Crisp, clean, and transparent, the pilsner is a beer style often used to gauge a brewer’s skill. Its simple recipe and light body, as well as the German purity laws (Reinheitsgebot) under which pilsner was historically governed, help make any brewing flaws immediately apparent. Recent scholarship has discounted the often-told story that the brewer responsible for Czech-style, or Bohemian, pilsner smuggled lager yeast out of his native Bavaria to the precursor of Urquell Brewery in Plzen (in the then-Austrian Empire, now the Czech Republic). But one thing is certain—that innovative combination of pale malt, bittering hops, and cold fermenting lager yeast has resulted in a beer style that’s often used as a brewing benchmark.
Today, American brewers undoubtedly look to traditional German and Czech pilsners as models of the style. Although they’ve each created their own renditions, these American brewers agree that since their inception, clean and refreshing pilsners have stood the test of time.
Bavaria or Bust
Ro Guenzel is about as Germanophile as it gets. The Nebraska-born head brewer at Left Hand Brewing Company in Longmont, Colorado, was a former brewer at Kaltenberg Castle Brewery in Germany. “Working under Bavarian brewmasters, I had it beaten into my head that there’s Bavarian beer, and then there’s everything else,” he says.
So naturally, the Left Hand Polestar Pilsner is just about as German as an American beer can be. It starts with Longmont’s soft water, not far off in chemistry from that of Plzen, Czech, and is brewed with pilsner and 2-row malt, as well as Magnum, Mount Hood, and Sterling hops. Polestar is so German that it’s actually beating out German beers in international beer competitions. It has now received two awards (gold in 2012 and bronze in 2013) at the Brussels Beer Challenge.
It’s in the Water
“From a stylistic standpoint, I’m trying to make a Bohemian-style pilsner,” says Rick Allen, the owner and brewer at Heater Allen Brewing in McMinnville, Oregon. “I’m trying to replicate Pilsner Urquell as close as I possibly can.”
Pilsner Urquell, first brewed in 1842, is often called the world’s first golden beer. “I’m trying to be old school with it,” Allen says. “I want to use the [barley] in the original recipe—German or Czech malt. I want to use the appropriate hops—Saaz hops. And I want to start with really soft water.”
Allen was attracted to McMinnville because of its soft water. “We’re on the crest of the coastal range here and thirty miles from the Pacific Ocean. McMinnville is basically a giant basin to collect rain water,” he says, explaining that “soft water gives your beer a rounder flavor. It also allows you to use more hops without really noticing the bitterness as much. You can get depth of flavor and aroma without getting harsh bitterness.”
Creating Nuances With Hops
“Pilsner is a bit of a high-wire act,” says Bill Covaleski, the president and brewmaster at Victory Brewing Company in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. “It’s just you up there in the spotlight. It really showcases a brewer’s skill to make a nuanced pilsner.”
Victory has been showing off said skill since the launch of the Prima Pils in 1997, but not without a fight. “At that time, Miller Lite was advertising itself as a true pilsner beer,” says Covaleski. “We told our wholesalers that we wanted to make a pilsner, and basically everyone walked out of the room. But given our desire to have a crisp pilsner in our portfolio, we stubbornly marched on. That stubbornness has paid off.”
Now more than fifteen years old, the Prima Pils has won two Great American Beer Festival medals for German-Style Pilsner and become an industry template for the category. “It has an underlying, appealing malt base that you can put a lot of hop variety on top of,” says Covaleski. Prima is brewed with German pilsner malts and a full range of whole-flower, noble hops, including Tettnanger, Hallertau, and Spalt. “We like to use hops in their most natural form,” says Covaleski. “Whole-flower hops give a broader spectrum of hop nuances.”
Covaleski agrees with most brewers that soft water is the essence to pilsner brewing, but says, “I’ll put in the caveat that if you use an excess of Tettnanger hops, they can give a pilsner an iron-like minerality. That edge shouldn’t be coming from the water, but the absolute absence of minerality is not the goal to achieve.”
Prima is a beer brewed with the goal of refreshment, says Covaleski. “‘Prima’ is a term in German that means “excitingly good.” When you taste the Prima Pils, you’re going to have this exclamation of joy—Prima!
Equipment Counts
California’s Lagunitas Brewing Company only makes one lager amid its lineup of hop-forward ales: the Czech-style Pils. “It’s a true lager,” says Head Brewer Jeremy Marshall, “fermented for six weeks with one of the coldest fermentations I’ve heard of.”
It might be a true lager, but the Lagunitas Pils isn’t exactly true-to-style for a Czech pilsner. It’s brewed not with European malt, but instead with 2-row malt from Canada. It’s hopped not with German hops, but instead with American hops of German lineage. And then there’s the mystery yeast. “I can’t say what yeast we’re using, but we’re probably the only brewery making pilsner with it,” Marshall says. “It’s a lager yeast, but it’s not known for pilsner.”
When Lagunitas opened, its brew system was English with an infusion-style mash tun. Since then, Lagunitas has purchased brew systems from Germany. “One thing we noticed when we jumped brewhouses is that the Lagunitas Pils tasted a lot better,” Marshall remembers. “It got a lot more lager-y,” he jokes. He can’t quite put his finger on why, but he swears the difference is in the brew system. All of the ingredients—water, yeast, cellaring practices, and fermentors—were the same, he says. “For some reason, a German brewhouse seems to make pretty good lager.”
Anything But Yellow, Fizzy Lager
The Northern Pilsner from Sudwerk Brewery in Davis, California, is a North-Germany-meets-West-Coast take on pilsner, says Lead Brewer Mike Hutson. “From what I’ve read, if you’re traveling from south to north in Germany, the pilsners get more bitter as you go up.” Accordingly, the Northern Pilsner comes in at 35 IBUs. “To someone who doesn’t drink IPAs all day, whose palate isn’t completely shot,” Hutson jokes about West Coast hopheads, “it’s a pretty bitter beer.”
The bitterness of the Northern Pilsner comes from German Hallertau hops for authenticity, Perle hops for bittering, Tradition hops for finishing, and Tettnanger hops added in the whirlpool for aroma. “These aren’t exactly sexy hops,” says Hutson. “They’re just Grandpa hops.”
Since opening in 1989, Sudwerk has been a Bavarian-focused brewery. When America abandoned lagers for hoppy, experimental ales, Sudwerk kept on brewing its core lineup of German-style beers, pilsner included.
“Pilsner gets lumped into the light, fizzy, industrial beer category. All lagers are,” Hutson says. “For a long time, if a beer said ‘lager,’ people walked right past it. We have well-educated beer drinkers nowadays. They haven’t necessarily gotten hops out of their system, but they’ve seen a broad spectrum of what beer can be, and they’re coming back around.”
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Edited 5/20/2015 to correct historical inaccuracies in the opening paragraph.