Classic lagers fight for survival

Sometimes it's the small, simple words that cause the most problems. Take the word lager. Every week the MA reports, in both news and feature pages, on different aspects of lager, with new brands coming onto the market or old ones ­ such as Heineken and Castlemaine XXXX ­ dusted down and given a new lease of life. Lager accounts for 93% of all the beer drunk in the world. It has come a long way in a comparatively short time since the lagering of beer was developed on a commercial basis in the middle of the 19th century. But there is a great deal of confusion and lack of knowledge about lager. For a start, the term is hardly used in such countries as the Czech Republic and Germany, where the process was first developed: they call it beer. To them lagering is one stage in the brewing process. Lager is a German word meaning a camp, a warehouse or a storage place. Where beer is concerned, after primary fermentation, the liquid is stored or lagered at a low temperature just above freezing point. During that period, a slow secondary fermentation takes place, with the remaining malt sugars turned to alcohol by the action of yeast. The beer that emerges from the lager tanks has a clean, quenching and lightly-hopped character, quite different to the more robust aromas and flavours we expect from ale. The development of lagering in such major brewing centres as Munich in southern Germany, and Pilsen and Budweis in neighbouring Bohemia, was a response to the age-old problem of beer turning sour during the hot summer months. Brewers found that if they stored their beers in deep, icy caves in the Alps, the cold kept them free from infection. The brewers also noticed that fermentation was much slower as a result of the cold, and that the yeast sank to the bottom of vessels instead of forming a thick head on top of the liquid, as it does in traditional ale brewing. This explains the terms "bottom fermentation" and "top fermentation" where lager and ale are concerned. Once ice-making machines were invented in the 19th century, beer moved out of mountain caves and into deep cellars packed with ice beneath breweries. Beers would be stored or lagered for long periods. The famous strong Bock beers of Munich are lagered for between 10 and 12 weeks. The March, or Marzen, beers brewed in Munich in the spring are stored until the autumn and ritually tapped at Oktoberfest. The world's strongest beer, Samichlaus (14%), is lagered for nine months. The Czech Budweiser Budvar, with a comparatively modest strength of 5%, makes much of the fact that it is lagered for three months, probably the longest storage period in the world for a standard lager. Great lager brewers stress the point that if you use the finest raw materials ­ barley malt, the wonderfully aromatic hops from Germany, and the Czech Republic, pure soft water and carefully-cultivated strains of yeast ­ beer can only get better the longer you store it. Sadly but inevitably, crude commercialism has entered the world of classic lager brewing. Everywhere, there is a rush to make beer as quickly as possible. In the Czech Republic ear-lier this year I found, to my distress, that the sublime pale Kozel lager from the Velke Popovice brewery has had its storage time halved from 60 to 30 days. The brewery is now owned by SAB-Miller. In Finland and Russia, I found that two identical breweries, Synebrychoff in Helsinki and Vena in St Petersburg, have computer-controlled systems that enable total fermentation, primary and lagering to last no longer than 21 days. Synebrychoff is owned by Carlsberg, Vena by the BBH consortium owned by Carlsberg and Scottish & Newcastle. I have never visited any of the breweries owned by the American producers of Budweiser (is it something I said?), but the company has told me that fermentation lasts for 21 days and is sometimes reduced at times of peak demand. Camra was formed to save cask beer in Britain. We are fast approaching the time when beer lovers will need to set up a similar organisation to save classic lager beers from extinction. www.protzonbeer.com