BEAR-ly Getting Started 7.2 - Pilsner

Opening this episode, we highlight the state of Young Lion Brewing, who is the feature brewery. We talk Pilsners. Czech, German and American are just some of the varieties out there. Did you know that the water table plays heavily into the distinct profiles of beer?

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Transcript

The Buffalo Brews podcast, we continue our talk about loggers. Let's talk. Let's talk. Yes, we were. We were in a virus Steiner, the W because we were just joking about getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. But the next we're just trying to pronounce it. Not this one. This one's young lion. It's easy to pronounce unless I'm pronouncing it wrong. It's fun. It's fun. Shine. Yeah. Young Lion. You know, the Kings of Lyon. The W is pronounced V in German and we were just playing around with our next brewery after Young Lion. But we're pulling in the reins. We're coming back stateside. I always, especially with these podcasts in my class, if I do a German class, it's all German imports. If I do a styles class, you know, I typically am like, we're talking about the style, not so much the country, the style. And then there's the interpretations and I always try to grab what I think is a very well made interpretation of the style. So I am grabbing Young Lion. So we have next up, we have Young Lions Pilsner and they kept it simple, just Pilsner, nothing fancy. They have a very clean, crisp logo and they're a very clean, crisp brewery. There's some good news and bad news and we're talking about them and I mean, some people know already, but Young Lion is from Canandaigua or was from Canandaigua. So their brewery and tap room, which was right on the lake, a beautiful little tap room is no more. Other half came in and bought the assets or basically the location and the equipment. But K2 Brothers bought the brand and a female owned brewery. You're talking that there is multiple owners. I knew that there was kind of one that was a lot of heart and soul behind it. And I do believe she is still on board with K2 and being a part of it. And K2 bought the brand and some recipes. So basically Young Lion will live on and they are brewing, K2 is brewing some Young Lion brands. So we'll definitely see, you know, I doubt that they're going to stop making this Pilsner and a couple other of their staple year round beers. And then I think they're doing one or two seasonals and one or two in just one off beers. So we'll still see Young Lion and I don't think they're changing much about the appearance. I think the brand is just under the K2 portfolio now and we're seeing that with quite a few different breweries with some consolidation. Strong philosophy, women owned and veteran owned. So they have a nice history. So it's good that they're still involved. Yes, absolutely. So now we're actually going to try a Pilsner. And some people think Pilsner and Lager are synonymous. And, you know, I always bring up this dated reference because I remember just taking it on the SAT or IQ test, whatever. But there was the Snarfles, all Snarfles are Barfles and some Barfles are Darfles. So what does that mean about Snarfles and Darfles? What in the Dr. Seuss are you talking about? I know. I just remember that question. And I just, there was like six of them and it just, it just goes back to mathematics and subsets and these family trees. So the easiest way to say it is all Pilsners are Lagers, but not all Lagers are Pilsner. Pilsner is down the branch a little bit on the family tree. So it is a Lager, okay. Bottom fermented with Lager yeast, cooler temperatures. However, Pilsner and Czech Republic, Pilsen is the town, city, municipality. If it's a Pilsner, it's from Pilsen. And it's an Appalachian actually. So overseas, you know, in Eastern Europe there, you don't call it a Pilsner if it doesn't come from Pilsen. So you know, I don't want to go too off topic because we're barely getting started. But that's why you see the, the German Pils is just P-I-L-S versus a Pilsner because they're basically paying homage and respecting the fact that the Czech Republic or, you know, at the time, what is the Czech Republic now, Pilsen developed and, you know, owns the credit of the Pilsner. So we went from a dark beer, Dunkel, to not what we would say is a super light beer by today's terms. But you know, we have to go back to this, I believe it was 1842 actually, Pilsner Urkel. So Pilsner Urkel, Urkel meaning the original. So the original Pilsner. Basically, the history, the location, everything was going right for Pilsner Urkel. They have very soft water in Pilsen, which allows for the harsh like hoppy flavors from hops. They're, they don't, they don't come out as harsh. Harder water is more suited for darker beers. So a lot of, you know, that's why like London, England had their porters and Dublin, Ireland's got a lot of hard water. So that's why the Stoughton porters were big there. But in Pilsen, the soft water just made that Pilsner and lighter beer because the lighter beer doesn't have as much acidity because the malt, there's more acid in the darker malts. So it didn't balance the pH as well as the darker beers. So having soft water meant that when you hopped a lighter beer, it didn't come across as harsh. And the Daniel Wheeler's roasting drum, which I brought up in the last episode, that was now commonly used. And it was a practice that the English were using for their pale malt. And that's where the Germans kind of picked it up from. Some, some brewers and some people that were learning from English pale ales kind of brought that idea and technology with them and said, hey, we can roast these malts at a much lower, longer temperature to get these lighter Pilsner malt now as the base malt. So it is a much more subtle cracker like flavor than toasty dark bread. So that was one large factor. Kind of got lucky with the terroir of that soft water. But then also glassware was just becoming much more readily available. It was, you know, kind of something left to the nobles and people with a little bit more expendable income. When you were just happy to have a beer in your ear, in your possession, you were drinking a lot of them were drinking out of earthen mugs, whether that was clay or it was leather with some sort of tree sap on the inside to make it impermeable. They just took what they could that would hold it outside of their hand. And I'm sure some people were drinking out of their hand when they could. But a lot of times you would just buy a beer by the bucket and then you would just put it in your storage and, you know, or you'd fill a cup up because, you know, buying a bucket of beer was literally a bucket of beer and people just dip their cup in it, fill it up and then send someone down to go get another bucket of beer. We can go get whatever varieties, whatever types and whatever quantity we want. Back then it was like you got your bucket of beer and it was a commodity for you and it was your property. Yeah. And try not to spill it. So I didn't care what kind of glass. But now, you know, glass is almost synonymous with cup, but glass meaning, you know, clear glass. When that came out, people started paying attention to what the beer looked like. And, you know, the Pilsner was just such a brilliantly clear, light colored beer that it was kind of like, you know, when you strike gold, just like, oh, wow, you know, humans have always kind of been fascinated by gold and this bright, brilliant, clear, golden beer with very crisp, clean flavors. And it just took the world by storm. And, you know, you have pale lagers, it's basically pale, amber and dark lagers. We were drinking a dark lager, but pale lagers have taken over the world. That is what we think of when we think of yellow beer. However, it's much different than, you know, a craft Pilsner and a craft pale lager than a mass-produced adjunct lager. And we'll talk about that because we're going to be doing one of those in our series this time around. So I'll save that for there. So Young Lion Pilsner, this is probably one of their flagship beers. Get a nice little, oh, yeah, perfect little can opening there. Czech lagers, they do fall a little bit more on the amber side, not so much like an amber ale, but definitely darker than what you're used to when you're pouring an American lager. American lagers are very light yellow. Almost some of them are straw in color. And if we take a look at this one, you know, we are definitely a bunch of shades lighter than our Dunkel, but we are definitely darker than yellow here. This is kind of actually the room we're sitting in is actually called Old World Gold. But if you ask me, it's just mud brown in here. But this is kind of like Adobe hut. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's almost like clay, you know, earthy. So this this to me is a very dark gold with just a drop of copper in it. But we're definitely not yellow here. We're definitely in between the spectrum of yellow and brown, but so light brown that it looks more like yellow with a dose of copper. And it's not so much amber because I don't get a ton of red in it. Right. Whereas that Dunkel had a little bit more red undertones. So let's let's think about what we're going to drink again here before we have the taste of it. So lighter roast. So to me, it should be more of like cracker, white bread or white bread crust at the most because it is a little darker, but it's not going to be that toasted Dunkel that we just had. And then again, we know it's a lager, OK, because pilsners are lagers, but not all lagers are pilsners. But pilsner is kind of quintessential in the fact that they use one of the noble hops from the Czech Republic, the Saz hop or Sazer hops, if you talk about them kind of in plural, I think there. And then this beer is a little bit more ABV 5.2, but still pretty much your standard ABV. We went from a 4.8 to a 5.2 and Czech style pilsners are a little bit more full bodied and you get a little bit more IBU and a little bit more bitterness than your traditional American lager. Which just completely killed my sheet here with all my information. All right. Well, there's higher ABV, fuller body than American pilsner. Yeah. And then and then the 5.2. So there you go. You got it. Check, check, check. It's good. And it's check, check, check. Check lager. And there you go. All right. So the difference between some of the German beers and we'll go into it when we talk about the Helles, Germany being a larger area than the Czech Republic, there was kind of North Germany, South Germany. So the northern Germans came out with the German pils and then the Bavarians, which were like the last. Why did you roll your eyes when you said that? That's my namesake. Trust me, I love me some Bavaria. But the Bavarians, you know, like a good Italian, nice, hardheaded. It's like Rundstein and Mottrenzel. There you go. Yeah, they you know, they were the last to just kind of say, all right, we'll just become a part of the entire thumbprint of Germany. But there are a lot of Bavarian culture specific items. One of the things is they're like, OK, well, we can't call it a pilsner. We don't want to call it a German pils because we're brewing a different beer than the north. So they and this is our segue into the next one is they came up with the Helles. So we'll talk about the Helles more with the next episode because we'll be drinking a Helles. That's right. But that's kind of the foray of Czech Republic into Germany. And then, you know, our last beer, when we're bringing it home literally to America, we'll talk about how it all kind of came full circle until we got to the American lager, because the American style lager is kind of, you know, that's the one that's truly when you think Budweiser, when you think yellow fizzy beer, it's the American pale lager that has been mass produced, but has since in the last decade or two have a much more craft approach to it. So without further ado, let's take a couple of let's let's do a cheers and then a sniff and a sip. That's right. Last series, we forgot some cheers in the beginning, but we made sure we're not going to do that again. It's bad luck. You know, we got to drink beers for seven years if you don't cheers. Seven years of bad luck if you don't. I always make up stuff with this. My wife, she got mad at me because she just laughed at me because she flushed the toilet before I got in the shower. And I was like, you know, you can't take a shower if you flush the toilet, you can't take a shower for an hour. She's like, what are you talking about? Shower for an hour? I was like, yeah, that's how it goes. Shower for an hour. But I make up things all the time, you know, and I drop a beer can inside. I won't open it for thirty five years. There you go. Right. Put in a time capsule. That's right. So not not too much of aroma that the sweetness of that dunkle kind of wafted its way a little bit easier. This one. Definitely not as much sweetness, and it comes across a little like almost oaky where it's got this kind of slight vanilla, like almost like it was aged in a wood barrel, not necessarily a bourbon barrel like everything, but it's got that. You might be right on that. The earthy kind of oak type of aroma to it. Yeah. And that, you know, if we think about, you know, what are grains? Grains are just grass and what's grass? But a baby little tree, you know, it's all just as grass grows, it gets more woody. And as the barley kernels, I think they're kernels as the barley seeds kernels come about, they get a little bit more of that woods like woodsy kind of taste and flavor. And then you do get that sharp little bit of bitterness here. OK, that's that the noble hop where it's a little bit more. You know, it's not so much citrusy. It's definitely got some just pure IBU bitterness to it. But then it does have like a little like kind of perfumey, a little bit more of a kind of like refined bitterness than just this like biting into a pine tree or pine cone or grapefruit pith that we'll get from, you know, those quintessential American hops. So here's another one. Could drink a few of these, but I actually think the Dunkel would be more sessionable. I agree. Mainly, yeah, just mainly because there's a little bit more bitterness in this. And what bitterness does is it does help balance and cleanse the palate. But usually bitter beers tend to drink in a little bit more because to they finish drier. Right. The other one finished a little bit less dry, a little sweet. And this, since it finishes drier, it does make me want to sip again. You know, it does make me want to have a little bit more. But even though this is lighter, this is where, you know, some of the common misconceptions come about. It's a lighter beer. But to me, this is a much more powerful beer on my palate than that Dunkel. It's got a lot more bitterness that's at least perceived because perceived bitterness is different than actual IBU because the more original gravity and final gravity and sweetness in a beer balances with that bitterness. So some could have a higher IBU, but if it's got a little bit more alcohol, it tends to balance a little bit in the perceived bitterness is actually less. Where here the IBUs might be similar, but the perceived bitterness, because it's drier and not as sweet, it tastes more, it's perceived more bitter. And I don't, I don't get a ton of those straight bread and cereal grain flavors. I get that hint of cracker, but it is kind of, I don't want to say dominated, but it's definitely overshadowed by the bitterness in the hop. Yeah. And I, I think Czech Pilsner, I think is far superior anyway to American Pilsner only because of that, that slight bitterness that goes with it. You don't get that in a lot of American Pilsners. A lot of Pilsners will be super clean and okay, it's a good drinking beer. But yeah, these, I like, I like the, the use of hops here. You said this was the Saz that was the main component? Yes. I mean, and that's kind of just speaking broadly about, I mean, I'm sure that Young Lion is using Saz hops, especially if they're calling this a Czech style Pilsner, but that is what's quintessential with the Czech lager and the Czech Pilsner. Yeah. So some of the American Pilsners I've come across, they use the Saz hops and I don't know what the difference in the style when it, you know, like the types of grains that they would use. But I don't get the same mouth feel as I do from this. It's just, it just doesn't resonate the same way as a Czech style does for me. Yeah. The Czech style definitely is a little bit more full bodied, a little bit bolder and when we talk about body, think about milk and you got your skim milk all the way up to your whole milk. So actually the Dunkel, again, misconceptions, right? It was a darker beer. You would think it'd be heavier. It actually felt a little lighter on the palate, a little bit closer to water, where this, you know, has a little bit more of a, you know, it's not quite a chew to it, but it's definitely got like a silkiness, a little bit more of a full bodied, you know, I'm not saying whole milk here, but, you know, we definitely went from that Dunkel if it was skim or 1%, we're definitely in the 2% category here. And it just kind of coats your mouth a little bit, leaves a nice little herbal perfume kind of bitterness and, you know, dry enough where you want to go in for another sip. And here's where it's another, I think a good dinner beer. However, you would pick totally different foods to go with this. It's, you know, it doesn't have that darker molasses-y kind of toasted character to it that would make me immediately think like grilled food. What this makes me think is like fried food. This is something where if it's like a schnitzel or even, you know, the Western New York fish fry or even chicken wings, to me, the fry aspect doesn't give you those toasted notes that open flame does, gives it kind of that crisp, you know, and if it's breaded or whatever, battered, and it's got that crunch to it. This, the crisp kind of, you know, this also had a little bit more carbonation to it. The carbonation and the bitterness here kind of cuts through that a little bit more so. And I would use this beer less to pair where it's kind of bridging the gap in similar flavors versus it's a very good beer to cut through some fat. And I would want to cut through like the fried, you know, like a fried shrimp. It would be great with this because, you know, it's not too heavy of a flavor. So it's not going to overpower the actual shrimp. But if you're, you know, dipping some shrimp into a sweet sort of, whether it's the Thai style or whatever you may be. Yeah. You're dipping in that like chili, sweet chili sauce. This will kind of cut through that. It cuts through the fried coating and same thing for a fish fry or for eating potatoes. You know, the fish and always comes with some coleslaw and tartar sauce and all those things. Like this nicely complements some of those basic flavors, but then cuts through it. As we drink more of it, it gets lighter and lighter because there's less body in the beverage here or less in the glass, I should say. And you see how this, you know, if I look at it now, I'm probably a third of where I started. And that where I said looked like a brown, you know, kind of like a copper dipped into yellow, I've gotten to kind of a golden now. I have a lot less density in my beer. The light is shining through. And as I lift it up, that's where I definitely see some more of those gold and yellow hues. And right now I went from kind of a very, very light brown, dark gold to just kind of more of a regular gold. And, you know, you could see where people would go and see this beer versus a Dunkel or a Schwarz beer or something that's cloudy. And it's like, wow, this is clear. This is bright. It looks good in the glass. It's got this easy drinking. The bitterness is there, but it's not harsh. So it kind of just, you know, checked a lot of boxes of what people were just, you know, didn't know they were looking for. And then once people had it and it started getting around and that's what, you know, good new styles do is it's the talk of the town. And then this town talks to that town. And next thing you know, it's sweeping the world. And people don't even want to call their beer Pilsner because they're stealing it from Pilsen. And, you know, that, like everything else kind of spawns, you know, if we're talking about the family tree, that is a new branch, right? Like we've gone from the darker beers and that was a branch that would, you know, continue to grow. Now we've kind of started a new branch in the lager tree and it's going to be the Pilsner branch or what comes from this Pilsner. And that is, you know, what we'll be talking about next. Yeah, well, we'll have to continue to tease this family tree. I actually wrote it back down on my sheet here because I know a while back we visited it and I made a couple of like, just toyed around with a couple of panels to see what something like that would look like. But I'm not sure that it would like, I think it would have to be a series where it's like, okay, so the first piece of the tree, where does it fit into the other pieces of the tree where the tree might actually become a puzzle of pictures by the time that we're all done. So, you know, it was just kind of an idea. I was right. There's a couple of posters out there and I've gotten some people that have bought me gifts. And when you're into beer, like I am, you know, you get, you get the tie with beer, you get socks with beer on it. And it's like, okay, thank you. I like Friday's where actually I work from home on Fridays, but my Thursday socks are always it's beer o'clock. There you go. Beer o'clock socks. Yeah, I like it. But one of the things, so we got me, you know, I was thinking this wasn't a good spot to put it up here, but it is, it's a diagram less than a tree, but I've seen some really good trees. You know, if you just do a Google search of the beer family tree and then click images, I'm sure you'll find a couple of good ones. But I think in the beginning I talked about, you know, everything's either lager or ale, except for that spontaneous. And it was cool. This one I did see, there was the lines that, you know, kind of bridge certain things. It was just very well thought out because there are some hybrid beers out there where it's a lager yeast, like the Kolsch, you know, Kolsch has gotten popular over the last decade. It was a great summer for Kolsch. Yeah. It's a great summer. Always seems like people just, they like the name Kolsch again, Kolsch coming from Cologne, Germany, Koln, K-O-L-N with like an umlaut in there somewhere. That's another appellation in Germany. You're not really allowed to call it a Kolsch unless it's from Cologne. But that's another one that, you know, uses a lager yeast, but is brewed like an ale. And then you've got some ales that are brewed like lagers and all sorts of interesting things. And when you see some of these family trees and diagrams, they do, it's interesting how they take a style and they find the right spot to put it on the tree where it is touching a little bit of the lager side and a little bit of the ale side, but then it's also underneath this. And it is cool. It's a fun little, you know, kind of activity or exercise to do when you're thinking about all the beer styles that are out there. And, you know, there's official beer styles from organizations. And then there's, you know, styles that kind of just come up by, you know, the local area because they need to, because it's a new beer and it's not quite this. It's not quite that. So it just needs its own name. And that's what we like to see because innovation just moves to new stuff for us to order a bucket of. I have created the labradoodle of beers. There you go. All right. So, yeah, then we have that we said at the very beginning of the episode, our next episode will be, you know, we're definitely going to test our German out for this next episode. So then in the meantime, okay, you go out, you get yourself a good old fashioned, authentic Czech Kolsch or Czech. Oh my gosh. Czech Pilsner. Kolsch only comes from Cologne. That's right. That's right. Need that tree. And then, but in the meantime, then in between time, you join us in a few weeks because we are barely getting started. I'm Jason and he is Craig. And we're going to finish. Well, actually, you're done and I'm going to finish this one here. Yeah, I got to put that one down. That's right. Cheers, my friend. Cheers.