Light Lagers              

 

Light Lagers are beer styles that largely evolved from the Pilsner beer style and share some common characteristics with them, including a pale color and clean finish. Though many beers and sources refer to Light Lagers as Pilsners, they are not stylistically the same. Light Lagers evolved as a response to the Pilsner style but the beers in this category differ from the Pilsners. 

 

Light American Lager

 

In 1967, the Rheingold Brewery (New York) and bio-chemist Joseph L. Owades created a beer called Gablinger's Diet Beer. Rheingold later gave the recipe to  Meister Brau of Chicago, who brewed it as Meister Brau Lite and eventually sold it to Miller who reformulated it and called it “Lite Beer from Miller.” Miller Lite eventually became the first mainstream Light American Lager.

 

Light American Lagers specifically avoid strong flavors and are designed to appeal to a very wide audience. They are low calorie and light in color and flavor. They are characterized also by their extensive use of adjuncts as fermentables (up to 40% rice or corn) and six row barley.

 

The extensive use of adjuncts as fermentables in Light American Lagers is how the lightness of flavor and body is achieved. The adjuncts provide fermentable sugars, but very little in the way of proteins that might add body or character.

 

Standard American Lager

 

Standard American Lagers are similar in formulation to Light American Lagers, but no effort is made to keep them intentionally low calorie. In most respects, they are the same as Light American Lagers in many ways, but they do utilize more malt and fermentables than the Light version, so gravity and alcohol contents are consequently higher.

 

Premium American Lager

 

Premium American Lagers are the height of the American Lager style category and achieve this status by utilizing the fewest, if any at all, of adjuncts. Some of the Premium beers can even be all-malt (no adjuncts).

 

Though the style evolved in America and the style name reflects that, this is a very popular style internationally and many imports to the US are Premium American Lagers.

 

Dortmunder Export

 

The Dortmunder Export styles originated in the Dortmund region of Germany, but is now getting rare in that area and is considered to be on the decline in Germany.

 

The Dortmunder Export is characterized by its overall balance between sweetness and hoppiness. Where the Pilsner style accentuates hops and the Munich Helles accentuates malt, the Dortmunder Export should be meticulously balanced.

 

Munich Helles Lager

 

The Munich Helles lager was created by the Spaten Brewery in 1895 to compete directly with the hugely popular Pilsner beers coming from Bohemia. The same brewer who devised the original Oktoberfest recipe for Spaten, Gabriel Sedlmayr.

 

Unlike the Pilsner beers, the Munich Helles style accents the flavor of Pilsner malt and not the hop flavors that

 

Cuisine

 

Light Lagers pair well with spicy foods as they are thirst quenching and refreshing. German foods, buttery cheeses and earthy cheeses also make great companions.