By Spence Porter

I’ve got some bad news: many of you, maybe even most of you, have never tasted a beer good enough to be called mediocre, much less a really fabulous beer. Worse yet, you’ve probably never even heard of the good stuff. But the good news is that great beers are out there, and, every now and then, we’ll play hooky on wine in this column and talk about beer. Let’s start with a look at a few of the classic lager styles.
The international craze for lagers started at the beginning of the 19th century, when new lager beers swept through Germany and Central Europe and beyond, completely displacing the older ale styles. Today, lagers are easily the world’s most popular beers. Indeed, for most Americans, lager is beer. At a tasting I organized a few years ago at which I featured classic ales, one person actually complained to me, “You said this was a beer tasting—but these are ales!”

Well, all beers can be divided into two basic categories: top-fermented and (surprise!) bottom-fermented. Top-fermented beers (ales) include all of the oldest styles of beer, and are made with varieties of yeast that rise in a foamy mass to the top of the brewing vessel during fermentation. This fermentation takes place at chilly room temperatures, and usually requires only a few days. This results in beers that have hints of fruit in their flavors, often a faintly citrus or apricot-like quality quite unlike the smooth round bottom-fermented lagers—made at cooler temperatures, using yeasts that sink to the bottom of the brewing vessel. Top-fermenting yeasts are usual in Belgium, England, and among most American microbrewers. Just about everything else—this is an overstatement, but it gives you the right idea—is lager.

In addition to being made with bottom-fermenting yeasts, lagers go through a much slower fermentation than ales, usually several weeks rather than days, and at lower temperatures, typically around 45° F. Then they’re stored at around 32° F to allow them to mature. This maturation period, during which the beer achieves its final flavor and carbonation, can range from as little as a few weeks (in tasteless mass-produced beers) to as much as almost a year, with one or two months (and more) being typical of most really good lager beers. This period of maturing at cold temperatures takes place in something that the Germans call a “lager” (storehouse), which is how the beers got that name.

Lagers are a much more recent style of beer than ales, although it’s not easy to say exactly when the two styles became clearly different. As early as the 1400s, Bavarian brewers were storing their beers (ales, of course, at that time) in cold Alpine caves, simply as a way of keeping them from spoiling during the hot summer months. Soon they began not just storing but also brewing the beer in those same chilly caves, and the other characteristic aspects of lagers gradually evolved over time. Since bottom-fermenting yeasts give the best results at these lower temperatures, brewers gradually began to develop their own house strains of (more or less) bottom-fermenting yeasts by a process of trial and error, saving starters from the most successful batches. Beginning around 1810, various individuals in the Munich area started trying to put bottom-fermentation on a more systematic basis. Around 1840, two factors led to a major beer breakthrough: first, the modern bottom-fermenting yeast strains that produce the beers best suited to lagering began to be readily available (although they were not scientifically isolated and made available in a really pure form until 1883); and, second, early methods of artificial refrigeration, essential if people who didn’t have a cave handy wanted to achieve the cool bottom-fermentation temperatures, were also becoming possible. Together, these factors led to an explosion of experimentation with the possibilities of lager beers. So modern lager beers, the sort we drink today, came into being only in the last century and a half.

Compared with ales, lagers show a narrower range of flavors. But although lagers lack the euphoric complexity of the great ales, the great lagers have a seductively rich velvety smoothness that is all their own.

Lagers should be served slightly cooler than ales, between 45° and 50° F, which subjectively should seem quite cool, but still not cold. If you’re trying to get this right at home, an hour and three quarters or two hours in the refrigerator should put you pretty close. Beer should never be served at temperatures that seem “cold”!

Why does serving temperature matter?
Do an experiment sometime soon. Take three bottles of a really great beer like one of the beers in this column—but it should be three bottles of exactly the same beer. Taste one at room temperature. You’ll get a lot of complexity, but the flavors will seem blurry and bloated and out of balance, sort of icky. Next taste one that’s been refrigerated about an hour and three quarters. You’ll find the flavors have snapped into clear focus, everything beautifully balanced. Finally, taste one that’s been really “well chilled”. All of those subtly interacting flavors you’ve been tasting will have vanished. You’ll get the overall style, but every bit of liveliness and complexity will have disappeared.

When a beer is “well chilled”, there is simply no difference between a great beer and a mediocre beer in the same style!

Now, I’m going to be talking about various beer styles, but there’s an element of artificiality to this. Until recently, beer was not really an intellectually respectable subject (indeed it may not be quite respectable even now!) and so the whole concept of “beer styles” is relatively new. The great brewers of the past didn’t say, “I think I’ll make a beer in such and such a style.” They just tried to make the most amazing beers they could make in the context of local traditions. Still, as we explore the beers, we can see that there are groups of beers that have various qualities in common. But many of the great beers lie on the boundaries where one style blurs into another, making the classifications somewhat arbitrary.

I recently organized a tasting in New York, exploring some of the classic lager styles—Dunkel, Vienna/Oktoberfest/Märzen, Rauchbier, Bock, and Helles Dubbelbock.

DUNKELS

Dark beers are in general the oldest styles of beer, and dark lagers (known in Germany as dunkel beers) are the oldest style of lager. There are many different regional variations on the style.

A FRANCONIAN DUNKEL

1. Mönchshof Schwarzbier (Kulmbach, Franconia, Germany)
You’ll notice, half of the beers I’m discussing here come from Franconia, and that’s not an accident! Of all the sections of Germany, Franconia is the region with the largest ratio of breweries to people, and it has the most diverse and even idiosyncratic range of styles. The Franconian town of Kulmbach has its own style of dark beer, so dark that they call it a Schwarzbier (black beer).
Monks were brewing a dark beer in Kulmbach as far back as 1349, and the Mönchshof brewery refers to that in its name. Mönchshof specializes in older traditional beer styles. This beer is 4.9% alcohol by volume. It’s more delicate and complex in flavor than you’d expect from its extremely dark color.

A BAVARIAN DUNKEL

2. Klosterbrauerei Ettal Dunkel (Bavaria, Germany)
The Bavarian dunkel style is not quite as dark as the Franconian style. 900 meters above sea level in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, Ettal is a Benedictine monastery founded in 1330, and, since 1609, the monastery has in part supported itself by its brewery. The brewery continues to be owned and managed by the monastery today, although the monks no longer actually make the beer themselves. This Bavarian dunkel has 5.0% alcohol by volume. A lovely rich beer with a wonderful malty sweetness.

VIENNA, MÄRZEN, AND OKTOBERFEST BEERS

This is a wonderful example of how confusing the question of “style” can be! Although attempts have sometimes been made to distinguish between them, these three historically related styles overlap so much that it is virtually impossible to be sure which style you’re tasting unless someone tells you in advance. And at the same time, the range of variation within these “styles” is so wide, that the whole concept of “style” becomes more than a little questionable! With that disclaimer, though, there’s still a lot we can say.

The early lagers were all extremely dark beers—something like the dunkel beers we just discussed. But in 1841, a Viennese brewer named Anton Dreher introduced a much lighter beer, a reddish amber malty lager that became the rage of Vienna.

Malty
Okay, what do we mean by “malty”? Beer is made from water, hops, yeast, and malt, which is dried sprouted grain, usually barley. A “malty” beer will have a sweetish quality in its flavor, rather like the flavor of malted milk. Malted milk is indeed flavored with malt.

At that time, in Bavaria, there was a type of dark beer called Märzen, traditionally be brewed in March and then laid down in a cool cave (or other cool place) to provide a supply of beer for the hot summer months in which high temperatures made brewing impossible. The last of the beer would traditionally be drunk toward the end of October at the Oktoberfest, a festival that celebrated the new harvest. (Of course, these days the new harvest is pretty much forgotten, and Oktoberfest is mainly about beer!)

Well, soon after Dreher introduced his beer in Vienna, Gabriel Sedlmayr, of Munich’s Spaten brewery, learned about Dreher’s beer and decided to brew a new Märzen in the new Vienna style. This became so popular that the older Oktoberfest style disappeared, and, for a long time, this Bavarian variation of the Vienna style became the new standard Oktoberfest beer.

However, stories about beer are never that simple, and the style continued to change. Today, that amber Oktoberfest style is primarily an export beer shipped off to America, and the beers actually served in Bavaria at the Oktoberfest are merely slightly stronger versions of the standard pale Bavarian lager style!

Similarly, the “Vienna” style is pretty much extinct in Vienna, lingering on primarily in places like the Netherlands, the United States, and Mexico. Yes, Mexico. When Maximilian arrived in Mexico in 1864, Austrian beers came with him, and those dark Mexican beers are the descendants of beer styles brought in from Austria during the Emperor Maximilian’s short sad reign.

3. Mahr’s Jubelfest (Bamberg, Franconia, Germany)
This is an example of what the old early nineteenth century Oktoberfest beers may have been like (perhaps? probably? nobody really knows!) before the Vienna style arrived. Bamberg has a population of 70,000 people and nine breweries! Mahr’s tiny family-owned gasthaus and artisinal brewery in Bamberg dates from 1670. This beer was created by the head brewer at Mahr’s and is brewed just once a year as a birthday present for his father, the owner and former head brewer. The beer has 4.9% alcohol by volume. A really enjoyable rich dark beer.

4. Smuttynose Portsmouth Lager (Portsmouth, New Hampshire)
Peter Egelston was a high school teacher in Brooklyn, when in 1986 he moved to Massachusetts to join his sister in founding a brewpub. A second brewpub followed in 1991 in New Hampshire. Finally, in 1994, he started the Smuttynose Brewing Company, named after an island near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Today, Smuttynose is one of the best breweries in the northeast, and their Smuttynose Portsmouth Lager is one of the best Vienna style beers around. The beer has 4.5% alcohol by volume. American beers in this style are typically more intensely hopped than their European counterparts, and this is no exception. So you can think of this as a Vienna style beer with a distinct American accent.

Hops
Hops are dried flowers that give beer its characteristic bitter flavor, balancing the sweetness of the malt flavors.

5. Christoffel Robertus (Roermund, Limburg, The Netherlands)
The St Christoffel brewery was founded in 1986 by Leon Brand, who was born into a large Dutch brewing family. The brewery is named after the patron saint of the town in which it’s located. It’s a very small brewery making fanatic perfectionist beers. This is an unfiltered beer, so you’ll see some haziness. It has 6.0%
alcohol by volume. Really complex and interesting.

RAUCHBIER (SMOKED BEER)

Beer is made from malt, and malt is any dried sprouted grain, usually barley. The simplest way of drying the malt is drying it over a fire, and, until the mid 1700s, which counts as relatively recently in beer history, all beers used to have at least a slightly smoky taste because of this. As modern drying methods were developed, most brewers were delighted to get rid of the taste of smoke, but a handful of beers are still made with malt that has been dried the old way. Not surprisingly, many of these beers are made in Franconia.

6. Spezial Rauchbier (Bamberg, Franconia, Germany)
Once again we return to Bamberg, this time to the small Christian Merz Spezial brewpub, founded in 1536. Spezial’s brewery is in the courtyard behind the tavern, and has its own maltings where barley malt is smoked over beachwood fires. This beer, which has 5.0% alcohol by volume, is made from 40% smoked malt and 60% unsmoked barley malt. This is a delicately and subtly smoked beer—quite different from the next one!

7. Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen (Bamberg, Franconia, Germany)
The Schlenkerla tavern in the center of Bamberg was founded in 1678. For five generations, it has been owned by the Trum family. The pub’s brewery and maltings (a place where malt is made) are in a nearby residential neighborhood. It is, by the way, very unusual for a brewery to own its own maltings. Most breweries buy their malt from firms that specialize in the malting process. This beer is made from 100% beachwood smoked malt, and has 5.4% alcohol by volume. It is lagered (matured) in hillside caves near the brewery, caves that have been used by local brewers for hundreds of years. The result is an intensely, even overwhelmingly smoky beer. Personally, I wouldn’t want to drink it too often, but as an every now and then experience it’s wonderful fun!

BOCK BEERS

Although you’ll often see the word “bock” explained as coming from name of the town Einbeck, this is merely a conjecture and there is really no evidence as to why bock is “bock”. But, whatever the origin of the name, bock beer is a very malty and unusually strong (by “strong” we mean high in alcohol) beer, typically somewhere around 6% alcohol by volume. There are also dobbelbocks, with even higher levels of alcohol. Most bock beers are fairly dark, but there are exceptions. The style goes back at least to the 1600s, when, of course, a bock would have been a strong ale rather than the strong lager it is today.

A REGULAR BOCK

8. Mahr’s Bock (Bamberg, Franconia, Germany)
This is another beer from Bamberg’s tiny Mahr’s brewpub, founded in 1670. This unpasteurized beer is rather pale and light for a bock. It’s an amazingly complex and fascinating beer, and it was probably my own personal favorite of all the beers in my New York tasting. This beer has 6.0% alcohol by volume.

A PALE DOBBELBOCK FROM BROOKLYN

9. Brooklyn Brewery Blond Bock (Brooklyn, New York)
I probably shouldn’t even tell you about this beer, because you probably won’t be able to find it. But it’s so good, I can’t resist mentioning it! And besides, it will make you feel jealous of me.

Brooklyn Brewery was founded in 1987 by Steve Hindy, who was a Mideast correspondent for the Associated Press and later assistant foreign editor for Newsday before finding his true calling, and by Tom Potter, who at the time was a banker. In 1996 they reached a major milestone when they opened their own brewing facility in Brooklyn. Garrett Oliver, their brewmaster, was office manager of a law firm in his previous life. Earlier this year, Garrett brewed this beer in the rare German helles dobbelbock style, inspired by a beer he tasted years ago at the small St Jacobus brewery outside of Munich. The hops come from Germany, the malt is from Bamberg, and even the yeast is a special strain from Bavaria. Since it is a double bock, the alcohol level is high by beer standards, 7.7% by volume.

Only one batch of this beer was brewed, and it is no longer commercially available. But Garrett very generously agreed to make a small amount from his own private stock for my New York tasting. I’m glad he did! If you ever hear that Brooklyn is brewing this one again, make a point of tasting it!

Spence Porter is wine consultant who teaches wine tasting, leads wine seminars and dinners, and advises on wine purchases, as well as on the planning and maintenance of large wine collections. For more than a decade, he has organized and led the wine and beer education programs at the Harvard Club of New York City. He is also an internationally known playwright, whose most recent productions include Francesca in Leiden, The Netherlands, and The Woman from the Sea in New York City.

For more information about his plays, visit Spence Porter's website at http://www.SpencePorter.com

Images courtesy Corbis