Cook's Light Lager

Ever since Cook tasted my homebrew, he's been bugging me to make a light lager (his fave). I demurred, not really being into weak beers, but Paul kept on it. So a couple weeks back I said "fine, if you buy the ingredients I'll brew a light lager." Paul called my bluff, so here I am brewing a light lager.

This is not my beer label, but a label from the now-defunct F.W. Cook brewery in Evansville, Indiana.

First, let's get clear what makes a lager a lager: it's all about where the yeast eats the sugars in the wort, or the unfermented beer. Ales are "top fermented" (yeast in the top) and lagers are "bottom fermented" (yeast in the bottom). Although a lager is defined as a bottom-fermented beer, the word lager actually means "storeroom" in German.

And while we're at it, the word "Milwaukee" comes from the Algonquin "Mill-a-wau-kee," which means "the good land." But don't just take my word for it; here's aging rocker Alice Cooper with more.

Lagers are fermented at low temperatures (50-60 degrees Fahrenheit), and once they are all fermented, you store the beer in a fridge (close to 32 degrees Fahrenheit) for three weeks or so. That storage period is the "lagering" (yes, lager can be a verb, too). That is also why you can get "lagered ale." Lagered ale is a top-fermented beer (ale) that is stored (or lagered) for a few weeks before bottling.

Our friend Gregory has been wanting to see brewing in action for a while. So he gave me hand. Brewing mostly involves cleaning stuff and sitting around, which can be boring by yourself. Also, it really comes in handy to have a second pair of hands on deck. Thanks Gregory!

Brew day is almost never without event. First, I realized that I bought the wrong part hook-up for my garden hose, and I really didn’t want to hit the hardware store. So Gregory and I used duct-tap this time around, which worked fine. Second, I broke my hydrometer (which measures sugars in the beer). Hydrometers are made of glass, and this is probably the fourth one I’ve broken. The result, I don’t really know how much sugar is in this beer, and so I won’t know exactly how much alcohol is in it at the end.

Lagers present their own challenges to would-be homebrewers. First, you need to be able to keep that fermentation low. A lot of folks jerry-rig an old fridge and set it at 50-55 degrees Fahrenheit. Since I don’t have that luxury, I found that the old coal room in my basement keeps the beer chilly in the high 50s.

Second, every little flaw in a lager lights up like a Christmas tree. If you’ve ever had a new homebrewer’s first batch of brew, you probably noticed that it tasted just a little…off. This is because it's easier to hide homebrewing flaws in bigger, darker beers, which is why I recommend brewing stouts when brewing for the first time. But in a light lager, there is no place for those flaws to hide. 

Finally, you have to get that wort to really cool down right away. I normally pitch my yeast with ales when the beer is around 80 degrees. I added a garden hose attachment to my wort chiller (a copper coil) so that I could run water from my garden hose through it. This is high-tech stuff.

Here are the stats on the beer, in case you want to try your hand at what we're creatively calling "Cook's Light Lager":

Target OSG: 1.038

Target FSG: 1.01

Target ABV: 3.8%

Grain:

6lb Pilsen

1lb Light Munich

Hops: Tettnang hops (1 oz) (60 min), 1 Citra (10 min).

Yeast: 3470

Mashing in: 145-8F for 60m, Sparge 168.

Grain:

6lb Pilsen

1lb Light Munich

Hops: Tettnang hops (1 oz) (60 min), 1 Citra (10 min).

Yeast: 3470

Mashing in: 145-8F for 60m, Sparge 168. It is absolutely vital to this type of beer not to over-shoot the target temperature.

Cool the wort down to around 50–55 °F.

Enjoy!

-the Mugg