Tasting Beers Live: Lessons Learned Part Three

#4: Good lager is where you find it

You’ve just walked from one end of the National Exhibition Centre to the other, both halves seemingly in different postcodes. You’ve got a throat dryer than the Atacama. You’ve free access to a fridge chock full of beers – Trappist ales, Belgian bruins, double IPAs. What do you satiate that itching thirst with?

Lager, of course.

Nothing – and I do mean nothing – is as refreshing as a cold lager on a parched palate. Those flavours you’d usually savour in a hoppy beer would be too sticky. Maltiness would just clag the gap left where your tonsils were whipped out. You need something crisp, something cold.

We were pouring samples of two great lagers. Moritz is a clean, soft Spanish pils sprinkled with Saaz. Rothaus Tannenzäpfle is a South German pils with echoes of pine needles; there’s a herbal edge to its sweet malt base. I loved them both and drank them deeply all day.

There’s an awful lot of shit lager in the world. But there’s some well made, carefully crafted, thoroughly enjoyable examples out there too.

Remember – pils is not a four-letter word.