Q: When is a lager not a lager?A: When its Euro fizz

Do you know what a lager is?  A lot of people- too many - would reply that it’s a cold pale beer. Well that’s not true, but as there are plenty of cold pale beers around describing themselves as lagers, drinkers can be forgiven for thinking that’s what the lager style is about.
These cold pale ones, it could be a description for the living dead, are made by the mega-international brewers. Designed to be all things to all men, and women, they inevitably become blander and blander with each passing year. Some beer experts claim that in the search for the Holy Grail of ultimate blandness their taste is actually converging to a point where their drinkers will hardly be able to discern one from another. In other words they all become Euro- Fizz.
Real craft brewed lager, like Budweiser Budvar, isn’t like that at all. In fact craft brewed lagers represent one of the world’s great beer styles and deserve as much respect as, say, one of England’s great cask ales.  So what is it that makes real lager as good as but different from other styles?  In German the word means a place for keeping things. In  brewing terms “lagering”  means the process whereby beer, following fermentation, is stored at low temperatures to mature and to allow yeast and protein to settle, leaving a clear liquid behind. At the Budweiser Budvar brewery this is a completely natural process involving not less than 90 days at no more than 9º C.  
            Not only is Budvar’s fermentation process natural, all the ingredients used in its brewing are as well. Whole Saaz hops, female and virgin, barley malt from Moravia, spring water from an ice age aquifer located 300 metres under the brewery and the same strain of yeast that was used for the first brew in 1895 all come together to make a product that many claim is the world’s finest lager conditioned beer.
           Another quality of Budvar, and indeed of any real lager beer, is that it is brewed only in one place and never, never under licence.
            Typical Euro-fizz on the other hand ticks niether of these boxes. More often than not it is brewed under licence so there are inevitable inconsistencies in quality and style. For commercial reasons the ingredients used are often not of the best quality and in some cases are substitutes for the real thing. For instance hop extracts rather than whole hops are frequently used and water is from the mains rather than a pure spring. Most importantly, again for commercial reasons, the lagering period is also drastically shortened by using higher temperatures during this period.
             So what?  Well the answer is a beer that doesn’t taste half as good as the craft brewed product. If you go on a tour of the Budvar brewery you will be able to taste Budvar from the lagering tanks at one, two and three months and you will soon find out how the beer improves with age. It ends up after 90 days with a mellow, clean, honey and vanilla character that is totally absent at one or two months. Eurofizz on the other hand has no character at all. We rest our case, and our keg. (ends)