When was lager first introduced

Beer ran into the ditches and finally into the nearby Radbuza River. The brewers had decided that the ale had become undrinkable. Even the breweries of Plzen with over years of brewing experience, had contamination issues to contend with.

Ales were prone to spoilage either by wild yeasts or bacteria. This time, though, would be different. The brewers gathered after watching their work run down the street and decided to take drastic measures so this would not happen again. By this time, brewers in Bohemia and across Europe had learned the importance of yeast in the brewing process. There was some debate about whether fermentation was a living process or the by-product of the death of yeast.

There was, however, no question that this mysterious little life form had a big effect on the character of a beer. They hired Josef Groll, a Bavarian brewer, to come to Plzen and teach them the German lagering method of brewing. Legend holds that in a monk smuggled some of the precious lager yeast out of Bavaria. Whether this is the case or not, when Groll arrived in Plzen there was a supply of lager yeast available.

He also found a nearby source of excellent Saaz hops , a Noble variety that he would have been familiar with in Germany. The brewers of Plzen also had a well that supplied very soft water. With caverns carved for lagering in the local sandstone, the stage was set for lager brewing.

Using light barley that was only partially malted and none of the roasted or smoked barley that the German brewers were using, Groll added generous portions of the fragrant Saaz hops to his brew. On October 5, , he and the other brewers of Plzen gathered for their first taste of the new beer. When they tapped the cask, they saw a beer unlike any other that they or anyone else in the world had seen. The color of straw, it was light and clear. There is proof for the assessment see comment on the 22nd November that yeast was well known: There are court records from the city of Munich from 15th century, in which brewers and bakers fought over who had the yeast monopoly, i.

It is pronounced like the well known name Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy, and yes: he is of German ancestry and therefore probably came from a family of yeast handling craft men. Hefner remains a common name in Franconia today. The Hefner's job was to harvest the yeast at the end of fermentation and prepare it for the next batch.

The left over beer in the yeast was pressed out and sold as affordable beer to poor people. Yeast is a living organism, and according to the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin, the fittest i.

The first batch of beer started with a mix of yeast strains and the strain that coped best with rock cellar environment i. The yeaster harvested this yeast mix at the end of fermentation, and added it to the next batch of beer.

The well adapted yeast had a head start since it was larger by proportion already due to the stronger growth in the first batch and hence outgrew the competing yeast strains even further.

This process happened in each batch over and over again, for months, years, decades and even for centuries. So quite possibly Franconian breweries were breeding Lager yeasts at least for the last years, and since Franconia and Bohemia today Czech republic are neighbouring areas and culturally very similar, it can be assumed that Bohemians did the same. Both the Franconian Lager which Schlenkerla Smoked Beer is a special version of and Czech Pilsener are representatives of these old beer styles.

With the invention of artifical cooling this fermenting technique became available everywhere and anytime, and so Lagers and Pilseners left their "birth ground" with their yeast and conquered the brewing world.

They filled up the cellars with ice from lakes nearby, to keep the beer cool during the summertime. As the development of refrigeration grew, as did the lager. Now it was suddenly easier to store the beer cool, and it was easier to brew the beer year-round. The first large-scale refrigerated lagering tanks were developed for Gabriel Sedelmayr Spaten Brewery in Munchin by Carl von Linde in The yeast used in lager fermentation Saccharomyces pastorianus is a bottom-fermented lager yeast.

This kind of yeast can ferment at a lower temperature than the top-fermenting ale yeast. By letting the beer ferment and mature at a lower temperature, you reach a cleaner flavor profile. This extended cold lagering is also resulting in longer shelf life of the lager beer.

Lager yeast works slowly, but they are very thorough. They consume a wider variety of sugars than ale yeasts do. This helps produce that characteristic dry finish. As mentioned, Saccharomyces pastorianus is the yeast used in lager beer. This yeast has a complicated genome and appears to be the result of hybridization of two pure species in the Saccharomyces species complex. There are various beer types, and they are brewed in different ways which also mean, that they have different timelines.