Pilsners Are Leading a Craft Beer Resurgence in Lager

Greetings, Top Shelfers, ’tis I, Tony Rehagen, your humble lager lover, checking in on your Oktoberfestivities. If you’re like me, you’re not quite feeling the autumnal pull of those darker German Märzens and Dunkels just yet (and it’s still too warm for lederhosen). Fortunately, craft brewers all over the country are putting out Pilsners—a classic style of lager that’s light, complex and the perfect balance of summer hops and fall malt. But before I get into all that, here’s the news from around the beer world:

Garage Beer, the company owned by footballer brothers Jason and Travis Kelce (the latter of whom is Taylor Swift’s fiancé) is worth a reported $200 million
Reuters had a great profile of the Middle East’s first and only female brewmaster
A legendary Bay Area craft beer pioneer announced it’s shutting its doors
Vinepair has this fun infographic ranking bar games (I’ve got next in shuffleboard)
The same site reveals a garnishing hack bartenders are using to spice up pumpkin beers

And *yes,* it can taste great! Last year I rounded up the history of the style and suggested four seasonal pumpkin beers that don’t suck.

The “Original Pale Lager”

For the past decade or so, there’s been a running joke among craft beer professionals that each flip of the calendar will finally herald the Year of the Lager. The idea is that 20-plus years of bold flavors via hop-packed IPAs, decadent stouts and sugary sours have scorched drinkers’ palates to the point that they’re finally ready for the lighter, simpler and more sessionable style.

While everyone’s been waiting for this sudden seismic shift in consumer tastes to take over the tap handles, something funny happened: One by one, lagers have quietly bubbled up from the bottom to claim more spots on tap lists across the country.

Make no mistake, IPA is still craft king many times over. But walk into any brewery or beer bar these days, and you’ll reliably find multiple lager options. It started a couple of years back with the reemergence of the American light lager, craft brewers’ more sophisticated, more flavorful take on the straw-colored macro lagers that defined domestic beer for decades. And now, the brighter side of the menu is getting company.

Also getting popular: British-style cask ales that are poured via “beer engines.”

Pilsner, or Pils, is a type of lager, the branch of beer made with yeast that ferments at the bottom of the brew at colder temperatures, creating a generally crisper, lighter-bodied drink than top-fermenting ales. (The Oktoberfest beers you’ve been seeing for the past month, the Märzens, Dunkels and Festbiers, are all lagers too.) Pilsners are among the lightest of the class, characterized by a transparent, golden hue with a sturdy stand of white foam, and a flavor that drinks clean and dry like an American pale lager—in fact, in many ways those domestic beers are the direct ancestor of Pilsner.

“Pilsner is the original pale-colored lager,” says Sam Tierney, innovation brewery manager for Firestone Walker, the Paso Robles, California, craft powerhouse whose Pivo Pils is an industry standard. “But Pilsner turns the flavor up.”

Specifically, Pils amplifies the hop characteristic, matching that bitterness with the sweet malt backbone of a pale lager. It’s an innovative balance first struck out of necessity in the 1840s, when brewers in the Bohemian town of Pilsen (in the modern-day Czech Republic) were trying to replace their not-so-great local ales with something closer to the darker German-style lagers from neighboring Bavaria. Pilsen’s softer water, and the use of herbal Czech Saaz hops and an English-style kiln that could create a lighter malt, combined to result in a sparkling golden lager that became the iconic Pilsner Urquell—the world’s first Pilsner.

Some sticklers say Urquell is still the only true Pilsner. Nevertheless, many of the craft Pils we’re seeing in the US are in the Czech style.

“You have a nice peppery hop flavor with a spicy-herbal-malty aroma, medium body and a soft taste on the first sip,” says Hagen Dost, brewer and co-owner of Dovetail Brewery in Chicago, which specializes in old-world styles, including lagers. “The hoppy bitterness is pronounced and clean, but it doesn’t lord over the maltiness. There’s a fine balance between hop bitterness, hop and malt aroma and malt flavor. If you’re calling your beer a Czech Pilsner, it should be some shadow of that.”

The popularity of this crushable yellow beer, which registered only 4.4% to 4.6% ABV, soon spilled over into nearby Bavaria, where it inspired Helles (German for “pale” or “bright”) lager and a lighter Bavarian Pils to compete with the region’s hallowed darker Dunkels, and eventually to northern Germany, where it spawned what most people think of as a German-style Pilsner. These straw-colored beers were crafted with German-grown hops and were bracingly bitter for a lager but still delivered a hint of slight malt sweetness.

German immigrants brought their Pils to the States in the 19th century, where it was brewed with domestic barley malt and often adjuncts such as rice or corn, creating an American-style Pilsner that was less bitter, had less hop profile and was generally milder.

Little Lager in St. Louis exclusively serves Pilsners and other cold-fermented lagers—always topped with a proper head of foam.

Most craft Pilsners you’ll see today are a take on one of those three styles—Czech, German or American. But there’s a fourth that’s really caught on among American drinkers and brewers alike: the Italian Pilsner.

Unlike its old-world forebears, the Italian Pilsner is a true modern craft-beer creation. It was first brewed in the late 1990s by Birrificio Italiano in Limido Comasco, Italy. Brewer Agostino Arioli basically took the German Pils and dry-hopped it—adding aroma hops during or after fermentation when the brew is cold. This practice, now common in today’s IPAs, boosts the hops’ aroma and flavor in the beer without significantly increasing the bitterness. The result is a lighter beer with the citrusy-floral scent and flavor of a lighter IPA with that Pilsner malt backbone in a refreshingly easy-to-drink lager.

And it is popular: Every place I’ve been in and around Atlanta has had an Italian Pilsner, like this one Lana from Variant Brewing in Roswell, Georgia.

Of course, when it comes to American craft beer, there are no rules—and it’s same for the new wave of Pils. You’ll find traditional French Pilsners that use Alsatian hops to impart a distinctive bread-and-honey flavor, New Zealand Pilsners that use the more tropical and funkier hops from down under, and even West Coast Pils, which is essentially a lager hopped like an IPA.

Tierney and Dost say there are a multitude of reasons for Pilsner’s resurgence, including drinkers looking for less boozy, more drinkable experiences, the aforementioned flavor fatigue and a recent overall trend back toward bitter beer (but not face-twistingly bitter) after waves of hazy IPAs and sours have left consumers a little sick of sweetness. Whatever the cause, Tierney believes the Pils trend is here to stay for a while.

“I would bet on lagers and Pilsners as the future of craft beer,” Tierney says. “I think as more people have gotten into craft beer, their palates have developed. They’ve come to value balance, clean flavor, drinkability and the skill it takes to make a well-crafted beer.”

That same trend toward sophistication is creating a wide, wonderful world of American hard ciders too.

Beer Run: Brooklyn, New York

I travel a lot, for work and play, and wherever I go, I like to survey the local beer scene. Been to a good beer town lately? Do you live in one? I’m always looking for new destinations and breweries and bars to add to my itinerary—I’d love your recommendations. Here are mine from a recent overnight in New York (as well as previous trips to Michigan and Indianapolis).

There’s really nothing you can’t find in New York City—and good beer is no exception. If you’re in Manhattan, there are tons of great drinking spots, including one of the best beer bars in the US. But because of the value of square footage on the island, there’s a dearth of great breweries to visit. For that, you should head across the East River to Brooklyn.

Now, I know Brooklyn is vast. Fortunately, there’s a cluster of top-quality breweries all within walking distance in and around the borough’s Gowanus neighborhood. Start at Other Half Brewing Co., which also has taprooms in Williamsburg’s Domino Park and Rockefeller Center, although it’s here where they carved out a name as one of the nation’s best purveyors of hazy IPA. The flagship Broccoli is a can’t-miss imperial IPA with notes of pineapple, mango and white grape (and gratefully no actual broccoli).

From there, it’s a 10-minute Uber or cab ride (or an easy 26-minute stroll) to Finback Brewery’s Brooklyn Studio, another world-class hazy house that pairs its own New England-style IPAs with amazing Asian dumplings. (It, too, has its OG brewery and another taproom in Queens.)

Hopped out yet? No worries if you’ve had enough IPA—just across the street from Finback is Strong Rope Brewery’s Gowanus taproom (another is in Red Hook), where there’s a well-rounded tap list of fruit beers, cream ales and barleywines. For instance, I cleansed my palate with a bright and Belgian-y River Dragon Saison made with Hudson Valley malt from just up the river.

Then, two quick blocks north, sits Wild East Brewing Co., your best NYC stop for all things malty, from Czech dark lagers to English milds to Italian-style Pilsners. I chose a roasty-smooth Standard Deviation stout that was even creamier on cask to cap off my Brooklyn brewery tour before catching the train back into the city.

Standard Deviation stout on cask from Wild East Brewing Co.

Discuss over a beer: Bloomberg Screentime

Join us Oct. 8-9 for the definitive gathering of leaders driving the future of entertainment, media and technology, an event where big-picture ideas meet new opportunities. Discuss and debate the future of Hollywood studios, the boom in sports and live music as well as the impact of artificial intelligence on the creative industries. Learn more here.

The “Original Pale Lager”

Beer Run: Brooklyn, New York

Discuss over a beer: Bloomberg Screentime

More from Pursuits