It reads, “In 1840 John Wagner brought lager yeast from his native Bavaria and brewed the nation’s first lager beer.” In many ways, Wagner was a saloon or brewpub brewer. In Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood, there is a historical marker honoring what is believed to be America’s first lager brewer. We might know the names of their beers-ale, strong beer-but likely not the names of brewers, such as Peter Hemings (who brewed ale at Monticello) or Eliza Smith (whose cookbook, the first printed in the United States, features a recipe for strong beer). Theirs was a time in American history when beer was brewed by enslaved people and women. Those beers-persimmon beer, molasses beer, strong ale-are not well-known today. And what would that brewer make of adding lactose for sweetness or tossing in some pea shoots to turn the beer a beautiful purple color? So what if their molasses beer and persimmon beer had no barley in them? Typically, they were boiled with hops, just like ours.Īmerican lager follows those early beers of colonial America. Malted beans or malted peas are strange to us as 21st century brewers, but they might be normal to an 18th century brewer. The further back you go, the weirder the ingredients get-but maybe that’s unfair to the brewers back then. So anytime I start feeling sad or annoyed about the state of American craft beer, I reflect on the past and think of all the weird crap Americans have had in our beer throughout the centuries.
Kaiser pilsner beer how to#
Kaiser pilsner beer simulator#
Geeky Stuff: The test tube stands for geeky content. Oftentimes a conclusion that is drawn from preceding, more complex, content. Practical Brewing Advice: The pot stands for practical brewing advice that will help you in home brewing. How Things Work: the cogs mark sections that detail how a particular process woks More recent articles on this site use symbols on the right margins to indicate the type of content and allow readers to skip possibly uninteresting or complex partīrewing Basics: The building blocks stand for basic stuff that is important for the understanding of further discussions and elaborations. There are also two blogs that I'm maintainingī - Blog is a convenient place to report about experiments and ramble about random subjectsĬommercial Beer Reviews started as a tasting report of almost 80 different beers that I had on a trip to Germanyġ0-9-12 Yeast growth experiments - some early resultsġ0-03-12 Yeas un-flocculation for cell counting Some of that relaxation comes from knowing the process and knowing where attention is necessary and where not.įor questions and suggestions contact kai at braukaiser dot com Despite what many readers would think, I'm a fairly relaxed brewer. Being an engineer I like to know what is happening and how I can control the final product and fix problems when they arise. I enjoy the scientific and technological aspects brewing, which shows in the articles, and want to promote a better understanding of them as well as introduce the advanced brewer to various brewing techniques. It is a rather loose collection of various articles. This site is dedicated to brewing science and topics that are mostly related to brewing German style beers and it is not intended to be a complete reference for the home brewing process.