Pale Lager

The most popular beer style in the world, Pale Lager is a dry, crisp lager with very little flavor and a light body; it is brewed to be refreshing and easy-drinking rather than flavorful and is often brewed with a substantial amount of adjunct grains, especially maize and rice. However, some beers brewed in this style can be all-malt as well.

This style encompasses the standard American Lager, exemplified by Budweiser, as well as many popular European pale lagers, sometimes called International Lager, such as Carlsberg and Heineken. Because this is the most popular style brewed by large international brewers, home brewers tend to use names like Macro Lager or BMC (short for "Budweiser - Miller - Coors") to describe it.

History of Pale Lager

The pale lager style developed from the Pilsner beers of central Europe. However, American brewers quickly found that the six-row barley available to them was not well suited to brewing light-colored, all-malt beers, and began using adjunct grains such as maize to lighten the body of the beer. The result is a beer with a very light body, little malt flavor, and correspondingly low hop bitterness, flavor, and aroma.

Types of Pale Lager

Rice or Maize Adjuncts

Because the style lacks any strong malt flavor, the adjuncts chosen, if any, can significantly affect the flavor of the beer. American pale lagers brewed with maize tend to have a sweet, corn-like flavor, while Asian pale lagers brewed with rice (as well as Budweiser) tend to be more neutral, sometimes almost flavorless. All-malt versions tend to have a different character as well.

American Mass-Market Lager

Budweiser and Miller are the examples of this style, although it is also brewed in other parts of the world; for example, Foster's Lager from Australia, Corona from Mexico, and Kirin from Japan. The unifying characteristic is the extremely light flavor and color.

European Mass-Market Lager

Heineken and Carlsberg brew beers very similar to the American breweries, but with somewhat more of a malty flavor, and sometimes with correspondingly higher hops to balance the beer; adjuncts are often lower but rarely absent. These beer still resemble the American mass-brewed beers than they do true European Pilsner. Some American brewers also brew "premium" beers, such as Miller Genuine Draft or Anheuser World Lager, in order to compete with the European imports. Because of the "green bottle" traditionally associated with these beers in the United States, skunking is common enough that it is considered a characteristic of the style by some.

Light or Lite Lager

The "Light" or "Lite" versions of mass-market pale lagers are lower in gravity, alcohol and calories than the "standard" versions. As a result, they are also lower in flavor and mouthfeel; some can seem watery.

Dry Beer

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Dry Beer|]] | Main article: Dry Beer }}

Dry Beer is an Asian variant of the Pale Lager, briefly popular in the United States and still brewed by several large brewers. It features unusually high attenuation, with the result that it has almost no sweetness and very little body.

Ice Lager

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Ice Lager|]] | Main article: Ice Lager }}

Ice Lager or Ice Beer has undergone a process of freezing and (sometimes) removing part of the water, resulting in a sligtly more concentrated flavor and a slightly higher alcohol level. In most commercial examples, the effect is insignificant and the resulting beer is almost indistinguishable from a standard pale lager except for a slightly higher (0.5% abv or so) alcohol level.

Brewing Pale Lager