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Comment by jcampbell1 | Hacker News Reader

Some people actually like lagers and don’t want that fruity taste and smell that all ales have. Lagers are much more expensive to brew in terms of time and equipment and benefit from industrial scale.

It is perfectly fine that I enjoy crisp piss and you like your fruitcake beers.

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Commercial lagers are brewed very fast. Real lagering is a long process, sure, but the big boys don’t do any of that. They have a very fast turnaround, often less than a week.

Enjoy your lager if you like, I do from time to time, but it’s only one type of beer from a very wide spectrum. And don’t kid yourself you’re getting a cold-aged beer in the traditional style unless you’ve got evidence that’s what’s really happening.

Tank space and cooling costs the big boys very little because insulated factories and tanks the volume increases with the cube and the cost increases with the square. This is why lagers are made cheaply industrially, and ales can be made inexpensively on a much smaller scale.

The premium light lagers are tanked for a month. Try to make anything resembling a light lager faster than that. They don’t have some super secret method that no one knows about to make the style in a week. You are wholesale making that up.

I am absolutely not making that up - perhaps whatever premium light lagers you drink are better, but the UK market (which I’m more familiar with) is awash with “lager” that is barely lagered at all, and the 1-week mash to bottle or mash to tap schedule is relatively well known. I'm having trouble finding primary sources but have various secondary ones -

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/14/superma...

https://www.ft.com/content/e5a1417d-47f9-4245-a265-a66055ea8...

"the beers are produced in around 10 days." - https://protzonbeer.co.uk/comments/2014/02/26/after-cantona-...

And it doesn't seem to be purely a UK issue -

"I did a tour of a Polish commercial brewery (I want to say Tyskie, but it might have been Żywiec) and the guide said, with pride, that it takes them no more than two weeks from grain to store shelf."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/o2jqy1/comment...

And there are tricks you can do, such as using faster-fermenting yeast strains (34/70 is mentioned), pressure fermentation (which suppresses ester formation and allows you to ferment warmer, therefor faster) and overpitching for speed, centrifuging and cold-crashing to clear the beer quickly etc.

Commercial lagers are also famous for using cheap adjuncts, like rice in Bud for instance, and corn in others.

Lots of small brewers do lagers and pilseners, FYI, I've had several in the last couple of weeks (from a selection pack of local brews) -

https://blackbrewingco.com.au/products/lager https://www.brighttankbrewing.com.au/2021/02/east-perth-lage... https://cowaramupbrewing.com.au/craft-beer-range/

And lots of other beer styles can take longer than a few days for fermentation and conditioning, particularly the stronger stuff. NEIPAs can take 2 weeks just in primary fermentation, for instance.

AFAICT it's you that's made up the idea that smaller oeprations can't age their beer a handful of weeks weeks but the larger operations can. Not to mention all the various barrel-aged craft beers that crop up, and things like brett-saison's that can take months to ferment out fully.

So again - maybe what you are drinking is aged with care, and is made from an all-malt base, and is well flavoured with the appropriate noble hop strains. But the mass market doesn't necessarily operate that way, and you can't just pick a random lager off the shelf and expect very much care or craft has gone into it.

I'm not saying you're wrong to enjoy lager, and there are great ones out there, but it's just one style of many, and they're not all some amazing artisan feet. A lot from the larger operators are quick-churned shite.

Most craft breweries make lagers and pilsners that are considerably better than “big beer.” Local/craft beer doesn’t exclusively produce IPAs, Fruited Sours, and Bourbon Barrel Aged Oatmeal stouts.

Craft lagers are out numbered 15:1 by ales because of the tank space and cooling required. The esterification reactions of ale yeasts are inherent to ales and the brewing temperature. All Ales smell fruity. This is really basic beer knowledge.

That’s fair, you clearly know more about beer than me. I mostly just drink them. I don’t care for most lagers but a good one on a summer day is nice. I was just trying to make the point that you don’t have to choose Budweiser over craft beer to get a lager. It’s clear to me now that you already know that.

I have to disagree here. Fermentation temperatures and yeast strains do, of course, have a huge impact on the final outcome, including, but not limited to, the effect of esters. It is not true, however, that all ales smell fruity. With the large variety of top fermenting "ale" yeasts available, as well as some control to be exercised over the fermentation process, it's perfectly possible to get quite a clean fermentation. Kolsch is fermented with an ale yeast, for example.

And more importantly, this is why there are a few craft lagers. It's not because they're too busy making IPAs, it's because lagers specifically aren't easy to do at smaller scale. There are plenty of craft ales that are not IPAs.

What exactly are we calling ales here, isn't ale just beer said another way (or, rather, the other way around)?

Speaking of lagers, good ones are hard to come by these days. I like all things beer, and I enjoy all the IPAs, fruited sours and all that, BUT I also much, much enjoy quality lagers. As it is, in the US, it's rather hard to find good ones, all the mass market ones are horrible (I guess a Stella will work if that's absolutely the best you can do, but everything else is even lower in terms of quality).

I'm in the ironic position that I actually whole-heartedly enjoy IPAs, but hate the IPA fad because it's (mostly, just due to the sheer size of the IPA market) keeping brewers from making good lagers. Can I have both please?

> isn't ale just beer said another way

No. Ales are a subset of beers.

> I hate the IPA fad because it's keeping brewers from making good lagers. Can I have both please?

Yes, of course. Seeing this so much in this thread makes me feel like it's 2012 again. I travel a lot in North America and like to check out the local breweries when I do. There are always plenty of non-IPA options.

Ale yeast and lager yeast are the two different types of beer yeasts. There are a million lines of both, but ale yeast ferments in about a week at 70f and produces esters which have a fruity odor. Lager yeast operates at roughly 55f and takes a month to ferment. Lagers have little odor which some people like.

To me, lagers are like a steak and ales are like chicken tikka. Both are good, and people preferring one or the other is reasonable. Due to tank and cooling requirements, lagers benefit from large scale production.

Something like Sam Adams is a good lager to compare against an IPA. Just smell the difference and decide which you like.

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