Notch Brewing’s Chris Lohring loves that more craft brewers are embracing lager, but he has some strong opinions about the best way to brew lager beer.

“Crispy boys don’t exist, lagers aren’t dry,” he says. “Clean lager yeast is boring to me.”

Refinement and distinction are his goals, not minimalism, and he uses all the tools in the brewer’s toolbox to achieve them, adjusting mash schedules and malt bills to build body in low-ABV beers, moving lager mid-fermentation from quasi-open fermenters to conical fermenters before later moving to horizontal lagering tanks, reducing and timing decoction to fit the goals of individual beers, and considering the impact of mash rests on fermentability, among many other things. It’s not one thing, after all, that makes a lager distinct—in his worlds, “there’s no magic bullet.”

In this episode, Lohring discusses:

Why Czech pale lager is a category not a style
How variable processes in the cellar lead to different expressions of diacetyl
Manipulating a mash schedule to build body and character with more expressive lager yeasts
What decoction does and doesn’t do for lagers
Using small percentages of crystal male in Czech pale lager
Fermenting with no head pressure and skimming to optimize flavor and hop character
The difference in cerné pivo and tmavy pivo
Using American hops in Czech-style lager

And more.

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352: Chris Lohring of Notch Wants You to Brew More Distinctive Lager

Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast