Michael Stein is president of Lost Lagers, Washington, D.C.’s premier beverage research firm. His historic beers have been served at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Polish Ambassador’s residence.
The lager-brewing tradition is full of received wisdom and rules of thumb about how long it’s supposed to take to condition a beer. In reality, however, there’s no magic formula.
This homebrew-scale recipe, based on brewer Paul Kaiser’s own notes, is for an authentic pre-war American lager with a high proportion of adjuncts.
There were Munich-style dark lagers, American bocks, and paler, pilsner-like beers. Adjuncts abounded. Here, historian Michael Stein of the research firm Lost Lagers digs into the recipes and methods of the time.