/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.14941408]

Why are lagers dismissed wholesale in popular perception, given how diverse they are as a brewing style? What I mean to say is, why are people's impression of lagers summed up in Budweiser rather than a given doppelbock or a Baltic porter? Is it solely due to the rise of watery macrobrews, or does it have more to do with the historical stereotypes behind the original definitions of the terms "ale" (made with gruit, seen as more 'native' in England) and "lager" (made with imported hops)?

[Anonymous No.14941426]

>>14941408
The first reason yes

[Anonymous No.14941468]

>>14941408
At least in the US, people distinguish between craft and macro, so I don't think the "Budweiser" argument really holds up these days. On the other hand, many countries only really make/export shitty light lagers (India, Thailand, Mexico, Korea, whatever ethnic food you might regularly go out to eat, etc.). Those are so predominant that when you see a decent Pilsner on a menu most people will look over it, and a Doppelbock or Baltic Porter wont even register as a "lager", aside from being pretty uncommon. In short, there are good lagers, but for the most part they're pretty boring.

[Anonymous No.14941469]

>>14941408
Nothing wrong with macrobrews. Budweiser is fine, Miller is fine, Coors is fine. The reason they’re and lagers are frowned upon is because you don’t look cool posting on Instagram with a beer your father drank.
Craft beer culture is cancer, craft distilleries a close second. Hopefully bat aids will put them all out of business.

[Anonymous No.14941491]

>>14941469
Yeah getting a decent beer with an abv higher than 5% that was brewed a few miles away is real cancer

[Anonymous No.14941495]

>>14941469
My dad drank whiskey, you stupid faggot.

[Anonymous No.14941502]

>>14941408
Lager being dismissed?
Isn't it the most drinked style basically and for good reason and damn that's a dark lager

[Anonymous No.14941533]

>>14941408
Lager is terrible. Ales are superior

[Anonymous No.14941797]

Femanon here I prefer wine or maybe a vodka if hubby is feeling frisky

[Anonymous No.14941844]

>>14941533
Said no one ever

[Anonymous No.14941872]

>>14941408
Because they're fags, I go for bourbon and rye myself. The beer fags are just plain annoying.

[Anonymous No.14941879]

>>14941844
Saith the Raven, oh Lenore.

[Anonymous No.14941887]

>>14941872
I'll drink both because I enjoy them and because I don't let faggots decides what I enjoy because they're being faggots about it.

[Anonymous No.14941920]

>>14941887
They beer fags with useless debates really come across as goofy, especially the left coast fags. Avoiding them is the main reason why I go for bourbon or rye, the NYC fags too that sit around in bars like freaks, I avoid them like the plague.

[Anonymous No.14941924]

>>14941887
The retard beers all have stupid hipster names, I'd be embarrassed ordering that shit especially around a girlfriend.

[Anonymous No.14941962]

>>14941797
Based. I prefer wine too. But I drink to get buzzed.

[Anonymous No.14942430]

>>14941408
First of all baltic porter is not a lager, and bock is not usually the first kind of lager one would think of, one rather thinks of pale lager/pilsner.

Budweiser is very archetypical lager. The originial taste good and is typicalfor checz lager while the american with stolen name is typical of american.

[Anonymous No.14942440]

>>14941408
If you count the Mexican brands, then lagers are quite popular in beer snob circles. As far as "popular" perception goes, the cheap megabrands still outsell everything, so your claim that they are somehow "dismissed" is false, seeing as they continue to dominate the market to this day.

[Anonymous No.14942600]

>>14941469
but you look cool as fuck when you're sponsored by stroh's

[Anonymous No.14942609]

i cant dissociate the taste of lagers and the taste of shitty mainstream characterless beers. every aus bogan drinks lagers, they're all shit, and anything they have in common with good lagers just makes me dislike good ones rather than like shit ones.

[Anonymous No.14942660]

>>14941469
The most normalfaggot thing my dad drinks is this. He often teases me for drinking traditional beers like Landlord or Old Peculier.
>>14941408
In England, lager is literally another word for "generic cheap macrobrew". When I was a kid I thought lager was some hugely popular beer brand lmao.

[Anonymous No.14944477]

>>14941408
because beer snobs are just as pretentious and pedantic as wine snobs.

[Anonymous No.14944507]

>>14941408
clean your fucking glass

[Anonymous No.14944528]

>>14941491
>Craft beer culture
Craft beer is great, craft beer culture is AIDS. Gastro pubs serving thai green curry oysters and bbq octopus spaghetti with rye garlic french toast and of course, their suggested beer pairing is tryhard and you know it.

[Anonymous No.14944570]

>>14941408
as a beer brewer that literally makes lager every week, the answer is usually education.

90% of (modern, American) beer drinkers don't know what a lager is. definitely don't know the difference between an ale and a lager. hence why even at supermarkets and liquor stores you will often see a separation between lager and pilsner.

most (modern, american) beer drinkers know "light beer" and "IPA" and very little else. any style beyond these are usually dismissed, especially traditional styles.

[Anonymous No.14944573]

>>14941408
Isn't it just because lagers are harder to brew? You have to worry about keeping them at a certain temp while you ferment them, unlike a lot of ales. So because ales are easier, they are more abundant

[Anonymous No.14944615]

>>14944528
Fair but they have to get into the market somehow. Boomer sportsball watchers are already claimed by macrobrews

[Anonymous No.14944617]

>>14942430
>baltic porter is not a lager

[Anonymous No.14944720]

>try a belgian tripel
>it's fucking disgusting

[Anonymous No.14944727]

>>14944720
Which tripel was it?

[Anonymous No.14944741]

>>14944727
I don't know how to describe it but something about it was just cloying as fuck and dialed up to 11

[Anonymous No.14944801]

>>14941469
Macrobrews are literally undrinkable garbage dude

[Anonymous No.14944856]

>>14944801
>literally undrinkable
k

[Anonymous No.14944893]

>>14944741
>try a belgian tripel
>actually tried a belgian style tripel

[Anonymous No.14944901]

>>14944741
san clemente isn't in belgium anon.

maybe try one from belgium or find a brewery known for their belgian style beers?

[Anonymous No.14944909]

>>14941469
>you don’t look cool posting on Instagram with a beer your father drank
objectively false, all hipsters nowadays drink PBR and other cheap """traditional""" watery lagers to appear nonchalant and "americana"
meanwhile normal people enjoy a nice quality craft beer, be it a lager, ale, sour or whatever
you have to be pretty out of the loop to think good beer is still just a hipster thing

[Anonymous No.14944915]

>>14941408
Because people are stupid

[Anonymous No.14944918]

>>14944893
>>14944901
it's the yeast that matters tho isn't it

[Anonymous No.14944922]

>>14942430
baltic porter is in fact a lager, unlike british porter
I do agree that the czech budweiser is a solid beer though - Czechia is one of the very few places in the world that actually has good macrobrew lagers

[Anonymous No.14944924]

>>14944741
Try a proper tripel actually from Belgium

[Anonymous No.14944931]

>>14944741
quadrupels are better
they're still not exactly a refreshing drink though, more of a winter warmer dessert drink like port

[Anonymous No.14944940]

>>14944801
Ask me how I can tell you live in an apartment and have never mowed a lawn in your life.

[Anonymous No.14944941]

>>14944909
How do I know you wear a snapback with a leather patch embossed with the name of your favorite brew pub, Brayden?

[Anonymous No.14945002]

>>14944801
hello numale
grow up

[Anonymous No.14945042]

Because it's not '''''''craft''''''''
craft breweries don't/didn't tend to make them because they require a lot of storage space and equipment, and increase the brew time significantly. Plus also harder to stand out from the crowd with a lager..because despite what redditors ITT will tell you, most macro lagers are fine. Boring, but fine.

[Anonymous No.14945101]

>>14941533
You've clearly never been to Germany or the Czech Republic.

[Anonymous No.14945152]

>>14945042
they are almost always bland and watery and if you don't drink them ice cold you'll taste all the nasty flaws they get by cheapening out on ingredients, using HFCS, cheapest, stalest hops available etc.
they're fine if you just want to get drunk cheaply (though I think vodka would be more practical for this), but how is this fine when you actully care about flavor?
there are many good pilsners you could have, either german / czech imports or from craft breweries. lagers don't have to be this tasteless alcohol delivery mechanism

[Anonymous No.14945172]

>>14945152
mmm i'm UK; maybe the adjunct lagers in the US really are bad. But the standard ones here: Stella, Heineken, Kronenbourg, Amstel, Becks..... are fine desu.

I've been to Germany and the Czech republic several times and the lagers are definitely better, but not enough for me to care all that much.

[Anonymous No.14945247]

>>14941408
That adjunct-heavy pale lager, based on Pilsners and German Helles, and usually coming from a brewery started by or in tandem with a German expat, pushing what was - in the 1800s - new tech, got pushed so hard that it basically became the entire market in places without a history of making beer. They became sort of a synecdoche representing lager or even beer in general. Because of this association, dark and heavy lagers got pushed to the back burner of the zeitgeist range, to be forgotten about until needed.

[Anonymous No.14945297]

>>14945101
There are pretty good ales in Germany and Czechia too. Altbiers, Kölschen and a whole bevy of wheat beers come to mind.

[Anonymous No.14945316]

>>14944617
>>14944922
My bad. Baltic porter is not really a porter then. I had never heard of Baltic porter until now.

[Anonymous No.14945394]

>>14945316
Sometimes it's not even Baltic. It's just a delicious pint of lies!

[Anonymous No.14945398]

>>14945297
True, but the best stuff are lagers.

[Anonymous No.14945413]

>>14945398
... yeah, you're right. My top five Reichsbiers are all lagers, but some of those ales are pretty god damned gut.

[Anonymous No.14945566]

I like Kozel. I am cool. I am not a tastelet.

[Anonymous No.14945592]

>>14941408
>lagers dismissed wholesale in popular perception
fucking
what?
Where the fuck did you dream THAT nonsense up, lmao

[Anonymous No.14945594]

>>14945592
read the second sentence - it puts the first into perspective.

[Anonymous No.14945650]

>>14942660
landlord is based

[Anonymous No.14945678]

>>14945650
true

[Anonymous No.14945685]

>>14942660
That's what lager became. Technically if you cold-cellar anything, it's lagered... but that led to mutated yeast that liked cold cellar temperatures, widening the distinction with "Lager yeast." If you hot-ferment what should be a lager beer, you wind up with some interesting things like Steam Beer, which isn't lagered, but is made with lager yeast.

Half of this shit is made up on the spot. Memes by the strictest definition.

[Anonymous No.14945699]

>>14945685
Craft beer culture in the wild. Post pics of your latest sour and your favorite open timber brew pub

[Anonymous No.14945745]

>>14945594
I did, and it's fucking idiotic. People who don't know shit about beer don't give a shit about "lager vs. ale", and people who DO give a shit about beer know enough to purposefully not give a shit about "lager vs. ale".
This is some whole-ass fart-sniffing beer snob bullshit.

[Anonymous No.14945753]

>>14945699
If I had them I might... I should probably make another sour soon. I'm getting pretty good at getting lactobacillus to play nicely with sweeter mashes.

[Anonymous No.14945761]

>>14945745
But the question is why... and the answer might as well be a history textbook.

[Anonymous No.14945767]

>>14945753
Based rebuttal to the smart ass poster (me).
Never tried a sour desu

[Anonymous No.14945777]

Why does every IPA taste like shit? Why is it the more recommended the IPA, the shittier it tastes? It's getting old, all I want is something decent and well-balanced.

[Anonymous No.14945792]

>>14944918
the yeast is where most of the flavor comes from, but belgians have been doing this a lot longer than we have and as a generalization have it more dialed in.

tons of factors in what matters though. process being another big one - each brewing system is different.

[Anonymous No.14945827]

>>14945767
They're... still in the testing phase. Lambics are usually done with the right mindset - let a beer get sour, mix it with other beers if it's too sour or not quite there. Some of the new school sours are falling into the arms-race trap that IPAs did - just because something can be carbonated malt-vinegar doesn't mean it should be.

Lacto-sours are the easiest to get right, and the least offensive when they're off. When they're good, it's a nice tang, when they're too much, it's sauerkraut beer.

Brett-sours have to be subtle. Brettanomyces tastes like an infection. When it's right, there's a subtle damp-hay sourness to the beer, and when it's too much, you might as well lick under a sweaty Scotsman's kilt.

Acetobacter can play into some natural sours with other yeasts and bacteria, but it's pretty gross on it's own - it literally makes vinegar.

[Anonymous No.14945857]

>>14945792
>Where most of the flavour comes from
... yes with an if / no with a but? In beers that follow a Belgian style, the yeast is very important for that banana-clove-coriander-pepper flavour, but with the wrong hops, or too much of the right ones, that's easily crushed.

Molson Canadian, oddly enough, is an example of this. New world hops with banana yeast.

[Anonymous No.14945877]

>>14944801
hey they may be trash at flavor but calling them undrinkable?
unless it's steel reserve gotta disagree

[Anonymous No.14945882]

>>14945777
then don't drink ipa faggot

[Anonymous No.14945916]

>>14945777
>Well balanced
>>14945882
isn't wrong. IPAs are supposed to be bitter, and if you don't like bitter beer, you will never find a West Coast or Traditional IPA that you like. You might have some luck with new-school, hazy, and New England IPAs, but then again, you might not.

[Anonymous No.14945932]

>>14945413
Yep. I love German ales, too.

[Anonymous No.14946001]

>>14945916
West Coast IPAs got more aggressively hopped over time.

New England IPAs are a more interesting style if you're looking for more than just pine needle flavored ale.

[Anonymous No.14946280]

>>14946001
>more aggressively hopped
That's a nice way to say that there was a decade long arms race before the people making it started realizing it had gone too far for too long.

[Anonymous No.14946529]

>>14941408
>Is it solely due to the rise of watery macrobrews
Mostly that. A lot of low-quality lager was massively oversold and it outstayed its welcome.

[Anonymous No.14946650]

>>14945827
>Falling into the arms-race trap
I've never thought of it once was an arms-race, but christ that's correct.

I think that a lot of brewers have to differentiate themselves in order to get attention. How do they do that? By having the hoppiest IPA, the most chocolatey Imperial Stout with weird ass flavours, and sourest sours.

The variety is nice, after all I don't want to drink macro lagers exclusively, and the sort of guy that just wants that will probably just reach for a bus or similar. As far as OP is concerned, lagers have a reputation as old reliable I guess. Some treat them as boring, probably, but at any rate a lot of people think of your bud, Coors, or Miller, or some of the smaller more regional or cheap brands like Yuengling or PBR. All great beers, and lager is more than that, but they'll have a bit of an uphill battle on that front.

[Anonymous No.14946681]

>>14946650
There are a few breweries here in Canada that do it right. Unibroue does their take on Belgian/Trappist styles, Dieu du Ciel does whatever they want with familiar touches, and Collective Arts do much of the same with some flagship touchstones.

[Anonymous No.14946965]

>>14946681
Canada has plenty of great beers and brewers, between Wellington, picaroon's, unibroue, mcauslan, plenty to be had. My only complaint is that the provincial borders are very effective at keeping smaller brewers from distributing stuff to other provinces. I miss a good few beers from Ontario that you just can't get up in NB, but even without legislature effectively segregating markets, plenty of tiny breweries just don't have the means to project that far anyways.

[Anonymous No.14946968]

>>14946965
Sorry, double posting, dieu du Ciel and collective arts are also great.

[Anonymous No.14947024]

>>14944801
Who are you trying to impress? This is an anonymous board full of 30 year old boomers

[Anonymous No.14947150]

>>14946965
If you're ever in Kingston, hit up Stone City Ales... their test batches are some of the best tasting things I've ever put in my mouth.

[Anonymous No.14947165]

>>14945592
>>14945745
in bongland lagers are wholesale associated with fizzy chemical adjunct beer. in america people tend to either fall into one camp or the other, but in other countries things aren't so simple.

[Anonymous No.14947202]

>>14944940
Because I'm not a disgusting, 40 year old decrepit loser on /ck/?

[Anonymous No.14948333]

>>14947150
Will do, and if you're in Fredericton check out picaroon's, if you're in Moncton look at pumphouse.

[Anonymous No.14948652]

>>14948333
Picaroon's is definitely on the list next time I'm out East. I actually hit the Pumphouse Brewpub on tour with my band a few years ago - lunch before a gig... had some drunken ass come sit at our table right after the beers arrived and call us a bunch of gay narcissists. Good beer, interesting company lol.

[Anonymous No.14949136]

>>14948652
>called us a bunch of gay narcissists
Dear god that's funny. I remember chilling out once in downtown Moncton this summer, and some teens with hair dyed all kinds of colours were planted on a bench in front of a bank with a bunch of signs saying "Black Lives Matter". Random hobo walks up and says something to the effect of "I know why you're doing this, you love sucking on BIG BLACK NIGGER COCKS! THAT'S WHY"

I was hanging out on a cafe patio, so I just walked over and told the guy to mind his own business if he wasn't going to keep it civil, but dear god it was silly.

[Anonymous No.14949148]

>>14948652
also, same guy, sorry for double posting twice, I'm just day drunk desu, but what's the band? I wouldn't mind checking it out.

[Anonymous No.14949229]

>>14941408
It's mostly to do with it being hard to find lagers that aren't said macrobrews for most people so they immediately fuck I don't knowwhat I was typing nevermin

[Anonymous No.14949314]

most American lagers fucking suck

[Anonymous No.14950766]

>>14949314
>most American lagers fucking suck
Only if you go by volume sold to define most. If you look at individual lager offerings, most fall in the good to really good range.

[Anonymous No.14950776]

drinking this right now

[Anonymous No.14952447]

>>14944801
they are ok in glass bottle