What the most important thing in a lager/'lager like' beer

[delboy]

Ok so i know that a true lager has to have a bottom fermenting lager yeast and that anything else is a golden ale.
Putting aside the style guide stuff what would you say is the single most important element of what actually constitues a lager like beer.
Reason i ask is that i have previously made a lager (albeit with steam beer yeast) with quite a lot of muncih and vienna malts that all my beer drinking non-homebrewing buddies assumed was ale and the golden ales i have produced using light malts have all been excepted as lager.

[delboy]

Its supposed to read grist/malts just in case people are unfamiliar with the term grist.

[David Edge]

Ok so i know that a true lager has to have a bottom fermenting lager yeast and that anything else is a golden ale.

That's probably the most common current English usage, but I wouldn't count on everyone else agreeing. One of Graham Wheeler's most entertaining rants is on that very topic. 'Lagern' means to store and 'lagering' is cold conditioning; hence many justifiably regard Koelsch as a lager. 99% of homebrew is brewed with bottom working yeast - few people claim it's lager.

I'd say it is the absence of esters (fruity notes) than makes it taste like a lager. That's why many prize-winning homebrew 'lagers' are brewed with Nottingham, a bit on the cold side.

[oblivious]

Larger yeast can use melibiose where as ale yeast cant; it’s a method of selection and identification of the two strains. Because they can use this sugar it has been suggest that it contributes to the crisp taste of a lager.

May people have made pseudo lager swith US-05 at cooler fermentation temps

[Gurgeh]

Lager malt has more DMS precursors, hence more DMS, which gives that characteristic cabbage-like whiff of a lager.

[David Edge]

Larger yeast can use melibiose ... it has been suggest that it contributes to the crisp taste of a lager.

And refuted by one informed source!
http://hbd.org/hbd/archive/5133.html#5133-2

[oblivious]

I did say supposed!

[spearmint-wino]

Suitable malt, hops, ahigher degree of carbonation and serving it ice cold is enough to satisfy most pub lager drinkers.

What?? Pub lager has hops in it?!

[BigEd]

It's the first two. There are as many different styles of lagers as ales so the grist will vary but lager yeast fermenting at the correct temperature and a cold, long lagering period are essential to produce a quality lager.

[mr bond]

Mash temp is another variable.

[David Edge]

Big Ed opines:

cold, long lagering period

Just how long would that be? That admirable US brewer Coors uses 48 hours at its Burton plant.

Now the discussion is getting interesting. Up till now it has been from people in the British Isles, ie who speak roughly the same language. But are we now talking about the same thing with the man from RI and indeed the man from Adelaide? How would we know? I think it matters - many brewing terms are used differently in globalspeak from English. Perhaps if we had a common definition of lager we'd be able to have a better go at the question:

Putting aside the style guide stuff

excellent! - from the word go Delboy set out to get 'our' ideas of lager

what would you say is the single most important element of what actually constitues a lager like beer.

This has been a fascinating discussion and I've learned a lot. Again, going back to the question:

all my beer drinking non-homebrewing buddies assumed was ale and the golden ales i have produced using light malts have all been excepted as lager

There are various ways of defining lager:
- brewers' definitions (process - how it's made) - eg Ed's
- drinkers' definitions - colour, marketing - after all commercial stuff (UK) is chilled down to the temperature of liquid nitrogen so you can't taste anything and sometimes served from a bottle so you don't get a whiff of aroma either - eg Delboy's definition
- beer enthusiasts/advocates definitons which centre on what it would taste like if served properly - (several contributors).

That final point is most significant - I often see US beer enthusiasts talking about the subdued hoppiness and slight maltiness of English ales like Coniston Bluebird. Now I've been to Coniston and tasted the beer - screaming hops or what? They are actually discussing in Protzian terms the characteristics of tunnel pasteurisers! So not only do we have language differences that mean we don't know if the words mean the same thing, but transport differences mean that the thing we're drinking isn't the same anyway! Morton Meilgaard, the US tasting guru reckoned that 50% of speciality beer in the US was flawed due to transport.

Which is why, if I want to drink Rauch or Pilsner or Biere de Garde of whatever I get on a train - a pleasure not available to our far-away chums. Then when I get back I might try and incorporate a nice character I've found in Bamberg, Praha or Brugge in my beer, but I won't call it a Schlenkerla or U Fleku clone.

Now, turning from epistemology to our more usual subject - pisstemology - Elena did once brew a lager. Not everyone gets the joke at first glance.

[mr bond]

That final point is most significant - I often see US beer enthusiasts talking about the subdued hoppiness and slight maltiness of English ales. Morton Meilgaard, the US tasting guru reckoned that 50% of speciality beer in the US was flawed due to transport.

]

Yeah that is a big factor in the english ales we receive here in OZ.

Most are lacking in that up front hop aroma/flava that i get from a home made bitter .Malt is more dominant.
Some travel better than others.
i recently forked out 7 odd $'s australian for a White shield and it was awful.
Thin, stale with a yeast bite that tainted it from the get go.No real hop character at all.Still 6 months inside the best b4 date ,but obviously mishandled on its way to southern parts.making my own and tasting domestic interpretations of the pommy Bitta have given me an appreciation of what fresh ale should be.

[Orkney_Rob]

I would have probably defined lager as straw coloured, fizzy and grainy for a while, but then travelling around continental Europe and sampling some of the stuff over there I have become somewhat more confused... cos it isn't always pale in colour... it is always pretty well carbonated though - but there tends to be a certain taste, or spectrum of tastes, that I would associate with lager that are different from the flavours in a blonde ale (which seems to have been my prefered tipple of late).

But then I had some cask conditioned, out of a beer engine, Atlas Latitude... it kind of turned my perception of lager on it's head, and especially British lager which had, until that point, been a waste of space. Truely lovely - creamy head, the texture of a really good real ale....

So - I can contribute nothing to this process cos I am confused!

[delboy]

Im kind of surprised nobody has mentioned hops, especially since all lagers seem to have the common denominator of noble hops in their makeup and we all know how important hops are to the overall flavour.

[David Edge]

Im kind of surprised nobody has mentioned hops

I can only recall three lagers with a really top-notch hop aroma: Stella Artois 30 years ago; Dinkelacker Pils 20 years ago and a pilsner from a small Belgian brewery at the Palace in Poperinge five years ago. So aroma's not a distinguishing feature. Bitterness - again not a feature of many lagers although it can be intense - eg Jever.

So maybe noble hops are put in (brewer's definition), but I'm not sure they are apparent to either the casual drinker or the enthusiast as a defining feature.