Let's look at the hops. Most of which are English. Which is dead authentic for the style. At least London Lager has continental hops, in the form of Styrian. Though even they were descended from English hop varieties. Given how few hops went into the Drybrough and Truman examples, it probably didn’t really matter what type they were.
We’ll now have a chance to see how authentic the fermentations were.
Not much really to say about the boil times. Other than that, the two hours for Elgood’s is a bit on the long side. But not stupidly so.
The Elgood fermentation profile looks just like those for its other beers. And way too warm for a Lager. But, as they were using their standard top-fermenting yeast, they couldn’t really have fermented cold.
Truman did pitch their Lager cooler, but not as low as in proper bottom-fermentation. Based on a fermentation length of just six days, I can’t imagine the Continental was fermented cold. From what I can make out in the brewing record, it looks as if they were using their standard yeast.
Elgood used the same underlet mash as for all their beers. While Truman employed a modified version of theirs, with the initial infusion a good bit cooler and the underlet quite warmer. Details are too scarce to tell what exactly what was going on at Drybrough. It certainly looks like a more complicated process than for their other beers. A mash with four steps, possibly.
Overall, not very authentic Lagers, then. Pseudo-Lagers, really. Which isn’t much of a surprise as none of the three breweries had a dedicated Lager kit.
| Lager hops 1969 - 1975 | ||||
| Year | Brewer | Beer | hop 1 | hop 2 |
| 1970 | Drybrough | Continental | English | English |
| 1975 | Elgood | Lager | English (1974) | |
| 1969 | Truman | London Lager | Styrian | |
| Sources: | ||||
| As in the table above. | ||||
| Lager boiling and fermentation 1969 - 1975 | ||||||
| Year | Brewer | Beer | boil time (hours) | Pitch temp | max. fermen-tation temp | length of fermen-tation (days) |
| 1970 | Drybrough | Continental | 6 | |||
| 1975 | Elgood | Lager | 2 | 60º F | 69.5º F | 8 |
| 1969 | Truman | London Lager | 1.5 | 53º F | 60º F | 8 |
| Average | 1.8 | 57º F | 65º F | 7.3 | ||
| Sources: | ||||||
| As in the table above. | ||||||
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5 comments:
Well , though most lagers are bottom fermented though there are some which are obergarischeslagerbier. Such as Kolsch. Lagering is what is done after brewing.
In the US there were a number of regional breweries which had ales that were barely indistinguishable from US lagers. They were made with neutral yeasts, had little color or malt character, and were hopped similarly.
I eouldn't say they tasted exactly like a lager, but the degree of difference was closer to the degree of difference between Budweiser lager and Coors lager, rather than the degree of difference between English bitter and lager.
6 days is possible with cold fermentation if enough yeast is used. Generally speaking you need to double the amount of yeast for every 10°C you ferment cooler. Kölsch and Alt both use top-fermenting yeasts that can work down to 12°C and to make sure things work smoothly they have to pitch a large amount of yeast.
Still interesting to see that Eldrige for example did not even try to change anything about their fermentation. They probably lacked experience to try to use their house yeast for a cooler fermentation.
My understanding of lager is that because of the cool temperatures involved bottom fermenting yeasts were gradually self selected. But bottom fermentation is the result rather than the intention or definition of lager brewing.
Lager means to store , the idea was that the beer was stored for a considerable time before consumption.
The confusion arises because English brewing terminology conflates two separate things – yeast type and cold-conditioning – into one word, "lager". Can you have a "lager" which is top-fermented but cold-conditioned? Or one which is bottom-fermented but not cold-conditioned?
The German language can cope with concepts such as the "Obergäriges Lagerbier" mentioned above. Although having said that, I am not keen on this expression, even though Schönfeld uses it, because I have never seen it used in the wild in modern times. When there were still a few breweries outside the Kölsch-Konvention making a beer in the Kölsch style, they tended to put "obergärig" on the label as an indicator of what the beer was supposed to be.
I think Elgoods assumed (probably correctly) that their customers would not notice the difference between their usual yeast and a true bottom-fermenting strain. Some British breweries still try to pull this off today with their seasonal beers.
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