I know that some of you are already opening your mouths to form the question, “Why?” Let me preempt your question: Any beer style can be good. The complaint most of us have about most light American-style lagers isn’t that they’re lightly flavored; it’s that they’re bad. They don’t taste good. It isn’t necessarily what’s in them; it’s that they’re produced in ways that yield something that is technically “beer” and technically a “lager” but isn’t pleasurable to drink, even ice-cold and even on a hot day (though many of us have our go-to, nostalgic lite lager). That’s not to say this will be easy. Say what you want, but those are mistake-free beers, which we know because any faults would be immediately apparent, so you have a technical challenge ahead even if you follow a solid recipe. You can’t even afford to have dirty thoughts while making this beer, so clean and sanitize thoroughly, and make sure your temperature-control methods are tight before jumping in.
Style
Some people look at the style description of American lagers with their “strong flavors are a fault” language and simply decide not to make them. You should, though—despite their limited range of flavor, these are still great beers! The Light American Lager actually differs quite a lot, practically, from the Standard and Premium varieties because at an ABV this low, it takes some work to make a beer with some flavor that still disappears on the palate as this one is designed to do. There’s less alcohol and less bittering, and they’re so pale as to almost appear white or colorless when done right. We’re talking the very bottom of the SRM scale (3 SRM on this particular recipe). You need a recipe that gives a lot while leaving very little behind as well as avoids pulling back so far that “delicate” turns into “hard seltzer with no actual flavors.” But please, don’t think that just because it’s light in flavor that it’s either flavorless or a waste of your time. Water has very little flavor, but who hasn’t had an incredible chug of clean, minerally water after a hard effort?
Ingredients
I know that most recipes call for nothing but 2-row and adjunct here, but I’m going to respectfully disagree. For certain, those can be great recipes, but they carry greater risk, and if you don’t pull them off, you’re left with a beer you won’t like.
Take equal parts of 2-row and Pilsner malt, about 3 lb (1.4 kg) of each. That will give you some hints of honey and corn and grain, but not much else. To that we’re going to add 1 lb (454 g) of flaked rice (or the appropriate equivalent in rice syrup), which will tack on a few more points of gravity and (I honestly don’t know if this is for real or just in my head) a slight “snappy” flavor in the finished beer. Your gravity (at 72 percent efficiency) should net out to about 1.038, yielding about 3.7 percent ABV. Right on target.
To this add 10 IBUs of any low-alpha hop at the top of the boil. I look for my weakest hop (currently a 2.4 percent AA Hallertau Mittelfruh). For one thing, this allows me to more accurately dial in the IBUs, but for another I’m 100 percent positive that the plant material itself adds a “beer-y” flavor that might be missed if I just used a miniscule addition of Magnum.
Then, for yeast, go with White Labs WLP001 California Ale Yeast. “But that’s not a lager yeast!” I know. But the guidelines give us some wiggle room on fermentation characteristics, and I want you to flog those for all they’re worth (which isn’t much, but it doesn’t take much!). WLP001 imparts trace fermentation flavors that we can use to build in a touch of additional flavor, even within these tight parameters.
Process
You’re going to want to add some chloride to your mash water, so a bit of calcium chloride is appropriate here (depending on your water profile). That will round off your malt flavors, which means even if they’re a little higher than par (which, with that Pils malt, they might very well be), they don’t come across as overtly “grainy.” Mash at your best-attenuating temperature or temperatures—a step mash isn’t a bad idea here—to ensure lots of good, fermentable alpha-amylase activity. Having said that, I just do my usual 152°F (67°C) and have no problems.
Boil and pitch are nothing special. Ferment at 60°F (15°C) for about a week, then raise the temperature to 68°F (20°C) or so. You want to ensure a good, full fermentation with no real by-products left behind (some DMS is okay but not really desirable). After you see there’s no activity in the airlock, leave it be for another 3–4 days and then cold crash it to help clarify.
After that, carbonate it up to 2.5 volumes to help fill out the mouthfeel, and you’re good to go! Don’t short the CO2 here—you want that bit of carbonic bite as well as the additional mouthfeel that you’re not getting from character malts and long-chain sugars and dextrines.
IN CLOSING
I know some of you are still skeptical, and that’s fine. Do this for me, though: brew this beer, and then taste it against your favorite (and least favorite) mass-production lite lager. You’ll notice the difference immediately, I can almost guarantee, and I think you’ll also find that you really, really like yours, even without the comparison. Enjoy!
Fermentation is where beer is made. In Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®’s online course How to Manage Your Fermentation for Better Beer, Josh Weikert covers fermentation temperature, yeast pitching rates, and everything else you need to know about managing fermentation. Sign up today and put yourself on the road to brewing better beer.