Short & Shoddy | Czech Pale Lager

Author: Jordan Folks

Brewers and beer lovers are often asked what their desert island beer is, the style they would choose if they could only drink one style for the rest of their life. While this would be a miserable existence, an unlimited supply of Czech Pale Lager would certainly make it much more tolerable.

Thankfully, I don’t live on a desert island and can drink pretty much whatever beer I want whenever I want, and even so, Czech Pale Lager makes up a decent portion of what I find myself reaching for. Whether commercial or homebrewed, this is a style I feel strikes a beautiful balance of malt, hops, and clean fermentation character that, despite being quite simple overall, offers a uniquely enjoyable drinking experience. The BJCP describes Czech Pale Lager as:

A lighter-bodied, rich, refreshing, hoppy, bitter pale Czech lager having the familiar flavors of the stronger Czech Premium Pale Lager (Pilsner-type) beer but in a lower alcohol, lighter-bodied, and slightly less intense format.

I’m a lover of all things lager, and I also happen to be among the seemingly dying breed of brewers who not only see value in employing traditional methods when making such styles, but I rather enjoy performing step mashes, decoctions, cold fermentation, and extended lagering. But there are times I need to have a beer ready quickly, which, as a Brülosophy contributor, gives me an excuse to go against what I’m convinced is best practice. Such was the case with a recent batch of Czech Pale Lager where I tossed tradition and embraced a Short & Shoddy approach – albeit with gritted teeth.

| BREWING THE BEER |

For this batch, I went with a very simple SMaSH recipe and changed a handful of the techniques I typically use to brew it.

Short & Shoddy Czech Pale Lager

I weighed out and milled the grain at 12:59 AM, after which I collected the full volume of water and adjusted it to my desired profile.

When the water was properly heated, I stirred in the grist then set the controller to maintain my desired mash temperature.

During the mash rest, I prepared the kettle hop additions.

Once the 30 minute mash rest was complete, I removed the grains and proceeded to boil the wort, adding hops as listed in the recipe.

Following the brief 30 minute boil, I quickly chilled the wort with my JaDeD Brewing SS Hydra immersion chiller.

A refractometer reading showed the wort was at 1.038 OG, for a brewhouse efficiency of 62%.

After transferring the wort to a sanitized fermenter, I pitched approximately 300 mL of Imperial Yeast L29 Lookr slurry that I’d harvested from a previous batch of Czech Dark Lager.

I then placed the filled fermenter in my chamber controlled to 65°F/18°C, which is nearly 15°F/8°C warmer than I prefer. The time was 2:44 PM for a total brew day time of just 1 hour and 45 minutes. With fermentation activity absent 7 days later, I took a hydrometer measurement showing FG had been reached.

At this point, I cold crashed overnight before adding gelatin finings and pressure transferring the beer to a CO2 purged keg, which was placed on gas in my keezer and left to condition for 2 weeks before it was ready to serve to tasters.

| RESULTS |

A total of 21 people of various levels of experience participated in this Short & Shoddy evaluation. Participants were informed of the specific beer style and provided the BJCP description prior to completing the survey. Tasters were then instructed to rate how hoppy, malty, and dry they perceived the beer to be on a 0-5 scale where a rating of 0 indicated “not at all” and 5 indicated “extremely.”

Tasters were provided a list of common hop, malt, and yeast characteristics then instructed to select from each the one they perceived as being most prominent in the beer.

Hop Characteristics

Malt Characteristics

Yeast Characteristics

Next, participants were asked to indicate whether or not they detected any off-flavors in the beer; those who did were provided a list of common off-flavors and instructed to select the one they perceived as being strongest. There was little consistency among tasters with 2 reporting they perceived sulfur while 1 person each felt the beer had an estery, diacetyl, yeasty, and DMS off-flavor.

Tasters were then asked to rate how well the beer represented the intended style, based on the provided BJCP description, on a 0-5 scale where 0 meant “not at all” and 5 meant “exactly.”

Finally, tasters were asked to rate how much they enjoyed the beer on a 0-5 scale where 0 indicated not at all and 5 indicated extremely.

My Impressions: I perceived an overwhelming peanut butter characteristic in this beer when I first sampled it, and while it was crisp and clear, I really couldn’t stand drinking it. However, after a few months of lagering, long after I’d collected data, that flavor and aroma was effectively gone and the beer was much more enjoyable for me.

| CONCLUSION |

Czech Pale Lager is one of those styles that many view as a “gateway beer,” offering increased flavor while still being approachable to those who are more familiar with the intentionally low flavor offerings from huge corporate breweries. Invented in the mid-19^th century, it’s also a style some modern brewers feel can be produced more simply than it was at its advent by bucking various traditional methods.

Overall, folks who had no idea how this Czech Pale Lager was made felt it was a pretty solid representation of the style, with most noting a cracker/bread crust malt flavor, earthy hops, and a generally dry characteristic, all stylistically consistent. In terms of fermentation, while a slight majority felt the beer was clean,  a good portion picked up a sulfur note, which isn’t uncommon in lagers and can be easily reduced, though is distracting in higher concentrations. Moreover, while 5 people felt they detected off-flavors, there was very little inter-rater consistency, with sulfur being the only one endorsed by 2 tasters.

Personally, I initially hated this beer, as I felt it had a peanut butter note that was impossible for me to overlook. This was my first time fermenting warm with Imperial Yeast L29 Lookr, and it seems plausible to me this yeast is the culprit, as we know traditional lager yeasts come from two genetic lineages with one known to be more robust than the other; perhaps Lookr doesn’t share a lineage with the classic Weihenstephan lager strain. Regardless, I held off on dumping this keg and let it lager for a couple months, at which point the aspects I didn’t like had faded and the beer was much more pleasant.

If you have thoughts about this Short & Shoddy brew, please feel free to share it in the comments section below!

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