LAGER FRENZY!

Entries categorized as ‘Beer’

Letters from home to satisfy a brewer’s thirst

February 2, 2010 · Leave a Comment

J.C. Jacobsen's letters to his son reveal a wealth of technical brewing details

I’ve been digging into Carlsberg history again – more specifically the letters from J.C. Jacobsen to his son Carl. As a young man Carl was packed off to travel the breweries of Europe for four years as part of his apprenticeship in brewing. The letters published in Danish as Din hengivne Jacobsen (Your devoted Jacobsen) are a fascinating insight into not only the characters of J.C. and Carl, but also into the techniques and practices of brewing at the time (1866-1870).

On his sojourn, Carl gained access to some of the greatest breweries of the time – both on the continent and Great Britain. Zum Spaten, Weihen Stephan, William Younger, Allsopp, Bass, Ushers, Evershed, Barclay Perkins, Lovibonds, Truman and Whitbread all figure in the letters of the father to the son. Carl actually worked for some time in Wm. Youngers and Eversheds  Allsopp’sand had several interviews while in Burton with the noted brewing chemist Horace Brown

The letters illustrate Jacobsen’s thirst for brewing knowledge as he fires off letter after letter with questions about malting, mashing temperature, the cost and construction of pumps and corrugated iron, bottling and especially how English ales were brewed – Porter and Pale Ale in particular. His goal was to open a brewery for English-style beers to get a slice of the lucrative export market.

Some of his last letters in 1870 are with a desperate need for detail before Carl leaves Great Britain to return home:

Have you in Burton received reliable information about the degree of attenuation for Export Ale and Pale Ale in the larger breweries during the main fermentation and at the filling of casks? It is not necessary for me to call attention to how important it is to know the measurements one should achieve during fermentation.

Despite this demand for information about the brewing techniques used in Great Britain he never really got over his dislike of the taste of the beer. He writes about Bass:

Most of the beer types from Bass have, to my taste, far too much dry hopping. In some of the casks there was an unreasonable amount of hops. Is this necessary for its keeping abilities or is it only a matter of taste?

When Carl returned to Denmark he did in fact open a brewery for English styles, but was never convinced that it would take off at home. He preferred to export lager beer, which he considered excellent, despite his father’s worries that it wouldn’t travel well and damage his hard-won reputation.

Categories: Beer · Brewing · Brewing history · Carlsberg
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Lager carries the can for loutish behaviour

January 19, 2010 · Leave a Comment

On busy streets, in the subways below and amid the tight, after-work squeeze on commuter trains, a menacing, befuddled and reeling regiment is on the attack.

Its young members, emboldened by alcohol and loosely allied by behavior, are known as ”lager louts” and are being accused of sexual assault, harassment, disorderly conduct and other offenses. As they struggle to vanquish their morning-after haze, the British Government, police and local authorities are marshaling their forces to defeat them.

The Daily Mail even ran a campaign against rampaging rabits boozed up with lager. No, honest.

Bloody hell, sounds like the opening scene of ‘Dawn of the Dead’. But no, the above quote is from The New York Times, October 31 1988, the height of the ‘Lager lout’ panic of the late-eighties.

I’ve been looking at news stories from 1988 and 1989 and the birth of the lager lout phenomenon, and the bile and venom served up by newspapers – broadsheet and tabloid alike (when it used to make a difference) – is remarkable. Especially when several academic studies suggest that the link between crime and alcohol is not as clear cut as the tabloid journalists would have it.

Roger Birch, chairman of the Association of Chief Constables, is credited with adding fuel to the ‘Moral panic’ by announcing to the association’s annual conference that Britain’s police forces were now so undermanned that they were “losing control on the streets”.

The Tory government at the time were not slow to turn ‘Lager louts’ into the new scapegoats ahead of  that year’s Conservative conference with new laws on advertising that brought a (temporary) end to George the Hofmeister bear. The Labour Party were also vocal. It also marked the start of calls for video surveillance cameras in town centres and Coventry became the first UK city to ban drinking in public

The drinks industry made attempts to clear its name – a Gallup survey for Miller Lite revealed that the youth were not drinking as much as everyone assumed and bought on average a mere four cans of beer a week. Mind you if they were buying Miller Lite, perhaps the low number is understandable.

The real villains of course were the advertisers who were blamed for forcing the poor innocent drinkers to swap the good honest pint of real ale for lager “by the shameless creation of an in-crowd mentality which permeates almost all of the lager advertisements we see on television”, according to the Sunday Times.

Andrea Gillies, editor of the Camra’s Good Beer Guide at the time also weighed in, frothing slightly at the mouth. “Lager breweries and their advertising agents seem to be proving that sections of the British public will literally swallow anything. The most inferior, overpriced lager will sell well if it is marketed right – especially if it has got a foreign name.”

And added: “The reason for the image war is that most of them taste the same. But when it ends in violence in the streets, we need to look carefully at what the lager adverts are really trying to sell us. Who really cares what’s in the can, or who in the end will have to carry it?”

So as the UK politicians again turn their focus on beer in the form of binge drinking, you can look back nostalgically to the louts of the 1980s and fast forward to the future.

Categories: Beer · Lager
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Lager. Did we jump or were we pushed?

December 13, 2009 · 1 Comment

Lager-market-share-1960s

Lager's market share rose rapidly as brewers spent money on production capacity and advertising (Source: The Economist)

At the end of November 1969, the British Labour government generously allowed a price increase of  ‘not more than 2d a pint’ to the brewing industry. There was little rejoicing among brewers; first because they had asked for double and second because the 2d increase was split two to one in favour of the retailers.

The Prices and Incomes Board was the main instrument of the government’s prices and incomes policy to rein-in inflation, but it was also one of the factors that helped spur the growth of lager.

British brewers at the end of the sixties were growing and consolidating. By 1969 the cost of brewing and retailing a pint had risen by over 15%, according to The Economist. At the same, time while beer volumes had risen by round 1% to 2% a year, it wasn’t enough to cover the capital needs for an industry that was rationalising production, refurbishing pubs and expanding overseas.

Brewers were concentrating on cutting costs by brewing centrally, distributing nationally and backing this with massive advertising campaigns. The number of breweries in the UK had fallen from 6,200 independently owned and managed breweries to 200. But the consolidation of ownership meant that these breweries were managed by only 100 different companies.

Keg beer and lager fitted the centralisation plans of the breweries perfectly. They were both pasteurised and easier to brew than draught beer and were ideal for the new outlets, such as clubs, that didn’t have the dedicated facilities to handle hand-pulled beers. They were also ideal for canning, which was slowly replacing bottled beer.

Lager was big business

Many reasons  have been given for the spectacular growth of lager during the seventies and eighties: a change in taste for post-industrial office workers who couldn’t ‘handle’ draught beers, and a series of hot summers are the most popular. They include elements of truth, but underlying them all was that lager was good business for the brewers.

Why? Because they earned more money on lager (and keg) than on draught. During 1969, lager sales grew by 30%. Although they only took 5% of the entire market, a quick look at the Scottish market, where lager had its British stronghold, showed a 20% market share.

Prices per pint were higher than bitter by around 6d, and more was sold outside of the pubs and so the brewers were free to charge what they wanted.  Add to this a slightly lower excise duty and all the benefits of modern rationalised production and it isn’t hard to see why in the few years up to the end of the decade £20 million was spent on building facilities for lager alone and £3 million was spent on advertising keg, lager and canned beers.

At the same time, the number of draught beers was reduced, with The Economist commenting darkly that by the mid-70s it would be impossible to buy draught beer.

With the resources thrown at lager and keg by breweries in search of better profits (between 1966 and 1969 profits grew by only 17% compared with 40% for the rest of industry), is it any wonder that the UK became a nation of lager drinkers?

Categories: Advertising · Beer · Brewing history · Marketing · UK lager

Don’t drink and ride

October 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment

At the moment I’m digging through classic lager ads on the basis of a theory about how advertising of lager has gradually progressed from product quality and nutritional claims to more lifestyle-based, social affirmation. It was all going very nicely and then Lamot happened. A bloke in armour riding on a tiger panther. What on earth was all that about. I’d rather be Hemeling…

Categories: Advertising · Beer · Brands · Lager
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Classic 80s lager ad – Holsten Pils

October 12, 2009 · 1 Comment

1979 commercial for Holsten Pils Lager

In the late 19th Century Holsten Brauerei first began trading in the UK when they purchased a brewery in Wandsworth, London. Holsten Pils was first imported into the UK in 1952 thus creating the premium packaged lager market. In 1979 the first of many award winning TV ad campaigns was launched starring Donald Pleasence. In the mid-1980s Holsten became the UK’s number one selling premium packaged lager. (source: www.wikipedia.org)

Thanks to http://www.retrotvads.com/

Categories: Advertising · Beer · Imported lager

Rice in lager gets an image overhaul in the LA Times

October 3, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Uhhm, Ill have a nice cold glass of rat poison, please.

Uhhm, I'll have a nice cold glass of rat poison, please.

For years ‘industrial’ lager has ben ridiculed for adding rice and corn as adjuncts to provide extra sugar for fermenting. The beer purists locked into Reinheitsgebot have accused brewers of cheapening the brew, watering it down for commercial gain, and generally being evil. All-malt is the best seems to be the general opinion.

But this week there was a story in the LA Times that describes how some craft brewers are experimenting with rice and corn ales. The horror! Well, not really, the Times’ story is nicely balanced piece describing how rice can be used for giving flavour, rather than taking it away.

“Yes, rice gives beer a light body,” says Brian Dunn, owner and brewer at Great Divide Brewing Co. in Denver. In 2007, the brewery released Samurai, an unfiltered rice and barley ale, to retail outlets. “But it’s also crisp and refreshing, and has a little fruity character that really comes through.”

Also quoted is Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew, a book exploring the history of brewing in the US, who says  “Craft brewers treat rice almost as if it’s rat poison.”

According to Ogle, the anti-rice sentiment is traceable to the early craft brewing revival in the 1980s. “It was all about, ‘We’re only using four ingredients, we’re not like those industrial brewers making watered-down, cheap beer by using adjuncts like rice.’

“The mythology is that these giant beer makers began adding rice and corn to their beer after World War II to water it down, but that’s simply not true,” she adds.

The American brewing industry was built in the late 19th century by first-generation German American immigrants such as Adolphus Busch, Adolph Coors and Frederick Miller. Although these men, craft brewers themselves, initially re-created the full-bodied beers of their homeland, many Americans had not developed a taste for the malt-heavy style.

“They needed a domestic ingredient that would make the beers more effervescent, bubbly and lighter,” Ogle says. “Rice and corn did that — it was a desired flavor, not inexpensive filler.”

Categories: Beer · Brewing · Lager loathing · US lager · ingredients

The debt lager owes to Guinness

September 30, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Guinness led the consortium to launch Harp lager

Guinness led the consortium to launch Harp lager

Lager and ‘container draught’  (later developing the slightly catchier name of ‘keg’) were the two great opportunities for British brewers in the early 1960s. They had been the fastest growing elements of the British beer industry, but it was the creation of draught lager that finally gave lager the mass-market breakthrough it had attempted for nearly 100 years.

At the start of the decade, lager and draught each accounted for no more than 3% of the total beer market. Lager had been brewed on a regular basis in the UK since at least 1879 and draught had been developed by Watney Mann before the Second World War and developed after by Flowers’ under the ‘Keg’ brand name.

In 1950, slightly fewer than 100,000 barrels of lager were drunk, most of them imported. By 1959 and the introduction of Skol by Ind Coope, the total had risen to 500,000. By 1960, 550,000. During this time total beer consumption was stagnant and the brewers knew that if they couldn’t  shift total consumption, they would have to try and shift consumption patterns.

It was Harp, brewed by a consortium of four brewers headed by Guinness, that began the major shift in consumption away from cask-conditioned ales. Guinness began development of its new lager in the late 1950s with the purchase of The Great Northern Brewery in Dundalk. The German brewer, Dr. Herman Muendar, was not overly impressed by the brewery and described it as “like an alchemists’ kitchen”

Harp lager was first brewed in June 1960 and quickly saw success first in Ireland and then a year later in North West England and then national. By 1962 it was the second biggest brand – neck and neck with Carlsberg – but still behind Skol. It was brewed in the UK by Scottish & Newcastle, Mitchell & Butler and Courage.

Initially Harp lager was bottled and did reasonably well, but it was the launch of Harp on draught in 1965 that saw sales really take off. According to brewing historian Martyn Cornell Harp wasn’t the first keg lager, but it was the first one to solve the problem of overfrothing, helping lager elbow its way into the UK.

From the 2% share of the beer market in the early sixties, lager grew to just under 10% by 1971, topping 50% by 1989. Ironically, this was also the year that Harp dropped out of the Top 10 beer brands in the UK. Just 10 years later, seven of the top ten beers in the UK were lagers.

Categories: Beer · Brands · Brewing history · Harp · Lager · UK lager

Light in more ways than one – US lager’s missing ingredients

September 16, 2009 · 1 Comment

Beer and Philosophy. Two subjects that go together surprisingly well. Or not surprising really if you’ve ever spent an afternoon or an evening putting the world to rights over a beer.

The two subjects also go surprisingly well together in a book of the same name, Beer and Philosophy: The  unexamined beer isn’t worth drinking, edited by Steven D. Hales.

What has this to do with lager I can hear you asking? Well, if philosophy is all about the examination of our human lives and how we experience them, then questions such as ‘How  on earth can people brew Budweiser with a straight face’ are extremely relevant. And Beer and Philosophy doesn’t disappoint, with some interesting background on what goes into US lager – or perhaps that should be what doesn’t.

What makes beer good or not good is one of the themes and crops up repeatedly in the book. Is a beer good because I like it, or do I like it because it is good? Also, it questions what makes a beer good.

Quality in, quality out

The chapter entitled ‘Quality, Schmality’ looks at ‘goodness’ by considering what goes into  US lagers in terms of the type and quality of malt and the amount of adjuncts and hops. And the authors reproduce an interesting table that shows that since 1915, the amount of fermentable material has fallen consistently. The amount of hops in US beer fell by 60% from 1935 o 1990. The table by the way comes from a paper entitled The all-American beer: a case of inferior standard (taste) prevailing?

Source: Choi and Stack (2005)

Source: Choi and Stack (2005)


Categories: Beer · Brewing · Brewing history · Lager · US lager · ingredients
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Growing support for UK lager

September 8, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Just to underline the recent number of posts about support for lager as a style (rather than a term of abuse) Larry Nelson, the editor of Brewers’ Guardian gave me a nudge that they are running a news story in the September issue about an organisation called Lagers of the British Isles (LOBI).

Headed by Mike Knight, sales manager of Freedom Brewery, one of a handful of micros that exclusively brew lagers, LOBI is a producer’s organisation rather than a consumer movement.

LOBI’s initial roll numbers just six brewers; its mission statement calls on members to brew unpasteurised lager with a minimum of six weeks maturation. It also wants members to use “honest ingredients” – specifically prohibiting the additions of rice or maize in the grist.

But, importantly, the organisation sees itself as championing “British” lager. Knight explains, “I think it’s still a perception over here that lager has to come from Germany or the Czech Republic or even America. If you set up a brewery over here you do ale, that’s the conventional wisdom. Ale equals British; lager equals German or Czech.”

There’s already a website at www.lobi.org.uk with a only a limited amount of information so far, but it looks like an encouraging development.

Categories: Beer · Lager · UK lager
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More lager lovin’ not loathin’

August 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Beer: Lager worth it | sctimes.com | St. Cloud Times

Search & Distill: Not All Blondes Are Dumb

More votes for lager. Has there has been an upswing in the number of people writing positively about lager or am I just biased :-)

Categories: Beer · Lager · US lager