You can still find traditional darker styled lagers like amber, doppelbock, and schwarzbier, which is black. Traditionally lagers were dark, like most other beers. These days, most lagers are pale in colour but that trend was driven by the creation of pilsner. Unlike ales there are no prominent esters (or fruit aromas) on the nose. It sounds complicated, but the bottom line is that any yeast can be used to ferment any style of beer, what really matters is the taste.Ī modern lager is pale yellow, clear, smooth with a light hop bitterness. It is how you, as a brewer, manipulate the variables you need to get beer with flavour and aroma you want.” So the difference between an ale or a lager today is less about the kind of yeast used.Īs New World Beer and Cider judge Kelly Ryan says: “The yeast strain doesn’t make the beer. Now, using temperature and pressure, brewers can make yeasts do what they want, depending on the kind of flavour they want to create. Over time, new brewing methods have given brewers greater control over the fermentation process. There are brown and black lagers just as there are golden and pale ales. This of course is where we get the word lager.Ĭolour has absolutely no influence over whether a beer is an ale or lager. They named the style of beer for the process used to create it: ‘lagern’ which is the German word for “to store”. Liking what they were getting, the monks over time allowed this strain of yeast to dominate. It gobbled up more of the malt sugars than ale yeast and didn’t produce as many fruity flavours. This yeast strain worked slowly but cleanly. Not only did the beer stayer fresher longer, but a new yeast strain, one which liked chilly temperatures, started to work its own brand of magic on the beer. This yeast produced fruity flavours like apple, pear, banana, and strawberry.īut in Germany, mountaintop-dwelling monks wanted to make their beer last a little bit longer and started storing it in chilly caves over the summer. This yeast worked away quite happily in open-topped fermenters at temperatures of around 18-24℃.
#Whats a pilsner beer trial
People used whatever ingredients they had to hand – from wild yeasts that make sour beers to what was predominantly used – through trial and error, a yeast variety called Saccharomyces cerevisiae which was used to make ale.
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Humans have been making beer for thousands of years, long before we discovered yeast was a living organism, and caused fermentation around the mid-1800s.
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So, what’s the difference between an ale and a lager? The answer is simple: Yeast. One of the most frequently asked questions in the beer world is “what’s the difference between ale and lager?” To be perfectly honest, these days, not much. In this New World guide to beer styles we’ll cover all the main types of beer and some of the categories within them. They are two different varieties of beer, and while they share similarities there are also plenty of differences.
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It may help to think of beers like siblings in a family. How you combine them together, how long you brew them for, and whether or not you add anything else into the mix influences what your beer will taste like. Not sure what the difference is between a hefeweizen and a hazy IPA? Here’s your guide to understanding the different types of beer in your bottle, can or keg.Īll beer is made using the same four ingredients: water, yeast, hops and malt. New Zealand’s craft beer industry has exploded, with more varieties of beer available than ever before.