WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PILSEN AND LAGER?

Brewing terminology is gradually carving itself a niche in our society, and almost everyone is now familiar with terms such as IPA, IBU, Ale, Stout, Malt, Hops, Pilsen and Lager. Nevertheless, we are not always sure about the exact meaning of each term, even though they are among the ones that have been in use for longer, such as the case of the two mentioned at the end: Pilsen and Lager.

Today we are going to take a look at those two words, to find out their origins, their exact meanings, their differences and similarities, and why we often see them together, sharing space on the same label on different beer bottles.

Let's start with lager, a word that originates from the German “lagern” which can be roughly translated as “store” or “conserve”, which makes sense in brewing terms because that is how those beers started to be identified due to the cold fermentation needed in an extra maturing process before the beverage was drunk. That technical innovation took place centuries before Louis Pasteur identified yeast as the organisms responsible for fermentation, and a long time before later researchers classified the numerous strains of yeast in two major families according to their working temperatures: lager yeasts, which ferment between 5ºC and 14ºC and ale yeast which does so between 15ºC and 24ºC.

Today, lager is defined as beer whose recipes include that type of yeast, and which usually have less complex characteristics than beer made using ale brewing yeast. That categorisation is not overly specific when defining a concrete type of beer; since lager can be golden, brown, reddish or dark, clear or cloudy, stronger or weaker, fuller or lesser bodied, more or less bitter... and this all depends on the rest of the ingredients in the brewing recipe.

We are now going to take a look at the other term: Pilsen. The fact that it is written with a capital P should give us a clue as to its origins, as it is a proper noun. It is an anglicised version of Plzeň, an important town in the historical region of Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Pilsen is the city which lends its name to this brewing style which came about in 1842, and which has been enormously successful all over the planet because of its bright golden colour, moderate alcohol content and refreshing taste.

The Pilsen brewing style owes its sensory characteristics to technical progress during the Industrial Revolution: ovens where grain was malted without smoking it, thereby producing a golden coloured beer, filtering systems to leave it crystal clear without any sediment... but also the use of local ingredients, such as the extremely soft water in the region and a hop variety grown for centuries by local farmers known as Saaz hops. The Pilsen style has inspired many versions in other countries, starting off with the German Pils, from which the most widely consumed beer in Spain is most likely derived.

Finally, the connecting point between the two aforementioned terms is that Pilsen beer is brewed using yeasts from the lager family. Therefore, all Pilsen beers are also lagers, but not all lagers are Pilsen. The term Lager defines a wide family of brewing styles, of which Pilsen is just one, although it is undoubtedly the most well-known.