Plenty of new styles of ale have been showing up on the scene recently. Barrel aged ales, wildly fermented ales and a myriad of hop-bombs to entice the beer hunters out there. Experimental styles seem to generating a lot of intrigue, but for flavor and balance, be sure to stop by and give your old friends, the lagers, a visit once in a while.

Here are a few to revisit or try the next time you’re in the mood for a crisp, clean quaff. As far as pale lagers go, treat yourself to the Imperial Lager (91 points) from Lion Brewery Ceylon in Sri Lanka. An incredible lager to spend some time enjoying, considering its ABV weighs in at 8.8 percent. To amp it up a bit, invite some of your favorite curry dishes to the party. If the occasion is game day, and you need a great session brew to pair nicely with some homemade chili, try the lager from River Horse Brewery Lager in New Jersey (87 points).

Many brands these days are calling themselves pilsners. It is, after all, the most widely replicated style. Buyer beware: many in reality are watered down versions of the classic. Here are a few that will give a taste of true pilsner perfection. Zatec Bright Lager (90 points) from the Czech Republic, the home of pilsner, is highly drinkable and well balanced. Germany’s Paulaner Brauerei (88 points) brews another fine example of the style. Even Scotland has shown us an interesting take from the Atlas Brewery: Latitude Highland Pilsner (90 points) is soft on the palate and highly thirst quenching. Try any of these brews with some encased meats and hard cheeses at your next session with friends.

When fall rolls around, many breweries offer fine examples of malty Oktoberfest beers to grace the autumnal celebrations. From Germany, try Hofbrähaus München Oktoberfest (92 points) or Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest (90 points) as benchmarks for the style. Upland Brewing’s Oktoberfest Bavarian-Style Lager (84 points) from Indiana is a great example of the influence the classics have had on an American brewer: a big, roasty malt bomb with some warming qualities as well. Wash down some roasted chicken or pork with some spätzle on the side with any of these fest beers.

Dark lagers, or dunkels are personal favorite. Hirter Morchl from Austria (96 points), with its perfect balance, is a must-try for any fan of the style. Hofbrähaus München Dunkel (93 points) is also welcome to the session. If you are in the mood to seek out a domestic example, definitely keep your eyes open for Bastone Brewery’s Munich Dunkel Lager from Michigan (90 points): you will be rewarded with excellence. Try a dunkel with a liverwurst sandwich if you’re feeling adventurous.

Lastly, explore the doppelbocks, the dark and mischievous side of the lager coin. Salvator Doppelbock from Paulaner (93 points) was my introduction to the style many years ago and still a personal favorite. For a fun combo, pairing try it first with some braised pork-belly and then, for dessert, some crème brûlée: you’ll experience just how dynamic and complex this beer style really is.

A handful of classics and a few interpretations of the various styles rounded out this last World Beer Championships. Many thanks to the brewers and judges who participated in such an extraordinary event. Cheers!

Plenty of new styles of ale have been showing up on the scene recently. Barrel aged ales, wildly fermented ales and a myriad of hop-bombs to entice the beer hunters out there. Experimental styles seem to generating a lot of intrigue, but for flavor and balance, be sure to stop by and give your old friends, the lagers, a visit once in a while.

Here are a few to revisit or try the next time you’re in the mood for a crisp, clean quaff. As far as pale lagers go, treat yourself to the Imperial Lager (91 points) from Lion Brewery Ceylon in Sri Lanka. An incredible lager to spend some time enjoying, considering its ABV weighs in at 8.8 percent. To amp it up a bit, invite some of your favorite curry dishes to the party. If the occasion is game day, and you need a great session brew to pair nicely with some homemade chili, try the lager from River Horse Brewery Lager in New Jersey (87 points).

Many brands these days are calling themselves pilsners. It is, after all, the most widely replicated style. Buyer beware: many in reality are watered down versions of the classic. Here are a few that will give a taste of true pilsner perfection. Zatec Bright Lager (90 points) from the Czech Republic, the home of pilsner, is highly drinkable and well balanced. Germany’s Paulaner Brauerei (88 points) brews another fine example of the style. Even Scotland has shown us an interesting take from the Atlas Brewery: Latitude Highland Pilsner (90 points) is soft on the palate and highly thirst quenching. Try any of these brews with some encased meats and hard cheeses at your next session with friends.

When fall rolls around, many breweries offer fine examples of malty Oktoberfest beers to grace the autumnal celebrations. From Germany, try Hofbrähaus München Oktoberfest (92 points) or Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest (90 points) as benchmarks for the style. Upland Brewing’s Oktoberfest Bavarian-Style Lager (84 points) from Indiana is a great example of the influence the classics have had on an American brewer: a big, roasty malt bomb with some warming qualities as well. Wash down some roasted chicken or pork with some spätzle on the side with any of these fest beers.

Dark lagers, or dunkels are personal favorite. Hirter Morchl from Austria (96 points), with its perfect balance, is a must-try for any fan of the style. Hofbrähaus München Dunkel (93 points) is also welcome to the session. If you are in the mood to seek out a domestic example, definitely keep your eyes open for Bastone Brewery’s Munich Dunkel Lager from Michigan (90 points): you will be rewarded with excellence. Try a dunkel with a liverwurst sandwich if you’re feeling adventurous.

Lastly, explore the doppelbocks, the dark and mischievous side of the lager coin. Salvator Doppelbock from Paulaner (93 points) was my introduction to the style many years ago and still a personal favorite. For a fun combo, pairing try it first with some braised pork-belly and then, for dessert, some crème brûlée: you’ll experience just how dynamic and complex this beer style really is.

A handful of classics and a few interpretations of the various styles rounded out this last World Beer Championships. Many thanks to the brewers and judges who participated in such an extraordinary event. Cheers!

The qualities needed for exportation are one of the many factors that shape certain styles. Because of the expense of packaging, shipping, handling and markup, it generally makes sense to ship off your best beer, so export products have long had a reputation as superior products. In the old days, the voyage itself was a factor, too, as heat, time and jostling have a negative impact on all beer, but less so with a stronger beer. And guess what? This is still true today. A good deal of the everyday European lager we get in the United States is unfresh, at best, when it hits our lips. It doesn’t seem so bad until you go, say, to the Prague and partake of the golden nectar gushing everywhere, or suckle kellerbier straight from a zwickel* in any ol’ Bavarian ratskeller. You know. We get an approximation, nothing more.

All of which is pretty good motivation for brewing your own. But if you’re relentless about tasting everything you can get your hands on, you run into some European lagers that seem to make the trip with a little more aplomb. The most famous of the export lagers, Dortmunder, barely exists in its homeland any more, but several U.S. craft breweries brew tasty versions. I’ve recently been fascinated by Polish lagers that come in a progression of strengths from five percent all the way up to about nine. How do you say “rocket fuel” in Polish? While the strong ones are very good by the standards of malt liquor, my preference is for the ones about six or six-and-a-half percent, historically the classic export beer strength. And glory hallelujah, most of them come with readable date codes!

Export-strength beers exist in Bavaria as well, but pay attention as this is confusing. The old coppery märzen beers, brewed at the end of the winter brewing season, were a little stronger to over-weather the hot summer season, and of course gained worldwide fame as the beer of the Oktoberfest, Munich’s great beer festival. Of late, public taste has been insistent on paler and paler beers, and brewers can only stick to tradition as longs as it sells, which means many Oktoberfest beers are more golden than amber these days. Some brewers have begun offering a classic märzen alongside the modernist Oktoberfest. Others in and out of Munich have started selling golden export-strength beers, typically under the designation spezial (not to be confused with a brewery of that name in Bamberg). Clear enough?

Expert Export

So if you needed justification for a strong, pale Bavarian lager, there it is. But, as always, we’re just looking for something that tastes great, suits the season and makes our friends and us really happy. Export does the job. More malt means bigger flavor, which means you can pile on the hops and still have balance. Lagering means a clean, smooth flavor. You can brew these as simply stronger versions of any pale lager you choose: the austere crispness of a German pils, the sweet ‘n’ spicy floweriness of a Czech pilsener, or the malty goodness of a Munich-style helles. Those recipes are well known and available everywhere. Just bump the quantities of everything up by about twenty percent. You can go further, but then the beer turns into something else.

For our recipe, we’re going to Poland, a country that has long had close and complex relationships with the other lager regions in Europe. The beers there are somewhere between Czech and German-style pilseners, but with a very slight rustic coarseness about them, which I personally find charming. Poland has several hop growing regions in the southern half of the country. The classic variety, Lublin, is named for the largest of these cultivation areas, shares parentage and some aromatic qualities with the Czech Saaz. The other variety available through homebrew channels is Marynka, a moderately high alpha hop (9%) with a clean bitterness and a powerful aroma Michael Jackson described as “…cedary, rooty, almost licoricelike…” Sounds like the start of a recipe to me. We’ll be using a proportion of U.S. six-row malt for a slight grainy bite, along with a little Vienna for a honeyed golden maltiness.

Water is always important, but in a pale bitter beer it can be night and day. Hard, alkaline (carbonate) water should never be used—the carbonate content should be about 60 ppm or less. Totally soft water isn’t good either, as the mash really needs some calcium to help it get going. Normally, a beer of this type would use calcium chloride as opposed to calcium sulfate as the calcium source. Unfortunately, water chemistry is too complex to deal with right here, so you may have some homework to do before you brew.

Note that lager brewing requires plenty of good healthy lager yeast and controllable cool temperatures, which means, for most of us, fermenting in a refrigerator. The fermentation should start out at about 38 °F (3 °C) for the primary, then several weeks at about 50 °F (10 °C) for conditioning. Don’t forget a diacetyl rest, a few days at cellar temperatures towards the end of conditioning to allow the buttery diacetyl to reabsorb into the yeast.

When the beer is finally ready, you can pour a cold one into a tall glass and enjoy the delightful aromas of malt and hops from a far-off land. Bon voyage!

*Small tap on a large aging tank