Craft beer snobs suddenly love the humble lager
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5 min read . Updated: 23 Feb 2022, 08:50 PM IST - Smaller breweries are seeing greater thirst for artisanal versions of the lighter beers long associated with mega-brewers like Budweiser
Among discerning drinkers, craft beer’s hot new thing is a cold, crisp lager that couldn’t be further from long-popular IPAs. The beer that Budweiser and Miller made famous in the U.S. has gone artisanal.
The bestselling beers tend to be mass-produced lagers, the kinds long associated with ballgames and barbecues. They’re also the brews that picky drinkers often regard as watery and low on flavor, beer experts say. But lagers are now important for more brewers and for a wider range of customers, says Bart Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association, which counts more than 5,300 craft breweries as members.
“Smaller local breweries are more likely to see lagers become a bigger percentage of sales, offsetting losses in other places," says Will Golden, co-founder of Austin Beerworks in Austin, Texas.
Mr. Golden said craft microbreweries weren’t very interested in lagers during the last decade because they needed to turn out beers faster than a good lager takes to brew.
But with craft beer becoming normal, beer connoisseurs now view lagers as a measure of quality, he says. Making one that is clean and refreshing is considered a mark of craftsmanship. “If a brewery has a great lager or pilsner, it’s almost certain that every other beer will be good," he said.
Lagers, which range from the bright yellow pilsner to the darker, full-bodied Märzen, are produced at low temperatures. The slow fermentation and refrigeration process reduces the speed of yeast activity during conditioning, creating a crisp flavor and brilliant color. But keeping the beer in tanks for the weeks it takes to make a lager costs more time and money. Add rising costs of labor, packaging and raw ingredients like malt—for which mega-breweries negotiate lower prices—and more lager means more risk and cost for microbreweries.
Dennis Byron, a beer influencer who goes by the nickname Ale Sharpton and tours large and small breweries around the U.S., said he has seen a resurgence of breweries specializing in crisp lagers.
“India Pale Ales, imperial stouts, sours and wheat beers have won the popularity contest on a lot of taps or coolers over the years at beer retailers, bars and breweries," Mr. Byron said. “Craft lagers are [gaining] a larger presence due to their light-bodied texture, mouthfeel, crushability and overall refreshing qualities."
Craft lagers tend to cost more than supermarket versions. Austin Beerworks’ bestselling brew is its Pearl-Snap German pilsner, at $10 a six-pack.
Lagers are the most popular style of beer on the U.S. market, according to an analysis by Allied Market Research. This is an area dominated by brewing giants like Anheuser-Busch InBev, Constellation Brands and Molson Coors.
Sales of craft lager rose 9.4%, to $501 million in the year leading up to November 2020, beer-industry reports from Nielsen show. Some 93 new brands of lager entered the beer market in 2021, a surge that made that style second only to new IPAs, according to data from market-research firm IRI.
Craft lagers making such inroads would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago, says Paul Verdu, head of Tenth and Blake, the craft-beer division of Molson Coors. Craft breweries, which the Brewers Association defines as producing six million barrels or less each year, account for 3% of U.S. annual sales.
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This isn’t lost on beer’s biggest players. In 2020, Molson Coors formed a joint venture with D.G. Yuengling & Son, helping the lager-forward Pennsylvania brewery—America’s oldest—launch in Texas. Tenth and Blake’s portfolio includes Leinenkugel’s, whose original pilsner-style lager was first poured more than 155 years ago.
“People have always liked easy-drinking beers, but it’s accelerated as craft breweries try to find that next avenue of growth," Mr. Verdu says.
Craft lagers even have their own hashtag: #crispyboi. Instagram users have flashed it in more than 15,000 posts.
Notch Brewing in Salem, Mass., focuses on lower-alcohol beers like its Session Pils Czech pale lager. Chris Lohring, founder and head brewer, says he is happy about lager’s rising demand among craft beer enthusiasts, but is not a fan of its social-media nickname.
“I’m gonna go on record that I hate the term ‘crispyboi,’ " Mr. Lohring says. He doesn’t find most lagers to be crisp, even if brewers aim to make them that way. Mr. Lohring said the hashtag likely came about because craft beer has become synonymous with stouts and pale ales, which have high sugar content and make lagers seem crisp in comparison.
Craft lager’s popularity has accompanied higher demand for lower-ABV (alcohol-by-volume) drinks, brewers say.
Tenth and Blake oversees several craft breweries acquired by Molson Coors in recent years. That includes Terrapin Beer Co. in Athens, Ga., whose Los Bravos Mexican-style lager launched in 2020 for Atlanta Braves fans at its microbrewery inside the MLB team’s home stadium.
Terrapin co-founder Spike Buckowski came up with the new brew after he realized that the company’s most popular beer, the 7.3% ABV Hopsecutioner IPA, wasn’t a ballpark beer.
“Watching a Braves game in 90-degree heat, in 90% humidity, a couple of Hopsecutioners will take you down," said Mr. Buckowski. “So we started brewing Los Bravos at the stadium and noticed people were really into lagers. They wanted a nice beer-flavored beer to quench their thirst."
Mr. Verdu says Los Bravos is now Terrapin’s second-highest-selling draft beer in the Greater Atlanta area, growing 242% in 2021.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
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