by Ale Clayson

Pre - Prohibition style Lager a/k/a Classic American Pilsner is the brew that our forefathers used to quaff in the days before The Volstead Act of 1919 - Prohibition. The late 1800’s and early 1900’s saw a major influx of German immigrants. Many of whom were brewers, who brought with them their production techniques, lagering techniques, and perhaps most important, their lager yeasts.

The German people took their beer seriously, and the demand for a light lager like Helles or Pils from back home was high. Lager brewing was the standard over in Germany, while the majority of beer produced in the States were still ales. Both darker in color and served at warmer temperatures than the lagers that the Germans wanted. This posed a problem for the brewers. In Germany the use of 2 row malt was already widespread, while American farmers grew 6 row barley for yield and the maltsters malted for ale brewers. The increased protein levels in the 6 row malt formed a haze that could not be reliably removed by filtering. This is known as chill haze and like the name implies, it occurs when beer is chilled. This didn’t pose a problem for ale producers because of the deeper colors and warmer serving temperatures, but chill haze was considered unacceptable by the German lager brewers.

The German brewers, forced to brew with the American ingredients on hand, had to come up with something - and they did. They found that if they replaced a percentage of their grist (grain bill) with corn, which is almost pure starch, (processed with heat, either by boiling or hot rolling to gelatinize the starches and make them digestable to the excessive enzymes in the 6 row malt), They could reduce the amount of the protien induced chill haze to acceptable levels, if not eliminate it altogether. Not only this, but they actually liked what they were tasting. The addition of corn lent a very distinctive flavor to this new style, it was lighter bodied than its European counterparts - allowing them to sell more - imbibers didn't get so full so fast, and this was something that they would never be allowed to do in their homeland because of the restrictive purity law, the Reinheitsgebot.

This beer hit the States by storm, and soon became the predominant style in this country, and lager brewing eventually became the standard. This was not a bland beer. It had a distinct malt flavor that was well balanced with an assertive hop bitterness. Not aggressive, but assertive. OG’s averaged around 1.055 and IBU’s at around 30.

Prohibition, which was enacted as the 18th Amendment on January 16, 1919, brought this wonderful, new, still developing style to a grinding halt. When the government finally came to its senses (and really needed the tax dollars) and repealed Prohibition in December of 1933, the brewing industry couldn't just pick up where it left off. Prohibition put most of the nations Breweries flat out of business. The few that were savvy enough to hang on adapted the use of their equipment for similar uses like soda manufacture and malt extract - for the food industry, like malted milk (wink,wink). When prohibition finally was repealed, we were still reeling from the Great Depression (Prohibition - Great Depression. Coincidence??? I DON'T THINK SO!!!!!!!). When the few remaining breweries geared back to beer production it was uphill with every step. Barley was scarce and expensive, as were hops, and corn to a lesser degree. The equation here was:

Fewer raw materials + a Thirsty Population that hadn't had a drink in almost 14 years = Weaker Beer.

World War II was no help either. Grain again became scarce due to the war effort of feeding hungry troops, along with the fact that a very large portion of our beer drinking population was overseas again forced the breweries to economize. Again they were forced to make the choice between less beer with more ingredients or more beer with less ingredients. Only this time they noticed an interesting trend - as the beer got lighter, more women were buying it. With that, most of you that have read this far already know the rest of the story. Let's just say that Classic American Pilsner was the beer that our forefathers drank before it morphed into the generic lifeless product that you find in 12 packs of cans everywhere today.