BEAR-ly Getting Started 7.4 - Light Lager

In the final episode of series 7, we discuss the unique light lager. Why is it a light lager and not a diet lager? What is the difference between 2-row and 6-row barley? What makes a quality brewery in today's market? Featuring Full Circle American Light Lager from Angry Chair Brewing of Tampa, Florida. Jason and Craig answer the question, "What is an Angry Chair?"

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Transcript

The Buffalo Brews podcast. Take it full circle. Absolutely. That's right. And by full circle, that means we have to Germany, we come back Western Europe, swing back out Germany, and then we dip it down into the panhandle. Correct. So we're kind of, you know, if we're talking about where the beers actually came from, we're doing a nice little spiral here. Top of a hostess cupcake there, I guess. Nice little loop-de-loops, nice little ribbon here. But if we think styles and we kind of just do a quick recap with this series, we started with a Dunkel, because historically that's, you know, the oldest style. And then now we're brewing, you know, the Dunkel and lager brewing in Germany kind of leads to the development or, you know, the mutation of the yeast that now we have lager yeast and, you know, these cleaner, crisper beers. So, you know, lager is a beer splits into basically lager and ales. Lager should have less of a, lager should have less yeast profile, less phenolics, less estuary notes, so less fruit spice. And then we went to Czech Republic where they started doing a little bit more pale and, you know, what was pale compared to the Dunkel was even lighter when we went to Bavaria, South Germany in the Helles. We had something very, you know, so now we're lighter colored beers, but we kept it around that 4.8, 5.2, that simple percentage. And now we're trying a beer called Full Circle. And, you know, it's just kind of serendipitous that it was named Full Circle, but it's how do we get back to America when we talk about styles, right? We're Germany, Czech Republic, Germany, now we are stateside. And we're in Tampa Bay with Angry Chair Brewing. I think they're a little bit more known for their big and bold stouts and pastry stouts and barrel-aged stouts. But I know you're going to bring up an IPA that you always remember. And the beer we're going to try is, you know, the farthest from what you would think of if you, you know, only had a beer from them. Right. It's a very, very light, light lager. So I'll leave it to you to bring up the beer. Yeah, just to get it out of the way, because I've only ever tried one beer from Angry Chair, obviously, and many years since they've been to Tampa and long before Angry Chair was a It's the first time they're really kind of, last like couple of months that you've been seeing them here distributed versus someone had to bring it home to you. Yeah. So my favorite beer from them is a Imperial New England Hazy that they have. And it's literally called the LAX JFK TPA DNE IPA. And so the Los Angeles, New York, Tampa, double New England IPA. That's what it's called. It's a mouthful of alphabet soup there. That's it. But yeah, they do. They're one of those breweries that they dabble in almost all styles. And each one they do, they do pretty well. You know, some are definitely bigger hits than others, but none of them seem to be huge flops. It's one of those breweries that you can trust. It's a destination brewery, right? If you're going to Tampa Bay, you should stop into Angry Chair. If you see their, you know, black and white or like almost black and silver labels, you should see what's being offered at your establishment. And you might be pleasantly surprised with the beverage you are holding in your hand. So let's talk a little bit about the style, how it came to be. Then we'll crack, we'll pour, we'll taste, we'll talk lagas for a little longer. And we'll have come full circle. So American light lager. So, you know, there's beers that have been on the timeline that we are jumping over because there are lots of beers in this family tree, let alone the branch of lagers that we've been doing here. But basically, you have immigrants coming into America. German immigrants, they're heading over. You know, a lot of them are going to be working the farms. They're going to be sowing the fields. And they really want their beer from back home. There's not a ton of beer going on in America. You know, we had our prohibition. America doesn't have a ton of history with beer. We have a huge beer culture now. It's one of the main beer cultures now. But, you know, we have not been brewing. We haven't even existed in 1040, let alone been brewing beers from 1040. A lot of the American styles are interpretations of other styles. But one of the biggest differences with American, let's just go with the grains. So barley that grew in America was six row barley, was much more abundant and easier to grow in our soil. So six row versus two row. If you, you know, take a look at some pictures, most of it is quintessential two row barley. And it really is kind of the stem or the stalk of the grass petal goes up. And then these seeds kind of grow in like a node that they're called. And they're just parallel on the two row. And since there's only two rows, they're a little bit more plump, a little bit more packed with the starch that you need to make beer. Whereas six row, there are basically like, instead of one and one being parallel, there's like a group of three and three parallel. So it kind of wraps around and you've got six little seeds. And they are growing up the center stalk there. And they don't have as much starch and they have a lot more protein to them. So proteins good in beer, but not a ton of protein. But what you really need to make the alcohol is the starch. So either you need a ton of six row barley. And then what ends up happening is you have too much protein for the beer. So now we have this like conundrum. So we've got barley, but it's not the right barley. So what do we do? That's where adjunct grains come in. And what's the word adjunct mean? Well, adjunct is a fermentable sugar that does not come from malted grain. So in America, there was also a lot of rice. So rice was one of the first things that they started to use. Because what's easy with rice is it has fermentable sugar that you can get from it, but it doesn't add a ton of flavor or body to the beer because it's almost 100% fermentable. Very similar to some of the sugars from like beets and what they use in a lot of Belgian brewing. So the beet sugar is almost fully fermentable. So, you know, some of their beers when they want higher ABV, but they don't want the beer to be too thick with residual sweetness, or they don't want it, you know. The other way to get a lot of sugar is just to add a lot more grain. And that makes it maltier and maltier. So instead of making it super heavy, you know, body wise and super malty, add some of this fermentable sugar and you have what's called an adjunct lager. So the first American lagers, they were using that six row barley and supplementing it with rice or adjunct grains to provide a little bit more of a, a little bit more sugar and reduce the amount of protein that's in the beer to be able to brew a little bit more. And it's a tougher process because they actually used one of the kettles. They use like an extra kettle called a rice cooker or a cereal cooker because it got a little bit more gummy. And it wasn't as easy because there's, it's just the way it breaks down when you're extracting the starch. And then when you're mashing and turning those starches into sugars for that yeast. So, you know, affects the process, affects the recipe. But what ends up happening is you have this very, very light flavored beer. And that works very well, especially when Miller Lite comes out with their light beer. Actually, light beers were diet beers first. And then they just kind of diet and diet sodas that lended itself more towards females. And they thought that it was a little too feminine to call it diet beer. So then they just started calling it light beer. Yeah, I didn't know it was ever called diet beer. I believe that's what I read at one point. And then Miller Lite was the first to market it. And they did market it as L-I-T-E Lite. And that's why it's kind of quintessential. You see some other people that use the L-I-T-E. But a light beer because it is very light in flavor. And then you've got now stuff like the ultras and the silvers and the premiums where you're trying to get it under 100 calories and less than X net carbs and for your health conscious people. But one of the things that you can expect from an American light lager is that it is almost akin to water. All right, we want something super crushable, super easy to drink. You know, this is light lager, both in color as well as in alcohol. I don't know. I don't know if Florida is one of the ones because I remember some of the heavier stouts that I had. I don't know if they have to list their alcohol on the cans. But I would guess that this is in the low fours when we go to try this. But I have this listed at three and a half. Three and a half. Now that's table beer territory. That's table beer. That is a light, light lager. So light in color because we're using very light grains, very lightly roasted. You know, we talked about Daniel Wheeler quite a bit. So not too much toasty flavor. As I'm talking, I'm going to go and crack open. We're not going to forget to cheers. We will not forget. Yes, the last of this series. And we don't want to end on a non-cheersing note. No, then we'd have to like series eight or whatever that becomes. You know, then we have suspended cheers. And then we're sending a precedent. And that's no fun. Not at all. So another thing we could have done is, but you know, we kept all these beers cold. Because that's another thing. Lager. Lagers with them being brewed at lower temperatures. We typically like them served at lower temperatures. It also suppresses even more any residual yeast derived flavors that would come about. So these beers are meant to be those cold. You know, that Dunkel maybe a little bit higher temperature. But the cold, just refreshing, straight from the cooler type beer. The Helles, even that Czech Pilsner from Young Lion. They could be those straight from the fridge. You know, we talked about letting some other beers and Cascales, especially just did the UK in a day where, you know, some beers are at 55 degrees. These are the beers that, hey man, if they come out at 38, 39 degrees and they just totally cool you down. That's kind of what American Light Lager is all about. If we were able to pour all of them and just look at the beautiful SRM. I mean, since lagers are more focused on the malt. Malt is basically what gives us the color in beer. So we have a nice, nice, just spanning spectrum of the SRM. This being on the very left or low end in color. We had the Helles, because this to me, this is lighter yellow. It's just as clear and crystal as the Helles was, but definitely a shade lighter. This is light, light gold. If not, it's a straw color. Straw, yeah. It's very light in color. Then we had the Helles, which was slightly darker, but still, you know, a yellow gold. And then we had your Czech Pilsner that was bordering copper, but still a very, you know, dark gold, light copper. And then Dunkel being like a chestnut, almost with a touch of red and ruby. Let's do a cheers, a couple of sniffs, and then a taste. And then we'll talk a little bit more. Super light. I mean, you know, you're not drinking water because it's not water. However, it also, when we talk about that Helles and it's got that, hey, this is that quintessential kind of beer, grain, malt, light malt, soda kind of flavor. To me, I'd probably actually double check myself to see if they used rice. I'm pretty sure this is rice, but it almost has that slight corn sweetness. Usually you see that in Mexican lagers. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was some corn in this grain bill as well. But considering it's marketed as American light lager, I'm going to say they used rice. But again, it's just providing that slight sweetness that doesn't have the grain flavor to it. It's just added sugar. And, you know, that's basically how you make sake is from the rice. And you see a lot of these breweries coming out with these rice lagers, like it's this huge new thing or it's like this big craft. And I'm like, you know, Budweiser's been doing it from day one. A local brewery that used to do a fantastic rice lager, rest in peace to Sato Brewing, they did an amazing rice lager. Yeah, they did a nice job. And Evan was the brewer there and I still work with him. And I'm glad he's still brewing because he makes some really good beers. Where did Evan end up? He's actually at Spotted Octopus right now. He was all over the joint. He does some consulting and helps some breweries open up. He was brewing, I think, at Pod City for a little bit. You know, I've never been to Pod City. You know, I've been there. I live in Williamsville, so Transit Road's not too far off. But I don't know if it's located there, if it's the one at Canal Side. Canal Side. Canal Side's got it. So I haven't been to them. I've had some of the Pod City Labs beer, but I have not been to Canal Side since pre-pandemic, I believe. Nope. I just, yeah, I don't go downtown as often anymore. And it's still under construction since 1947. So you know what I'm saying? There you go. You know what I'm saying? It's getting there. But when you drink this, this is, you know, at three and a half percent at, you know, light color usually leads to light flavor. And at light flavor, three and a half percent. This is your game day crusher. This is one of those. There's the word, crushable. It's crushed. Like you just, this is beer you drink, you know. We talk about the liters. This is gallons. You know, it's, at the end of the day, it's like, oh, how many gallons of beer did I drink? You know, that's only 128 ounces. So that's, you know, it's less than, less than five liters. But it's one of those beers that just goes down when it comes out ice cold. It's, it's just refreshing. And, you know, you would have people drinking this instead of water. Because remember, we, we've talked about this in many episodes, but beer was safer to drink than water because you know that it had to be boiled. So it was sterilized. But there'd be a lot of people that instead of drinking water, they're drinking this. And especially at three and a half percent, you're not going to get yourself in too much trouble. It's, it's, this is a, an American German style that has English characteristic of Moorish. Right. So this is that true full circle type of, we're just drinking beer to enjoy the beer. That's it. You bring up an interesting point talking about beer safer than water. And anytime that a pandemic or that happened back in yesteryear would happen, they would always go and blame the town brewery. Because it was your fault that everybody got sick. But we had to boil everything down. And yeah, that's, I just thought that was funny. I was just listening to the last episode that came out and you were bringing up about, it was actually Irish Red. I didn't listen to the one that came out today yet. But where there was, you know, a lot of people died from something, you know, a break, something that broke out from breweries. And they were thinking that, you know, Killian was involved. And I was like, most of the times, these are the people that you can hopefully trust. And, you know, one of the things about the craft beer movement and with there being so many different craft beers, because we were trying to talk about Young Lion and how it is no more. And, you know, one of the issues ends up being is, you know, breweries used to be a destination. There wasn't a ton of them, or your city or your town may have, you know, been in a state that had a few breweries. And then states started to have tons. And then forget about how many breweries in the state, how many breweries are in your municipality. And, you know, breweries are less traveled to, I think. You have people that when they travel, they're going to check out every brewery they can. That's how I go. It's like, all right, first, where am I sleeping? Second, where am I going to try a beer? I literally have a map on my phone that everything in Buffalo, everything through the Southern Tier, pretty much taken care of. There's a couple of oddballs out there that I haven't gotten to yet. You know, Gwanda Brewing still haven't had a chance to get down there. I forget that they open too. Yeah. So it's one of those things that people are going to continue to go to, but it is, hey, I'm going to check out this brewery. I'm going to probably check it out once because then there's a brewery that I like that's very close to my house. Yeah. So, you know, that makes the powerhouses even more powerful and the little guys have to have their following to survive. It's all niche. Yeah. Very niche. There's some great successes out there. I mean, Bree and I talk about on the Buffalo Brews podcast, we talk a lot about places like Beer Justice down in Arcade, very niche. Mystic Hills in East Concord, very niche. Because they have their following because you'd have to drive a long distance to get someplace else to be able to take it in. So I feel like the success is there, but if you don't embrace the town or unfortunately some places just don't make that great of a product, that's where they kind of get left behind. Sadly, I think that's either or the latter was the case, you know, like Marquis Brewing just it just didn't work out, you know, because you have four mile and four miles pretty, pretty proven then Marquis becomes to come in to be the number two. But, you know, it could be financial. It could be, you know, whatever reason that they couldn't. Yeah. Usually you find that the first year or two people are coming, they're just coming to check it out. But if they don't have something to come back to, whether it's your hospitality, you have a good food program. If you're not making stellar beer and all you have to offer is beer and there's someone else providing beer, you might not see people coming back and again and again and again unless they live next door or they're related to you. Yeah. But that's a that's a very true statement about niche. It's it's it that's a thing. Yeah. And it's I think we're going to go we're going to go through another little bit of consolidation where we're going to see some places. You know, I'm very proud that we're going to be celebrating our three year anniversary soon. You know, I've seen places open and close in the time that we've been open and I almost feel like I'm slightly getting into the old guard. I'm not, you know, but there's still plenty, plenty of people that do not know we exist. They come in like, oh, my God, you've been open three years. I'm like, yeah, you know, almost three years. But, you know, they think I'm brand new. And on the scheme of things, you know, we just had a beer that's almost a thousand years old. So that brewery. It wasn't brewed a thousand years ago. Let's just let's let that out there. The brewery is operating a thousand years ago. But yeah, when you're you're getting when you're coming close to your millennia and, you know, I'm talking about a three year anniversary, there's a vast difference there. But then you've got, you know, a lot you got like these three different tiers. You know, you've got these cultural icons that have been, you know, around for hundreds and hundreds of years. Then you've got that early 90s, kind of late 80s, early 90s. It was just that that graduating class. And then you've got the the early 2000s breweries. That was another little pop. But then that was also like the first kind of consolidation because things kind of really settled down for about a decade. And then the early 2010s, that's when we saw like another little push. It's a lot of places opening up, especially around here, like in the 2014, 15, 16 kind of timeline. So a ton of people that are coming in on their six, seven, eight year anniversaries, some that have been around for a while, 10. You got Flying Bison, you know, being one of the longer running establishments that's broken the 20 year mark. But, you know, a lot of our places, it's like, OK, our one year anniversary or two year anniversary. And, you know, you wanted to see how many are going to make it to those 20 years. And then it also gives you, you know, you have to pay your respect to those that have been around for that long. And they're continuing to make new beers and stuff like Wachen Stefana, where they still are just making about five beers versus a place that could be out for 20, 30 years. And they've made over a thousand different beers in their tenure. So there is something to be said about the worldwide distribution. I actually meant to ask you in the last episode if this was legit, like made and imported from from Bavaria or if they have a an American contingent, you know, because I know that I believe that's from the packaging that that comes in, because usually when it's made in America, you'll see a different like the four packs that this come in. It's definitely more Euro than American. OK, so I do believe this one is imported still. It is one of those ones where, you know, could be just made in some. So imported. So it is imported into South Carolina. So it comes from South Carolina via import. And then that's for the Wachen Stefana. So would we say then that that's what do you say, made in Bavaria, then tanked and then brought into South Carolina? Or is that it? I just think there's a hub in South Carolina. They're the ones that are they're basically distributing this. So, you know, I get this beer from a distributor, but that distributor is not receiving truck loads from Bavaria. They're receiving them from South Carolina. OK, so South Carolina is importing it, warehousing it. You know, at least that's that's that's what I believe to be the case. They're the they're the big ones to get it over. And then you get it from there. So it's kind of like the American or the East Coast hub for this. And there may be some all the way up and down the East Coast. And that's that's how we how we get it here at Magic Bear. It goes from from Bavaria to there to here. Angry Chair is actually getting shipped via, you know, tractor trailer from Tampa Bay. So this is this is almost direct from brewery, but it goes to a distributor I get out of Rochester. And then, you know, so we're getting this pretty fresh, the Angry Chair. When you try some of their stuff, you know that it's it's been brewed not too long ago. Give them a little prop here because they ask the question, what's an angry chair? It says everybody has an angry chair, even if you think you don't. You do trust us. This comes from their website. You don't like sitting in traffic after a long day at the office. That's your angry chair. You can't stand listening to people talk while chewing on their food. That's your angry chair. You have one spot of hair on your head that just stands up all crazy, no matter how much you put into it to get it to lay down. Then you want to rip it all out. Angry chair. Angry chair. Yeah, I do think I think it's a music lyric somewhere, too. But that's for another day because, you know, we're barely going to start and I leave those those, you know, I stick to the beer and I like what you bring to to round things out with your knowledge of, you know, your your research of these breweries. So, you know, the way it works is I I basically send a picture to Jason and I say, hey, this is what I think the next series should be. And he's all, sounds good. No, I'm just kidding. And Jason's like, I'll I'll start researching some stuff. That's right. You know, what's nice is sometimes I don't have all the answers and he's got some papers over here and I always feel ill prepared. But I'm like, hey, I brought the beer. I like to bring those old facts, you know, that just those weird things, like when we were talking about the Hellas and all the things that come along with it. I mean, there's just so many things about, you know, you know, foods and then Bavarian cold meal. And then this what was it? The bratzelt, but it's basically Bavarian charcuterie. No, I love it. I love it because then it's also like, oh, I don't know what I'm going to say next. And usually you pick up on that and you're like, all right, I got a little I got a little factoid here and I love it. Yeah. Well, we get we were to that famous part where we were talking about the all these things are kind of they're kind of manifestations of the education available at Magic Bear. You've got classes, you know, you were talking about a few episodes ago how you had to put in a double October and because the because so many people wanted in on it, you had to put a second one together for it. So you got education classes that take place here at Magic Bear. Tell the people where you're located and how they can find you on and follow you on the socials to find out where all the great education is. All right. So when it comes to virtually, I try to make it easy. You know, it's Magic Bear beer and we don't need the seller. It's where Magic Bear and we have beer. But if you go to Magic Bear Beer dot com, you can check out the website. And from there, you can get to our online market to purchase anything that we sell or any of the tickets to any of our classes. And it also gives you a nice little synopsis of what we do and offer here at Magic Bear. Magic Bear Beer is also our Instagram handle. And then you can find us with Magic Bear Beer seller on Facebook. So those are the main ways that you can find us on the interwebs. If you want to come visit us with your own two feet, two eyes and your palate. We are located at 799 Seneca Street. We are in the Millrace Commons where Sweet Bee or right under the lounging bear sign. You just come in, you'll see the purple and white logo and you'll know that sexy bear, sexy bear, the good old Magic Bear Beer seller. And we are here. We offer two classes monthly. But we we love talking beer. Anytime you're here, pull up a chair. Hopefully, it's not an angry chair. Hopefully, you just are drinking an angry chair. Right. We have comfy chairs here and, you know, love to talk beer. Love to do just we just enjoy enjoying ourselves. So whether it's with beer, wine, cider, seltzer, meat, or even non-alcoholic beverages, we just want to have a good time, a good conversation and a good place to do it. So come check us out or, you know, continue. And we appreciate all those that listen to this podcast. We we appreciate your audio support. That's I love it. That that's perfect. That's perfectly put. And it's Bill's season right now. So you have some fun new Bill's merch. And like in my line of sight here is your full zip fleece that's there. And then you have the the beer can style. Is that what that's called? Yep. Glasses in the bills. It's got the red. It's basically a Bill's blue bear with the red buffalo stripe. Yes, we I came up with that with our buffalo by a billion class where we do a class where we put Western New York beers and we blind taste them against, you know, beers of other city, states or countries. And someone's like, man, you need to put that on a Tshirt. And we started throwing it on things here and there. So, yeah, we're we're full on into Bill's season. So we're a good place to watch the game. Definitely got some cool merchandise. We try to offer a little bit of everything here at Magic Bear and hope that you find a way to enjoy us any which way we've just discussed. All right. Then that's that is the the hat that we put on. That is series seven. And I look forward to putting our heads together to see what we come come up with for season eight or if you just send me a picture and say, what do you think about that? That's yeah, that's where we usually it just hits me. It's like or it's what I have on the shelf. I'm like, oh, man, I just got a bunch of X, Y, Z in and that'll make a good series. So I throw it there. But, you know, when we first talked about it all the way to here, you know, we've broken the 30 episode mark. That's right. You know, I definitely know I want to break 50 and I hope we get to 100. Yeah. But, you know, one beer at a time because we're barely getting started. Barely getting started. We have 32 episodes and follow us at the Buffalo Brews podcast. All 32 episodes are available there and we will see you soon. Cheers, my friend. Cheers.