MdV: Merchant du Vin beer
e-newsletter –
Ayinger Oktober Fest-Marzen,
perennial gold-medal winner at the World Beer Championships, is appearing now
at your favorite pub, restaurant, and store.
The beer is deep and rich, and the festival commemorates an 1810
Bavarian royal wedding. More at:
http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/Ayinger_Oktoberfest_Marzen.html
When Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome
Ale first came to the
http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/Samuel_Smith_Winter_Welcome.gif
BEER = COLLEGE: Merchant du Vin teams up with Bellevue
Community College for a class that will teach beer history, styles,
ingredients, and some brewing techniques. Includes tasting! Held
at the Pike Pub in downtown
http://at-campus.net/bccsched/index.html?print=/bccsched/output/course_8000.htm
We have made your holiday
gift-buying easier: our e-store now features Bar Kits, a package of goodies
from some of our fine breweries. Perfect
for any beer aficionado; check ‘em out at:
http://store.merchantduvin.com/e/mdv
http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/news.html
For those of you who would like to
view previous e-newsletters, we have put an archive at:
http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/enews_archive.html
Beer Chat from the
There are a number of ways to break
beer into two categories – dark vs. light color; above or below a certain percentage
of alcohol; all-malt vs. brewed with rice or corn; even domestic vs. import.
Viewed from the perspective of
brewing history, there is an excellent way to begin to categorize: a beer – a
malt-based beverage, seasoned with hops and fermented via yeast – is either an ale
or a lager.
For thousands of years, brewers made
beer with no knowledge of microorganisms.
They knew that malted barley, after mashing (see e-news 3-24-04),
boiling, and cooling would begin to bubble and churn, and would change into a
different beverage. (Legend has it that
in
What these brewers were doing – without
knowing it – was selecting wild, natural, airborne yeast that thrived in
temperatures that were comfortable for people, too. The brewing regions of England, Belgium, and Northern
France were temperate enough to brew most of the year, and after many batches
of beer the yeast strains used by brewers were comfortably doing their job:
they consumed the sugars, produced alcohol and flavor, and did it all in 7 – 15
days at temperatures around 64- 70 deg F. These are ale yeasts, and they produce ales.
In Germany, (and soon, Austria and
Czechoslovakia) a different brewing tradition began sometime around the year
1400: brewers discovered that if they made their beer in the spring and in the
fall, when the weather was mild, they would get a more reliably tasty product
and fewer spoiled batches – very hot or very cold weather interfered with the “magic”
fermentation process.
During the temperate spring and
fall, they would brew quantities large enough to last half a year. Over the hot summer or through the cold winter,
they would store the fermenting beer in caves where the temperature stayed a nice
cool 42-50 deg F. all the time. (Often,
bocks were brewed in the fall, stored over the winter, and served from spring
through summer; and Marzens were brewed in March, stored over the summer, and
served from fall through winter.)
Over the years, these yeasts that
became strong, viable and comfortable worked best at low, cave-like
temperatures. These yeast strains
consumed sugar, produced alcohol & flavor, and did it all over a period of
4 – 8 weeks, or more. After
fermentation, the beers were kept at cool temperatures for more weeks, or even
months. The yeast is lager yeast, and
the beers made with them are called lagers.
The root of the word “lager” is the German verb “lagern,” meaning “to
store.”
During the period of 1830 – 1870,
some big changes began to take place in the world. Science and research made huge strides. Industrialization led to volume production of
all goods, including beer. Barley
malting companies began to produce cleanly-kilned, very pale-colored malt,
which could produce very pale golden beers.
Clear glassware became inexpensive and available. Trains and steamships allowed distribution to
distant markets. Advertising and marketing became important. This period of dramatic world change led to a
major change in the beer world, as well.
In the
This new style was of course made
with the regional yeast, the slow-fermenting, cool-temperature lager variety. German and Austrian brewers began to make
pale beers on a large scale, and some brewers from these countries emigrated to
In the latter half of the 1850s, French
chemist and biologist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was asked to help a local
winery: why were some batches of wine spoiling?
Pasteur viewed fermenting wine through a microscope, and determined that
the action of yeast made wine and beer. (Spoiled batches had bacteria present, which
Pasteur suggested could be killed with heat . . . a process still called
pasteurization) When brewing scientists
examined fermenting beer with microscopes, they learned that ale yeasts (saccaromyces
cervisiae) – those that fermented quickly, and at relatively warm temperatures
– were a species clearly distinct from lager yeasts, the cool/slow varieties (saccaromyces
uvarum, AKA saccaromyces carlsbergensis.)
(Sometimes the terms
“top-fermenting” and “bottom-fermenting” are used to define ales and
lagers. These terms come from the
fermenting action: ales ferment quickly & dramatically – a big head forms
on the fermenting beer, and many of the viable yeast cells do rise to the top
of the vessel as they work. Lagers, with
their cool & slow activity during fermentation, are less dramatic. Many of the viable cells do settle to the
bottom of the vessel, and there is less dramatic foam bubbling away at the top of
the vessel. It would be incorrect,
however to assume that all fermentation takes place only in the top or bottom
of the vessel.)
Ales can be dark or light in color;
high in alcohol or low; they can be very hoppy and bitter or very low in
bitterness. They can be highly
carbonated, or have almost no fizz at all.
Ales, however, will have a flavor contribution from the yeast that many
tasters call “fruity.” Many English ales
and some American ales (including pale ale, porter, stout, brown ale, and
barley wine) have a fermentation component to the flavor – isolate the malt and
hop aroma, then think of the smell of rising bread dough. That is the elusive, subtle flavor
contributed by the ale yeast. In the
case of some ale yeast strains, such as those used to ferment Bavarian
hefeweizens or many Belgian ales, the flavor component is far from subtle: it
can add flavors of cloves, bubblegum, spice, tropical fruit, or earth. In the lambic region of
Lagers can also be light, dark, high
or low in alcohol, bitter or not, highly carbonated or not. All other variables being equal, they will
have a “cleaner” flavor than ales: they tend to have less of a flavor component
from yeast. Pilsner, pils, bock, marzen,
doppelbock, helles, export, schwarzbier, dunkel, rauchbier and in fact most
beers made in
So historically, ales are the more
ancient. From their deep roots in human
history, they have maintained a position as the traditional styles of
Lagers, with their roots in
But in these days of Fine Beer, we
are fortunate. We can seek out the
styles, try them, compare, keep aware of their historical roots, and enjoy. Beer can be ale or it can be lager, and each
can be great.
Note: When is a lager an ale? Never, except sometimes “ale” has a specific legal
meaning in the
Merchant
