#Best vienna lager full

I’d like to see craft breweries try to explain that one to their customers. In fact, you can get similar results by just adding corn syrup directly to the wort to boost original gravity. Remember, flaked maize simply adds corn sugar to a beer’s wort. Therefore, I highly doubt a casual beer drinker could grab a pale lager and say, “hmmm, some flaked maize in here…must be Mexican-style.” It’s a stretch in my opinion. More often, I wrote “soapy” and “metallic” – two perfect words to describe almost any other imported macro lager. In my notes, however, not once did I write “corny” or “grainy” for any of the beers sampled. In my own taste testing of Mexican macros for this piece, I failed to do a side-by-side blind comparison test with American macros. And even for those who could tell the difference, no one was sure which samples had the corn in it nor did they have a preference between the two. Consider these taste test results where few could tell the difference between beer made with flaked maize vs. And corn flavors in beer are barely perceivable since, as I said, they ferment out completely. Brilliantly clear, relatively tasteless, yet “crisp” and “clean” pale lagers are the most ubiquitous beers in America. Several American macros are brewed with corn as well. My concern with the approach in Group 1 is that it isn’t readily apparent what makes these beers Mexican-style.

Moreover, all but Corona mention “pilsner-style” in their official descriptions. Dos Equis says it’s brewed with cornstarch and corn syrup. Pacifico’s recipe was nowhere to be found. The official websites for both Modelo Especial and Corona Extra simply say “non-malted cereals” in the recipe. This approach to Mexican-style lager, which I’ll call Group 1, draws inspiration from Mexican macros like Modelo Especial and Pacífico Clara, which are brewed with some adjuncts – possibly flaked maize.

#Best vienna lager full

Mexican Examples: Modelo Especial, Dos Equis, Corona Extra, Pacífico Clara Īmerican Craft Examples: 21st Amendment El Sully, Belching Beaver Buenos Tiempos, Full Sail Sesión Cerveza, Thorn Barrio Lager, Anchor Los Gigantes, pFriem Mexican Lager I’ll go into detail about Groups 1-3 and then throw in a few curveballs at the end. From my experience, it seems brewers gravitate towards one of three groups: 1) pale lager with flaked maize such as our benchmark Pacífico Clara, 2) amber lager with flaked maize such as our benchmark Modelo Negra, and 3) the Americanized beer cocktail of adding salt and lime to Mexican pale lagers for which there is no official Mexican example. However, there is no consensus on what constitutes a Mexican-style lager in the first place. For the past several years, American-made Mexican-style lagers have been creeping their way onto taplists and store shelves. Now, let’s pivot now to how American craft breweries have interpreted these Mexican lagers. But on the whole, the commonalities between them that stood out as “Mexican” is that they tasted old, heat damaged, soapy, metallic, and had no bitterness to speak of. They exhibited significantly fewer brewing flaws than their rivals making them much more enjoyable. Pacífico Clara was my favorite of the pale lagers and Modelo Negra the best of the dark lagers. After much searching at gas station convenience stores and sad nights alone with half-empty 24oz cans, I came to a verdict. Clear bottles yielded some awfully skunky beer, so I sought out cans for the most part and had to reassess a couple. For “research” purposes, I tried Corona Extra, Modelo Especial, Pacífico Clara, Sol, Tecate, Dos Equis, Victoria, Modelo Negra, and Dos Equis Ambar. In order to have a mental benchmark for this style, I went out and tried as many Mexican macro lagers as I could find. Last, it’s a cheap substitute for malted barley, though it can only take up around 40% of the grain bill. Second, since flaked maize carries hardly any protein compared to malted barley, protein-induced haziness is reduced and thus clarity is boosted. First, it typically dries the beer out slightly and adds a subtle crispiness since flaked maize ferments out completely – converting its starches to sugars and then to alcohol. It can be added directly to the mash of the beer for a few reasons. Part of their magic is the addition of flaked maize, which is just corn that has been rolled through hot rollers to remove the germ, oil, and most of its protein. For the most part, these lagers are relatively clean, have practically zero bitterness, but also aren’t cloyingly sweet. Mexican macro lagers continue to surge in popularity with American beer drinkers.