by Colin Morley

Created on: August 28, 2007   Last Updated: November 07, 2008

About the same time that ancient Britons were understanding how they could make ale by fermenting wheat with their spring water, there was something happening across the channel in mainland Europe. The monks of Germany had stumbled upon a similar idea. We know they were monks, because most of their beer came from Munich or as the Germans call it, Munchen, which means monks in English.

Nobody really understood about cultivating yeast to ferment the beer. It just happened when they left the wheat or barley and water out in the open. A sort of foam appeared on it (which was natural yeast from the environment). They did, however, learn that if you scraped off the foam you could use it to make more beer.

Now you will know (particularly this summer) that the climate in Britain is pretty awful and pretty unpredictable. What you may not know is that the climates both in Britain and in Bavaria (which is where Munich is) are both highly suitable for growing barley, wheat and hops. So the fact that beer was being brewed simultaneously in both places really wasn't that big a coincidence.

But now the difference. Bavaria is much colder than Britain in the winter months, and when the monks left their mixture out in the open to ferment, it got very cold, and the yeast sank to the bottom, instead of staying on the top. This process became known as lagering' and created an inherently more stable beer.

The British didn't really care. They knew that in the future they would be better at football once they had invented it.

Lager production took several twists and turns over the following few hundreds of years, but to this day a lager beer is one which is bottom fermented by keeping it cold.

An excellent source of information on the more technical aspects, which I may have missed out for the sake of brevity, is Michael Jackson (no, not he of Thriller' fame, but a renowned British beer buff). Look for his jottings at www.beerhunter.com. You will not be disappointed.

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