Comments on: Lager, lager, lager

By: The Beer Nut

The Beer Nut — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:15:27 +0000

The Hilden Brewery holds a festival every August which is exactly this: lots of lovely beer from near and far, both keg and cask — whichever the brewer thinks will show each particular beer off best. It’s a great day out.

By: andy mogg

andy mogg — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:16:24 +0000

Like everyone says good beer is good beer, a few the festivals i’ve been to have sold some form of carling/stella/becks so if they are happy to sell that why not sell kegged beer? it just doesnt make sense!

By: Woolpack Dave

Woolpack Dave — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:06:31 +0000

Top stuff. Good beer is good beer. I’d love to go to the festival you are talking about.

By: Pete Brissenden

Pete Brissenden — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:44:27 +0000

Mark from Pencil and Spoon and I were chatting about this at the weekend. I am on the whole not a massive fan potholing beers into categories like ‘real ale’,lager or kegged. Good beer is good beer, end of story, no matter how it is dispensed or how it is made.

The sooner beer festivals start springing up that serve good beer regardless of style or method of dispention the better.

By: Barry M

Barry M — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:27:21 +0000

Yep! Take a trip to Franken, and you’ll get lager beers served by gravity from a cask. Take a trip to Dusseldorf and pop into an altbier brewery, and you’ll get the same. I can even order a 15 litre cask of Uerige from my local drink market. “But that’s an ale”, some people cry. Well, it’s top fermented, but then it’s lagered. So it’s an Obergaerige Lagerbier. Huh?

I think the common view of lager in the UK and Ireland is of kegged fizzy yellow stuff. It’s not though. It’s simply been fermented with a yeast that likes it cooler, lazes about at the bottom, and benefits from being cold conditioned (lagered) to make it crisp and clean. The Dusseldorf altbier breweries do it, hell, my local brewery Pinkus Muller does it for months with their top-fermented Alt. That’s the only difference. It could be the same basic ingredients. Dispense is an entirely different question.

Personally I couldn’t give a crap about the dispense or fermentation type as long as it tastes good. Some are better on cask, some are better from a keg under pressure, and some I prefer in a bottle.

Prost!