A casual beer fan could be forgiven for imagining that the best place to find a style called “Vienna lager” would be—well, Vienna. Unlike some other beers named for their hometowns—Berliner weisse, Grodziskie—Vienna lagers are not especially rare. In fact, one of the best-selling American beers, Sam Adams Boston Lager, fits broadly within the style.
Nor was Vienna lager a footnote in the annals of brewing. Quite the opposite: One of the world’s first pale lagers, it was for decades spoken of in hushed tones as “liquid amber” and “fire in the glass.” The man who developed it, Anton Dreher, did so by the use of a pale malt that also bears the city’s name—still common today in brewing. He would go on to build one of the largest and most technologically advanced breweries in the world. For decades it was one of the most popular beers in the world.
But here two ironies emerge.