(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Friday Night Beer Blog: Lager Edition [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-07 OK, so it isn't from a craft brewery ;) Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once again (even though it’s been an age, not that anyone noticed), ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger for tonight, with esquimaux taking another well-earned night off from FNBB. The starting point for this edition is this Riverfront Times article from last Friday by Tony Rehagen, focused on lagers, with the start of MLB season: “It’s baseball season, and for beer drinkers, that means a Pavlovian thirst for lagers. The connection dates back at least to the 1880s, and more than a century of aggressive marketing has conditioned us to crave suds at the crack of a bat.” Rehagen then comments on how beer selections have expanded at Busch Stadium (perhaps more than a bit ironically named, in this particular local instance) in recent years, at least according to Rehagen (self the loser hasn’t been to a ball game in years), beyond the usual mass-market suspects: “But in recent years, you may have noticed a gradual uptick in gameday options beyond the boring old Bud. Even in Busch Stadium (named after the family once MLB nixed Budweiser Stadium; Busch beer, an allegedly Bavarian-style lager came later), fans can easily find a 4Hands City Wide Pils, a Schlafly White Lager kellerbier or Urban Chestnut’s Musial-commemorating #6 Classic American Lager along the concourse.” Self the loser is pretty certain of having sampled 2 of the 3 mentioned STL-regional lagers just mentioned (first and last of them). I think that I have tried the Schlafly item, but it’s been a while, so memory is hazy (perhaps like some beers). All that aside, Rehagen notes what looks to be a trend: “That’s because independent breweries in St. Louis, like those across the country, are finally trying their hands at brewing lagers.” Rehagen then cites Florian Kupient, of Urban Chestnut Brewing Company here in STL: ‘…according to Nielsen [IQ], between 2019 and 2020 alone, the sale of maltier and more sessionable craft lagers in the U.S. rose by nearly 10 percent. And the style’s upswing is showing no signs of slowing. “It feels like there is trend toward lagers, definitely,” says Florian Kuplent, brewmaster and co-owner of Urban Chestnut Brewing Company. If anyone can sense tremors in the lager landscape, it’s Kuplent.” You can watch the pre-pandemic promo video of Kupient talking up UCBC, in German (!): x YouTube Video However, in what may be a stereotypical case of flyover country lagging behind the coasts, a March 2015 NYT article by Eric Asimov, i.e. from almost exactly 8 years ago, opined, after discussion with a fellow NYT food writer and two NYC hospitality industry folks: ‘To the endlessly creative American craft brewer, plain old lager may not seem particularly exciting. Decades ago, with so many great styles of beer left moribund by industrial brewers, craft brewers had compelling reasons to concentrate elsewhere. But little by little, American craft brewers have now taken up the challenge. With many good examples available, the beer panel recently convened to taste 20 American lagers. Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Chase Rabenn, bar and hospitality manager for Colicchio & Sons in Chelsea, and Matthew Pene, beer director for Eleven Madison Park. We all agreed signs pointed toward a lager renaissance. “It’s just a cool time for lagers,” Chase said.’ Note, again, that the NYT evaluation is from 2015, while the RFT evaluation is from 2023. We are just a little bit behind the times in MO (no kidding, at least in other aspects). Both articles note in parallel the general challenges behind brewing lagers as reasons why lagers have historically taken a back seat in craft beer-land: NYT: “Aside from an initial distaste for diving into the style that epitomized industrial brewing, many early craft brewers had other reasons for avoiding lagers, one of the two major forms of beer, along with ales. Minimalist lagers, in general, are more difficult to produce than fruity, complex ales. They are subtle, demanding more precision and more specialized equipment. Ales, by contrast, tend to be more forgiving of errors.” RFT: ‘The reason UCBC’s lagers were so immediately successful might be the same reason so many of Kuplent’s contemporaries opted not to go there for years: Because brewing a consistent, quality lager takes precision and expertise. Unlike ales, which come from yeast that ferments at the top of the brew at warmer temperatures, lagers are bottom fermenters that require colder climes. “If you ferment at lower temperatures, which lagers do, there’s a lot less room for error,” Kuplent says. “You really have to have your process under control to produce a beer that’s good. That’s probably why some smaller breweries just starting out don’t tend to make them.” ‘The fact that lagers are more focused on core ingredients, especially the malt, with fewer adjuncts and added flavors also means that there are fewer places to hide any flaws in the translucent golden brew.’ Kupient brought his own past experience at Anheuser-Busch to Urban Chestnut, which fed into their early production of craft lagers: “...Urban Chestnut was able to hit the brew floor running with now-STL-standards like Zwickel, an unfiltered German lager that is naturally cloudy and 100 percent malt-forward; Stammtisch, a traditional pilsner with a slightly bitter finish; and Urban Underdog, an American-style light lager that doesn’t skimp on flavor. Today, these three lagers constitute about 75 percent of UCBC’s total sales.” Kupient also noted how customer demand drove craft lager production at UCBC’s outset: “We make more lagers than we make ales, and that was pretty much true from the start. Not necessarily by design but because consumers demanded it.” So in a way, UCBC gave STL beer customers “what they wanted”, if clearly at a different plane of flavor(s) than Budweiser. It’s easy, of course, to mock Budweiser as the epitome of mass market taste, as Rehagen does twice in the article (second example to follow momentarily). Yet, on one level, there’s something admirable on a mass production level about Budweiser, as this quote from Rehagen summarizes it regarding A-B and Budweiser: “….which many craft brewers begrudgingly admit puts out an incredibly dependable product especially for such a massive scale.” But going on to Rehagen’s second dis of Bud in the article, he speculates as to why craft brewers have been shifting more attention to lagers, with respect to UCBC’s early and continuing success with their craft lagers: “The early and growing popularity of these beers might also have contributed locally to another reason why Kuplent thinks craft lagers are finally having their day nationally: Beer drinkers have awoken to the fact that watery Budweiser isn’t the end all be all of the style. ‘”When craft beer first emerged, the best way to differentiate yourself was to make something that wasn’t already on the market,” he says. “Over time, the consumer got educated and tried different things and learned that lagers can actually have some interesting flavors and aromas.”’ Perhaps more than a bit ironically (or loserly), tonight’s featured FNBB selection chez 3CM isn’t one of these STL-based craft lagers, although it is a lager, at the least. As the picture reveals, the featured beer is a Yuengling Traditional Lager. This is certainly far from a craft beer selection. Given how popular and widespread Yuengling is, especially on the East Coast, commentary on this beer from me is especially pointless. The larger point is how it got to be the choice, given the geographical dissonance between Yuengling (PA) and self the loser (MO). I’ll leave it at that and for anyone who cares to guess :) . With that, for this Good Friday evening, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you imbibing tonight? Anyone brewing their own. Admittedly, it might seem a bit odd to ask the usual FNBB questions on Good Friday, on Easter weekend…. 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