It’s hard to predict what beer judges are going to love. Once upon a time, I set out to make a great Czech-style pilsner—and I failed, consistently. What came out of that, however, is a fantastic beer for another category. That beer always outperformed like crazy when I dropped it into the Pre-Prohibition Lager category. It got even better when I changed up the hops, dropping Saaz and swapping in some Crystal. And that’s the story of how this became one of my best-scoring and most popular beers.
Style: This beer is meant to represent the kind of pale lagers that were brewed by the likes of fellow Philadelphian John Wagner, who may have brewed the first lager in the United States, in 1840. It’s not clear how dark his beer was, but brewers soon came to emulate the pale lagers coming from Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia. They eventually adopted American-grown adjuncts such as corn and rice to lighten the color and add sweetness—I don’t use them here, but you could—and they also used American-grown Noble-esque hops. The result must have been something kind of like German helles or Czech pale lager, but with added variability and flair.
Ingredients: This is a straightforward grist that reflects its origins as a Czech-style pils recipe. I go 50/50 Czech floor-malted pilsner and Maris Otter, aiming for a gravity of 1.050, plus a half-pound of Carapils. The base grains bring a pronounced yet soft grainy character with a hint of honey sweetness, while the dextrin malt adds basically no flavor but a rounded mouthfeel—which also buys us some slack for semi-aggressive hopping.
Strange as it may seem, this is a decidedly hoppy beer and probably always was. (For more about beers from this era, see “America’s Founding Lagers,” beerandbrewing.com.) Stick with your usual water profile—no need to soften, as you might for a Czech lager—and buy yourself a lot of Crystal hops. Crystal is perfect here: It has just the flavor we want—woody, rustic, herbal, with a touch of light fruit—relatively low cohumulone, and high beta-to-alpha-acid ratios. That means that this beer will maintain a finer bitterness for longer, even as the alpha acid–derived IBUs drop out.
And for yeast, I like the Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager here. It accentuates some rounded maltiness while keeping out of the hops’ way.
Process: The mash and boil here are pretty standard, but the fermentation requires some attention. Some will tell you to aim for a bit of fermentation character “because you can in this style.” So what? I can get a bit of fermentation character by under-pitching, under-aerating, or fermenting warmer—but that introduces risk, and it’s not worth it. In fact, ferment this beer a little colder than you usually would—I like a clean background to enjoy the best of the malt and hops. Start at 48°F (9°C) and slowly increase over a few days to about 52°F (11°C), then hold there until the completion—two to three weeks, to give it time to finish out completely.