Lager vs Ale

[TimT]

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?

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[Roosterboy]

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

 

[brewtas]

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.

 

[manticle]

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.

 

[dent]

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

 

[manticle]

Yeah sauer for sure.

Decarbonation and mash acidification.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

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

 

[indica86]

And yet Coopers still made ale.

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[mr_wibble]

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.

 

[Spiesy]

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.

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[manticle]

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

 

[Not For Horses]

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!

 

[TimT]

Now ordering beer by the yard would seem excessive.

 

[manticle]

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

 

[Spiesy]

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.

 

[TimT]

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

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

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.