Hello everyone, welcome to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Let's just blow up Pilsner with Roger. Pilsner, baby. refreshing, I know it's gonna be good. It's bitter, right? Not sweet. Lighten its feet, I like it. I have never gotten Pilsner because I do like full-flavored beers, and because I didn't start drinking beer on light beers, it really seems like just a downshift to me. And whenever I drink it, I would rather have something with a lot more flavor. Well, Pilsner can be, it presents a genuine challenge. Especially, it depends on what styles of beers you acclimate yourself to and drink more often. So, a well-made Pilsner does have flavor. It's a misconception that they're bland. However, if you're used to drinking a lot of IPAs, it's not really bitter by people's standards. The American habit of going over the top and insane with everything has really been a detriment to people understanding and appreciating Pilsner because it gets lambasted as too boring. It's not exciting enough. Can we pour one and then taste it and then keep talking? Roger, you've picked some good ones for us here. I think let's just start because I want to talk about the history of Pilsner. Yeah, absolutely. Passing out the Pilsner Urkel. How do you say it, Roger? Pilsner Urkel. Urkel. Okay. Let's talk about it, buddy. It means the original. So it's the original Pilsner. This is where it all began. It's actually bitter. It's kind of sour, not in a sour beer sense, but a sour flavor. It has a sour quality. I just wonder how similar this Pilsner Raquel that we're drinking now would be to the first kinds that were made back in the late 1800s. A couple of things have changed, but they really are committed to remaining faithful to the original recipe and some of the key ingredients. So when you were speaking that this is hoppy, one of the key ingredients in this is Saws hops, kind of a famous hop that's used in a lot of lagers, but it makes a real distinct impression here in Pilsner. It's got a grassy, kind of herbaceous quality to it. One of the things that we should do is just appreciate the beautiful clarity of this beer. We are holding the beer up into the air. This is what really made Pilsner blow up at the time. We think of beer glasses now as something that just we take for granted, but prior to this, the most common drinking vessels were opaque. Beer was not beautiful. It was usually turbid, hazy. It typically was darker in color. People didn't really sit and appreciate the beauty of a beer. There was a lighter kind malt that came out around the time. They could make much lighter colored beer with such great clarity that they really wanted to showcase it in a glass. And it was the way we think of people appreciating champagne now and gazing at it and watching all the carbonation. Well, some of the original Pilsner stemware looks kind of like champagne flutes. And that was one of the stunning accomplishments of this style. But yeah, the thing with Pilsner that really, besides the nice appearance, it's loggered. So, loggering means to store at cold temperatures. And that storing at cold temperatures allows the beer to condition, the flavors to integrate, the beer to become rounder and fuller in flavor. And it also allows any salads and yeast to drop out. So again, clarity was something that was rarely achieved to the degree it is now through filtration. But if they were gonna store it in a barrel for a long time, they could clean it up that way. But didn't they historically age Pilsner for a short time on the Deadly's? And doesn't that account for the creaminess? It ages on the yeast, yeah, for sure. Let's pour another one. You can keep the tasting moment of growth. So that was Pilsner or Kale, kind of the first and historic Pilsner from the Citizens Brewery in the Czech city of Pilsen. Famously made with soft water. This has a nice kind of despite its dryness, it still has a soft rounded mouthfeel to it. All right. Next up is? Brownbacher. So the Czech Republic loves to claim that they invented Pilsner, and then Germany likes to remind them that it was a German brewer that created it. Joseph Grohl. So once they got their hands on the style, Pilsner became this crazy success. Think hazy IPAs times 10. It was the rage of the day. Of the next two centuries. Yeah. It was killing a lot of these traditional German styles that were darker and heavier. People wanted this newer style of beer. So once Germany got their hands on Pilsner, they really liked that aggressive hop profile to it, and they cranked it up to 11. They wanted to really showcase the hops. And they figured, well, we already make things like a German Helles, a German Sleitlager, and they had been making that. So arguably, a Pilsner was pretty close to that. So if they were gonna make Pilsner their own, they were gonna hop it a little more. So in Germany, this is, Kronbacher Pilsner is one of the best selling Pilsner's, and people would describe this as a bitter beer. But here, you would never drink this and think, oh, that's bitter. You say that this is more bitter, but it's also, it seems more mellow to me, and the bitterness seems balanced out by a creaminess. The creaminess, I think, is kind of an interesting observation. The carbonation level, I think, might just be higher on this than the Erichel, so it's presenting itself as a little bit more creamy, but recipe-wise, I don't know if it would be, there would be necessarily a reason for that, but I hear what you're So what are some other German Pilsner producers? The other German Pilsner's would be, Weinstefanner has one, Worshteiner, Radeberger, Veltens. And that's all over the map, so it's a style and it's not geographically tied. Correct, yes. Pilsner really took over the beer world. Stylistically, lagers in general are the most recognizable beer across the map, but Pilsner's in particular, name a country, and there's some derivation. Like even like Singha and... Yeah, all over the world. It's some sort of Bohemian German style lager, be it a German Helles or Pilsner. Yeah, Taiwan, Japan, China, Mexico, there's famous examples from all of those places. Yes, so the most recognizable, when you say beer, some sort of golden lager typically is what comes to people's minds. Absolutely, yeah. It's on the emoji. I mean, duh. It's obviously a Pilsner. So, what started to happen, unfortunately, in the US., they took something like a Pilsner style, which, very simple building blocks of beer here, so malted barley, hops, yeast, and water. They started adding adjuncts. Originally, there was sort of a noble reason behind this. They were having trouble working with the type of barley that they had in the US., so they found out that putting a little bit of corn into that recipe was brewing a better beer, and they liked the way it tasted. Corn imparted a touch of sweetness. People's tastes changed, and they enjoyed that as a component of American-style lagers. But even before Prohibition, there were still many traditionally made lagers that just had those four ingredients that held up to the Reinhardt's Gubbaut rules in Germany. We don't want anything in beer that theoretically shouldn't be there. After Prohibition, and as beer became more homogenized, they started throwing in more of these adjuncts. They've started becoming a higher percentage of the beer that saved money, it lightened up the beer. We're talking primarily rice and corn here. So a beer style that was already very delicate became more and more boring. If I say to you that a Pilsner is kind of the brewer's favorite beer, would you agree? Yeah, people can only drink so much of very high alcohol, full flavored. It also is a beer that appeals in both warm weather and cold. If you're in a place like Chicago and it's the middle of the summer and it's super hot, you probably don't want to drink a stout or anything that's heavy or yeah, when it's well made, it can be, you know, a beautiful beer. Well, that's another point, it's got to be well made because you can't hide behind adjuncts and the flavoring and sugar and you know, anything. It is what it is and so you've got to make it well, otherwise it will suck. Since they're so ubiquitous and they're everywhere, they figure, you know, the big guys make those and that that would must be an easy style to brew, but conversely, for the reasons you just said, it definitely is not. What's next on the tasting? What do we got? Let's try an Americanized example of a Pilsner here. Let's do Sierra Nevada, Nooner. I love the name Nooner. It's a brewer's favorite beer because they're making a stout and it's hot. It's like 95 degrees in the brew house and they want something refreshing and cool and they also want to make it home. Yep. So they made Nooner. It's a beer. This is delicious. Sometimes in today's culture, people buy these variety six packs or they just buy single bottles of stuff. Pilsner is the kind of thing you buy a six or a 12 pack and you know you're going to sit down and you'll have more than one of the same thing. That's something that sometimes today you'll recommend a beer and people go, oh, I've already had that. It's like, well, don't you ever revisit beer and actually drink more than one of them. So I already got the badge. Yeah, I already checked it in. This is the first one that's jumping out to me because I think they're using more than just the Saz Hop and you got some Tropical Fruit in the mix as well as the Piney Bitterness. No, it's a far fruitier style, that's for sure. Yeah, you're tasting the hops here and I know you enjoy some hoppier beers along with other styles. That's what's jumping out here. This is a nice canvas for a good variety of hop bitterness. Peach and tangerine, certainly. This is lighter and more refreshing than the other two. Yeah, it's all those things and more. It's 5.2%. There's a little bit of piney-ness in there too, which I like. 5.2% is hilarious for a beer called Nooner, because for some breweries like Sierra Nevada and LaGunita, suddenly 5.2% is what they would call a sessionable beer, which mere mortals don't think that that's sessionable, but Sierra Nevada and LaGunitas Right. What's sessionable to you then, mortal? Five and a half. When you're talking about a sessionable beer, it's a big difference between 7.5%. Right. Or an 11%, you know? Okay. So would that be like a 3.5%-4% be like a sessionable? Yeah, like a 4%. Like 3.2% is like you're in Utah, right? Because the Kronbacher is 4.8% and the Pilsner or Kell... Yeah, they're all in the sessionable category. That's why Roger's saying you could have more than one. It's five about the max for you for sessionable? Okay, okay. The term originated in England, where sessionable meant real low, like three. Right. But Americans got a hold of it. Suffice to say that German immigrants brought then the Pilsner style to the United States. And it just spread from there. Break prohibition. European immigrants in general become popular in a lot of Eastern European countries too. Post-prohibition, this was a style that built the breweries back up in the United States. Now it's kind of forgotten about by maybe the general consumer. Everybody keeps trying to say that Pilsner is going to be the next big beer style. And it struggles because of the rift between macro and craft. Exactly. It's not forgotten because it's the best selling style of beer in the world. I mean, it is what it is, right? So usually what people are, they're not doing what we're doing, right? Or we're trying, we started with a light, literally is a low calorie version of the style, and then went to traditional and now went to American. What happens is someone might try a beer like Nuder and go, well, I like it, but I don't know if I want to spend that much money on it because it reminds me too much of the other two. But having drank them all in a row, I love drinking the Sierra Nevada. And that's the kind of disconnect, I think, that forever hurts the style. People sometimes just think, it's nice and I understand it, but I'm not willing to spend the money on it because it's too similar to other beers that I can get for half the price or whatever. Founders, with their PC pills on the can, instructs me to crack it, pour it, and love it. So let's see if that's actually true. Go for it. So this brewery is taking kind of full force the argument that I just laid out, where they're trying to take cost out of the conversation by offering a lot of their beers, including this one in 15 packs at a really reasonable price. This is diving headfirst into welcome to American craft. We like to really feature hops. This is the best one yet. This is Lemon Zest City. Yep. Super citrusy. Wow. Yeah, this is not, you know, when I think Pilsner, this ain't it. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it's totally, you're right, at the opposite end of the spectrum of Pilsner. So there was a time for a while where it was fashionable to market IPLs, so India Pale Loggers, so the blending of the two styles. And in my book, this is an IPL, more than it's a Pilsner. I gotta agree with you. That's a lime, lemon lime. Yeah, you hit it. It's lemony. It's super nice. Is that why they call it PC Pilsner? For whatever reason, IPL didn't track at all. It did, poof, lead balloon. Isn't that like a kind of cholesterol or something? I think. Yeah, it does sound medical. We're gonna watch out for the IPL. Five and a half percent. We're getting closer. We are getting closer to IPL. Yeah, but hop-wise, you can definitely taste a considerable difference. If we take a few steps back and compare this. In fact, if you have any, like the Pilsner or Cal, try that next to it, and it's interesting to see how different they are. Different mouthfeel, different aroma. Yeah, technically the same style. I really feel like we're getting a sense of old world, new world here. I agree, and you can also appreciate the struggle that the craft brewer has with if you just start drinking craft beer, and because IPL is such a popular style, if you acclimate your taste buds with IPL, that's like walking to the deep end and cannonballing in, right? So whereas if you had started drinking beer by going with all these classic European styles, you develop tastes for all these nuanced flavors. So I think it's not like these breweries couldn't brew a traditional Pilsner, and many of them have in years past. They just realized it didn't take off or resonate, so they're like, let's make it our own, let's tinker with it. So I think the best Pilsner's are either the ones that just completely do that, or do an interesting kind of meld between the two styles. Yeah. Man, that Nooner's good though. Damn. All right, what do we got? Last but not least, North Coast Scrimshaw. This is a often overlooked American craft brewery that I've always been a big fan of, and they actually were one of the oldest craft breweries to do at Pilsner as one of their flagship beers that survived all these years. Good job, North Coast. That's awesome. So tell us about Scrimshaw in the 17th century merchant sailing. Yeah, it's actually a throwback to one of my favorite topics. I could go on and on about this. Whale bone carving. I've always just thought this was a really nice, well-made, it's definitely on the lighter side, American Pilsner and then I was stumbled upon there. There's some changes in legislation now where they're requiring that restaurants make calories available for things and their menus. So there was a fact sheet of all the calories for North Coast products and I looked at the table and I'm like, this can't be right. So I double checked it and then went to the North Coast website. This beer has a hundred calories and two grams of carbs, which blows my mind. If you're unfamiliar with what most of the macro giants are doing with light beer, beers that are specifically designed to be low in calorie, your typical beer, like a craft beer, might be around 170 calories to 220 for things like IPAs, lagers, porters. The darker, the richer, more calories. But beers that are specifically designed to be low carb, low calorie, like let's use Mick Ultra for example, 2.6 carbs, 95 calories. This is just a Pilsner that's always existed. How did it miss the marketing boat, you know? The six-pack should have 100 calories in giant numbers, like bigger than the name of the beer. I wanted to throw that out there for all of you who kind of love craft beer, but avoid it because of the calories or carbs. If I had to choose between seven Scrimshaw's and one old Rasputin, I would probably go with the old Rasputin. Well, anyway, we're not necessarily talking to you, Greg. It's very floral, but very light on its feet. Smell though. Yeah. I could sip on this for sure on a hot summer day. No off flavors. I mean, this is a traditional all malt flavor that you want in a well-made Pilsner. Yeah. But it has the same flavor, I mean, the same calories and carbs is like a specifically designed beer to be that way. So to wrap, that's our take on some old world and some new world Pilsners. Kronbacher and Pilsner Erkel from Europe. We had Nooner from Sierra Nevada, PC Pils from Founders in Colorado, and North Coast's Scrimshaw. The low calorie treat. All right, you wanna do a Q&A? Customer Q&A, Roger. All right, so Allison Aubin. Allison writes, how did Sierra Nevada influence the West Coast craft beer boom? Well, when Sierra Nevada released their Pale Ale, it was quite unlike what anyone really drank at the time. It showcased Cascade Hops, relatively unknown. It's funny to think that now they're everywhere. It's a staple of a lot of brewers' backstock with hops. It's a great workhorse hop. IPA was a non-issue back then. Their celebration ale that comes out around Christmas time was essentially an IPA. And that was one of the first IPAs that the Crest industry ever saw. Like a really multi-flavorful, rich IPA. It's a good beer. They were old school, definitely influenced by English recipes, but embraced American hops with open arms. And it's funny, you read stuff that Ken Grossman's written there, you hear him talk about it. And cascading hops back then was tough. It wasn't anything like what it is now. And it was kind of a revelation to get this new hop that was so citrusy and piney, and it was unlike anything that people really had access to. They previously were working with a small selection of American breeds at Cluster, or they were just using traditional European hops. But being able to get nice, freshly grown hops from the US up in Washington, Oregon, imparted just so much aroma. It was like nothing people had ever seen. So the rest is history with Pale Ale and IPA. I mean, they were right at the forefront. That's it. So the progenitors of basically the IPA style. And it just spread from there. It's that iconic green label. I like it. All right, cool. So Alison, I hope that Roger helped to answer your question. And if you have any other questions, you can write us at Binny's Bev on Twitter, or at comments at binnys.com for your chance to win a $20 gift card like Alison got to spend on any of her favorite Pilsner's at her local Binny's Beverage Depot. So thanks, Alison, we appreciate it. All right, cool. So Roger, how do you feel? That's Pilsner. That's our Pilsner episode. Hopefully, I made a bit of a believer out of Greg, at least. Yeah. You had me at Erkel. So I pretty much knew I was into it. But yeah, I like it. It's grown on me. I love it, man. So good. So refreshing. Thank you for dropping some serious Pilsner knowledge on me today. My pleasure. And as always, my esteemed co-hosts, Roger Adamson and Greg Versch. What's our tagline, Roger? Keep on tasting. That's right, buddy. See ya.