it either - it's flavour neutral.


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## TimT (4/1/14)

_Australia with its young heritage is probably mostly influenced by climate_

I don't really buy this - lots of Aussies still have the traditional roast and baked potatoes with gravy and all the works - a classic winter dish - on a searing summer's day when Christmas rolls around. So I don't think climate influences cultural preferences strongly.

It sounds like a combination of different things though - the lager trend caught on throughout the world in a big way in the 19th century, and Australia came to maturity at the same time. And our drinking culture got influenced by it.


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## Toper (4/1/14)

I've been reading "The Breweries of Australia-A History",and it's got a chapter on the intro of lager into Oz.Quoting from the Australian Brewers Journal from 1882 it describes lager as "lighter,less intoxicating,more gaseous,and better conditioned" than the old style ales and porters.The journal goes on to encourage brewers here to brew the style,which they say 'is "the beer of the future" in the Australian climate.It seems the 'less intoxicating' element was a big consideration at a time when the standard ales would have been a lot stronger than todays versions.Men wanted "a long drink,not a strong drink".Pasteurisation also comes into the factor,the 'new style' evolving at the same time,and increasing the longevity and quality of the beer for consumers.


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## Bribie G (4/1/14)

In A Town Like Alice by Neville Schute (Edit Nevil Shute) there's a sentence: the heroine meets the hero at an airport or train station or somewhere and buys him three bottles of "the light Australian beer that does nobody any harm if it's accompanied by hard work" or words to that effect. Always struck me as funny, as it was no doubt the full 5% stuff.

Aussie lagers are quite strong by Euro standards - Pilsner Urquell is and always has been 4.5% ABV and in the UK lagers are usually sub 4%, as is Fosters over there. Some of the East Euro ones go up to high fives, like Zywiec, but you have to seek them out.

Bet you didn't know that modern refrigeration was invented by the editor of the Geelong Times. They used acetone to clean the print blocks and he noticed that if he blew over the surface the metal almost froze and the penny dropped.
It was the right time and place because within a few years they were building refrigerated ships to send mutton and beef to the mighty UK and it was also what the breweries were looking for.

Unlike the UK where, if you build a big thick brick building with cellars you are guaranteed around 18 degrees all year round, in Australia it was very difficult to build breweries that didn't swing wildly in temperature.
In the UK you could use waste heat from the boilers to heat, and to a certain extent you could use cold well or stream water to cool the brew with attemperators (that's exactly how the Yorkshire Stone Square system works), but apart from that there was no way of seriously chilling stuff so they stuck with ales.

When refrigeration came in with the Fosters Brothers who built their high tech brewery, they went straight to lagers. As Toper says the ales at the time would have been pretty feral, as they would have been modelled on the UK "keeping beers" that were often plus 7%. I think there's a sentence in a Henry Lawson story I read about "the few quick beers had loosened his tongue....". Imagine slamming down a few warm malt liqua's in a hot pub in the summer.


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## Ducatiboy stu (4/1/14)

Cocko said:


> _"Good morning Worm your honour_​_
> __The crown will plainly show_​_
> __The prisoner who now stands before you_​_
> __Was caught red handed showing flavours_​_
> ...


Classic


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## Mardoo (4/1/14)

Rambo said:


> Not sure the average joe in Australia would know the difference between a lager and ale.



I work for a wine retailer that sells beers as loss leaders. I've been beating my head against the wall trying to get them to stop calling every beer we sell 'lager'. 'Larger' too. That's been applied to bitters, milds, stouts, weiss beers, ales, pretty much anything. FFS!


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## TimT (4/1/14)

_I've been reading "The Breweries of Australia-A History",and it's got a chapter on the intro of lager into Oz.Quoting from the Australian Brewers Journal from 1882 it describes lager as "lighter,less intoxicating,more gaseous,and better conditioned" than the old style ales and porters._


Toper, true - though I just opened a copy of _The Amber Nectar_ (borrowed from a friend) and there's this, from the same journal in 1897:

_There is not the smallest chance of the concocted-in-Germany swill ever being acclimatised in Australia...People that drink beer will stick to the decent old Anglo-Saxon stuff.... _

As the old Anglo-Saxons say every so often, crikey!


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## Gelding (4/1/14)

dent said:


> Nah, I disagree. Germany favours lager whether their water is hard or soft.
> 
> How many brewers can really tell the difference in their water quality? It sure seems to me they look to water long before they look to faults in the rest of the brewing process, as if there might lie some magic bullet that will cure all antedecent faults. I know I sure did.


100 years ago I suspect you could not make a Pilsner with water from burton on trent, nor could you make a newcastle brown with water from pilsen that would taste remotely like the lagers and ales they are respectively. Its what tasted good at the time without having the technology to adjust the 4 primary ingredients to measure.


As to how many brewers can tell the difference in water quality ? For me its very important. Taste a bottle of distilled water then taste something from your tap and tell me which one you would rather in your beer.




Spiesy said:


> Many years ago countries would have developed a preference for certain style based on their quality and type of water - but that time has passed.
> 
> These days you can adjust the brewing water, and you'll find German Becks brewed under license in Australia, Japanese Kirin brewed under license in Canada and everything in between (with varying results).
> 
> ...


Years ago the brits adopted the imperial system for measurement and used miles per hour on their speedometers and roadsigns. That time has passed. But they never changed.


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## manticle (4/1/14)

Germans for starters have been adjusting water/mash pH for a long time and water mineral content has been known to be important for more than 100 years.


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## Gelding (4/1/14)

manticle said:


> Germans for starters have been adjusting water/mash pH for a long time and water mineral content has been known to be important for more than 100 years.



Actually I did'nt think they did starters and just pitched vast quantities of S-189 dry yeast for their lagers 

Kidding of course, but I think you are missing my point.


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## manticle (4/1/14)

No I'm not missing yours but you may be missing mine. I don't think the prevalence of lager drinking is based entirely on region or water.

Clear looking, pale refreshing, not sour/hoppy/bretty/oaky/whatever beer became the desired thing at some point in brewing history and that trend spread here as it did elsewhere, water source irrespective (because brewers have known about water and mash chemistry longer than we seem to give them credit for).

Lagers may suit a hot climate when served bubbly and cold but that is not the only, nor even the main reason they are so popular over the entire world, climate and water notwithstanding.


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## black_labb (4/1/14)

Gelding said:


> 100 years ago I suspect you could not make a Pilsner with water from burton on trent, nor could you make a newcastle brown with water from pilsen that would taste remotely like the lagers and ales they are respectively. Its what tasted good at the time without having the technology to adjust the 4 primary ingredients to measure.



While it would be difficult to brew a true to style pilsener in places with hard water there is no reason you cannot brew a nice pale beer with hard water. The brewers of dublin weren't looking through a BJCP style guideline saying "well our water just isn't going to work for a Bohemian pilsener and I can't get my hands on american hops for a Double american IPA... Oh look, a dry Irish Stout, that sounds like a good idea." Beers were brewed for a number of reasons including local taste, culture, climate, availability of ingredients. Water profile is a consideration but I would put it pretty low on the list. For example the Czechs brew excellent Dark Lagers using local ingredients and water. Why were they not adopted locally and around the world like pilseners? What is now the UK priced beers based on alcoholic strength and they developed beers to taste strong so the landlords could charge more as the beer was perceived as stronger. Throw in some rationing of malts and the desire to get as full flavoured as possible was very important. They grew the flower producing female hops in the presence of male hops to give them a bit more aggressive bite to them compared to continental hops. 

Without really knowing I would suggest that the prevalence of lagers in Australia probably comes down to refrigeration. The ales of the time would have been fermented at ambient temperatures which have a big swing in just about all of Australia even if you have a cellar or similar. You would have winter brews in sydney and Melbourne probably in the mid to low teens being pushed up a few degrees by the exothermic fermentation. In Summer an ambient 25-35 with an extra 5+ degrees on top of that from the exothermic fermentation running out of control because it is fermenting too quickly. Lagers have no chance of being palatable here unless proper temperature control is implemented. Some ale brewers probably started to make use of refrigeration but the reputation was already there and fed by the ale brewers who hadn't controlled their temperatures.

Just look at how American style ales are completely dominating our craft beer market with every big and small brewery trying to get some sort of american style pale ale if not an amber and an IPA as well. It's because of cultural links to america, a backlash/differentiating point against local swill, local climate etc. In some eastern european countries Wit beers have become quite popular and are brewed locally (Ukraine and Croatia I remember in particulat). There is a lot more to do with the situation than just what water is available.


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## dent (4/1/14)

> 100 years ago I suspect you could not make a Pilsner with water from burton on trent, nor could you make a newcastle brown with water from pilsen that would taste remotely like the lagers and ales they are respectively. Its what tasted good at the time without having the technology to adjust the 4 primary ingredients to measure.


I don't think my point is refuted by cherry picking the diametrically opposed water conditions and beer styles out there. And even then it isn't much the case - have a look at the burton water vs dortmunder and you'll see that hard water can still make a good pale lager.




> As to how many brewers can tell the difference in water quality ? For me its very important. Taste a bottle of distilled water then taste something from your tap and tell me which one you would rather in your beer.


That sounds more like an ideology than anything else. I drink RO water all the time, and I use it in brewing. I also use filtered (Perth) tap water in brewing. By the time beer is made out of the water here though, you would no longer able to pick which beer came from what. Obviously the adjusted RO water has benefits, but they are of a generally more technical and process related nature, rather than the glass in your hand. And I brew light lagers pretty regularly.

I'm not saying this will always be the case, but it isn't night and day.


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## manticle (4/1/14)

dent said:


> have a look at the burton water vs dortmunder and you'll see that hard water can still make a good pale lager.


My understanding (what I was alluding to before) is that dortmunder is a great example of why relying on alleged, historical water profiles is a bad idea as German Brewers (including those in Dortmund) have been at the forefront of mash acidification techniques and water chemistry for a long time. We (collectively)seem to think it's a recent discovery and that anyone brewing more than 50 years ago did it by guesswork, magic and sacrificing otters while dancing widdershins.


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## pk.sax (4/1/14)

I'm guessing here, but innovation and risk taking seems to follow both the living on the edge people and the seeking the edge people. Doesn't matter ale or lager, seems that entropy seems to always cause a push away from whatever the status quo is and mostly pushes the pendulum farther away than it was. Of course, entropy can also be maintained by eliminating difference.


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## real_beer (4/1/14)

Money Money Money!
Big corporations in the brewing industry are all about increasing profits for shareholders. They do this by designing beers that will offend the least number of people among the population, this basically means brewing a beer with the least flavour possible. The rest is up to the advertising agencies using sporting hero's of all types, bikini clad beauties frolicking with bronzed he-men with bulging biceps & six-pack torso's. Very little about the taste of the beer itself usually because it doesn't have much flavour to talk about & also to be fair a lot about restrictions on what can be shown in an ad by government policies (probably lobbied for by the brewer's themselves :lol: ). Anheuser-Busch InBev spends about 1.4 billion dollars a year on advertising and you can guess the beers that get most of that budget. Sadly they also have a huge litigation department with funds to attack & wear down rivals brewers to get them out of the market, just ask Sam Caliagone about this tactic.

In Australia & probably the UK too, you could probably give this man the credit for cementing modern day megaswills as the beer to drink.


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## TimT (4/1/14)

Ah yes, the Barry McKenzie films. I saw an interview with writer Barry Humphries who claims 'we never got a cent from them [Carlton United]' for the use of the beers in the films.

Translation: heaps and heaps of free beer for cast and crew....


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## TimT (4/1/14)

_Germans for starters have been adjusting water/mash pH for a long time and water mineral content has been known to be important for more than 100 years._

That's interesting Manticle - what sorts of techniques would they have used a century ago to remediate deficiencies in the water and mash pH?


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## TimT (4/1/14)

_Doesn't matter ale or lager, seems that entropy seems to always cause a push away from whatever the status quo is and mostly pushes the pendulum farther away than it was. Of course, entropy can also be maintained by eliminating difference._

I like the way you're thinking, practicalfool. I feel there should be a quote from Michael Moorcock I should put up here.... something about law vs chaos, or something like that. But the fashion for lager as opposed to ale really could come down to some general rule like the one you are articulating here: for hundreds of years, ale, often unhopped, was supreme. Lager displaced it, due to some change in fashion about beer drinking - and sometimes, you just don't know why these changes in fashion happen. You can only make educated guesses.


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## Roosterboy (4/1/14)

I recently went to beer fest in Hobart and did a tour of both major breweries in Tasmania. One of those breweries only uses ale yeast but they call one beer a lager because it is kept cool for 3 weeks to condition (lagering) , I think there's a bit of marketing going on in the names. Can I say lagers can be hoppy but have less of the undesirable flavours ( as decided by the public ) like esters, acetaldehyde and diacetyl. It just comes down to taste.
Roosterboy


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## brewtas (4/1/14)

There's been a lot of good points made in this thread. From the bits and pieces of our brewing history I've picked up these seem to be the big factors:

The Australian brewing industry was a bit of a shambles. The beer generally wasn't great, the climate made it hard to brew and the instability of the beer meant that beer wouldn't keep, breweries were smaller so there were more of them.
Technology - in malting, microbiology and refrigeration - meant that those with the foresight/cash could improve the quality of the beer and grow in size as well as brew lagers.
That and the excise laws that came in with federation lead to a massive consolidation of breweries.
Lager was sweeping the world.
Climate might have something to do with the particulars of our beer but it didn't drive us to lager.


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## manticle (5/1/14)

TimT said:


> _Germans for starters have been adjusting water/mash pH for a long time and water mineral content has been known to be important for more than 100 years._
> 
> That's interesting Manticle - what sorts of techniques would they have used a century ago to remediate deficiencies in the water and mash pH?


I'll have to look up specifics (and will if I remember tomorrow) but decarbonation of water by boiling and precipitation might be one. Awareness of how specific water and minerals affected brewing was certainly no secret to many breweries a long time ago.


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## dent (5/1/14)

I expect Sauergut would have been the go back in the day.


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## manticle (5/1/14)

Yeah sauer for sure. 

Decarbonation and mash acidification.


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## Ducatiboy stu (5/1/14)

manticle said:


> I'll have to look up specifics (and will if I remember tomorrow) but decarbonation of water by boiling and precipitation might be one. Awareness of how specific water and minerals affected brewing was certainly no secret to many breweries a long time ago.


Beer......anyone


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## indica86 (5/1/14)

And yet Coopers still made ale.


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## TimT (5/1/14)

Wow - fascinating!

http://www.proz.com/kudoz/german_to_english/food_drink/2860892-sauergut.html

_Another technique developed by the Germans is to create a sour mash which again contains lactic acid produced by lactic bacteria. The technique is to mash a quantity of grain, cools it to about 80F and then adds some fresh malt (which contains lots of lactic bacteria naturally) and lets the mixture sit overnight. The bacteria will quickly sour the mash and start fermenting it, again creating lactic acid. _

Ingenious way to get around the Reinheitsgebot. I wasn't thinking about those - I thought maybe just folk remedies like adding the juice of fruits with a particular pH, or bicarb of soda, or something like that.

For sure old-tme brewers knew about the qualities of water - totally agree there.


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## mr_wibble (5/1/14)

Bribie G said:


> When refrigeration came in with the Fosters Brothers who built their high tech brewery, they went straight to lagers.


And the Foster Brothers were American - where the beer history was already heavily influenced by Germans, hence lagers.


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## Spiesy (5/1/14)

Gelding said:


> Years ago the brits adopted the imperial system for measurement and used miles per hour on their speedometers and roadsigns. That time has passed. But they never changed.


Despite the fact that the metric system kicks arse, I'm struggling to see the relevance in the current discussion, as the Brits have changed their drinking culture. 

One is a nationally adopted and Government enforced system (metric v imperial), one is a social and cultural trend that can be influenced by many factors.


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## TimT (5/1/14)

I'm glad we kept imperial measurements for beer though. Who walks into a bar and says 'I'll have point four seven of your finest ale'? Much more satisfying asking for a pint or a pot.

Not to mention those beautiful old measures for larger quantities of beer: firkins, kilderkins, hogsheads.


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## manticle (5/1/14)

Nothing wrong with asking for a litre jug from your favourite czech restaurant.


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## Not For Horses (5/1/14)

TimT said:


> I'm glad we kept imperial measurements for beer though. Who walks into a bar and says 'I'll have point four seven of your finest ale'? Much more satisfying asking for a pint or a pot.
> 
> Not to mention those beautiful old measures for larger quantities of beer: firkins, kilderkins, hogsheads.


Don't forget about the yard!


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## TimT (5/1/14)

Now ordering beer by the yard would seem excessive.


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## manticle (5/1/14)

Tell that to Bob Hawke.
Current Pm orders beer by its ratio to lemonade.


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## Spiesy (5/1/14)

TimT said:


> I'm glad we kept imperial measurements for beer though. Who walks into a bar and says 'I'll have point four seven of your finest ale'? Much more satisfying asking for a pint or a pot.


Are pot and schooner an imperial measurement?

Even a pint has different connotations; try ordering a pint from Adelaide, a pint from London and a pint from San Fran and see what you end up with… at the end of the day, those descriptors (pint, pot, midi, schooner, pony) are just that; a descriptor that references some form of volume. It could just as easily be 500ml = 1 pint as any other volume.


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## TimT (8/1/14)

Just a follow up to this chat about pots and pints and other strange measurements, I was inspired to write this little post on my blog - hope you don't mind, Manticle, I quoted you:
http://willtypeforfood.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/ordering-beer-by-yard-and-other-knotty.html


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## Lord Raja Goomba I (8/1/14)

Most beer is like coke. It's massed produced and people know what they're getting. They don't like being made to think or consider if they want their coke differently flavoured, and the same goes with beer.

Sure, there are some regional variants (coke with cherry in the US, coke with lemon in Hong Kong), but the staple product - plain coke, always has the most shelf space and comes out of the machine at any fast food joint the world over (or Pepsi, depending on rights - but the same thing) - whether it's McDonalds, Yoshinoya, Burger King or whatever.

It's about market saturation of a generic product and lots of advertising to keep it in the public eye, thereby maintaining its sales impetus.

Look at "New Coke", "Coke II" and the like. Change a generic product slightly and people cracked it.

Lager fits that bill. It doesn't challenge, is clean and generic. Anything to alter the status quo (even if it has no real actual impact) is frowned upon. Think of VB going to 4.8%, then 4.6% and back up to 4.9% as the beer equivalent of "New Coke" and the Cola Wars. They lost market position to XXXX (or Pepsi) by tweaking, creating a furore and then going back to the original product that "we all know and love". Now they are the top selling beer (cola) again.


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## Bribie G (8/1/14)

You dissing my brew, LRG?


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## Lord Raja Goomba I (8/1/14)

Bribie G said:


> You dissing my brew, LRG?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Mentioned Coke and Pepsi, not ALDI.

I wouldn't diss ALDI, I miss it way too much! 

And you were the bloke that put me onto using softdrink bottles to contain beer where tallies/longnecks/kingbrowns are running low.

One advantage is when your drinking a Bitter, draw the first pint off (and drink it), leave the plastic bottle in the fridge. Next day, you can use the "syringe ghetto hand pump" trick without overflowing your glass.


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## Spiesy (9/1/14)

Ducatiboy stu said:


> To the mega swillers....Draught is a style.
> 
> Yes, Pilsner is a lager....but to a mega swiller its Reschs.....and only Fosters is a lager, cause its printed on the label.
> 
> Next time you're in the Pub on a friday arvo and ask Bruce the tradie what he thinks of his Tooheys lager I will bet his reply will be " **** off mate...its New."


In actual fact, his response would more likely be "**** off mate… that's Sydney shit".


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