Pilsner was a distinctly famous and great style for years before American mega-breweries came along in the mid-19th century. “Pilsner” or “pils” on a can or bottle effectively means “lager created in the style originated in the town Pilsen in Bohemia.” Just like we all understand that Chicago pizza means one thing and New York pizza another, pilsner beer means: beer in a distinct style like that one place where they make that one kind that’s so good. The best of these beers came from the Bohemian town of Pilsen, a place with very low-mineral, soft water, which is what you need for bottom-fermented yeasts to succeed. This forced restraint is why lagers taste elegant like Champagne and not earthy like ales. This bottom fermentation takes much longer than a plain old top fermentation, but because the yeast can’t roil around grabbing air, the flavors that emerge are more buttoned down-think about the general effect of a tight bonsai versus a bounding vine. To make a lager, you take your soupy grain water, keep it very cold, and make the yeast do all its work at the bottom of the grain soup. The word lager comes from the German verb “to store” and refers to the particularly difficult and finicky way lager beers are made. Golden lagers hail from a place once known as Bohemia, the western part of today’s Czech Republic, between Germany and Austria.
#What's a pilsner beer how to#
This was because it took until the 1800s to figure out how to make the most popular beer style in the world today: golden lager. But Pilsner was invented relatively late, in 1842 at Pilsner Urquell. The first beers were made, depending on who you believe, 9,000 or even 12,000 years ago, before the discovery of hops or filtration or other modernities. Then, to make it tasty and make it last longer, people typically add hops-for spice, natural preserving, and aroma-or they age the beer to mellow and integrate the flavors.
#What's a pilsner beer plus#
All beer starts when you cook grain (usually barley, usually “malted” to make the sugar more available and get some enzymes going) in water and then ferment the resulting soupy stuff with yeast (or yeast plus other microorganisms) to turn the sugars into alcohol. You might have heard the term pilsner before but always been a bit vague on exactly what it means. Or at least an advanced Minnesota pilsner hobbyist, with an emphasis on summer good times.
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When you complete the tasting of the six Minnesota pilsners highlighted here, you can consider yourself a Minnesota pilsner expert. Take some notes: legitimately write them down, or just keep them in your head, in a thumbs-up, -down, -sideways sort of way. Or pair it with nothing-who cares? It’s summer. Pair your pilsner with bratwurst and kraut, the squeakiest cheese curds, or mussels cooked on the grill in beer and butter. Do this in your backyard with friends, all alone, on your boat, or wherever you feel a cold one is necessary.
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Your Beer Homework: Get these Minnesota pilsners and drink them. This feels like the perfect time to dig in to the sipping and sampling of the best backyard beer: the Minnesota pilsner.
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And as it goes with wine, so should it go with beer. I still believe the best way to learn to drink well is to do what you do at an ice cream counter-namely, taste the flavors that seem appealing with your very own mouth, then decide what you personally prefer. Because if you went to an ice cream counter with a wine critic, what are the odds you’d want exactly what the critic wanted? Just because I’m a sucker for all things salty caramel doesn’t mean you will be too. A few years ago, I wrote a book, Drink This: Wine Made Simple, based on the idea that wine critics were sort of useless.