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.