The History of German Adjunct Lager with Greg Casey – BeerSmith Podcast #288

Dr Greg Casey joins me this week to discuss the interesting history of German Adjunct Lager and how it influenced the rise of American Adjunct Lager here in the US.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (51:42)

This week I welcome back Dr Greg Casey. Greg has an extensive history in brewing at Annheuser-Bush, Red Star Yeast, Stroh, Coors, Molson and Millers. He has a PhD in Applied Microbiology and was President of the American Society of Brewing Chemists from 2005-2006.barrel aged and innovation programs before becoming head brewer.
Greg starts by telling us about progress on the first 2 volumes of his 5 volume series on the history of American Lager – the first volumes should be published shortly.
We talk about how his study of American Lager history led him to explore the history of Adjunct lagers in Germany, which were brewed quite widely in the 1800s.
We discuss key events in the history of German brewing in the late 1800’s and how adjunct lagers were actually brewed often using two mash vessels during this period.
Greg explains how the Bavarian purity law or Reinheitsgebot came about primarily as a tax in 1906, and in fact the purity term came several years after the law was established.
We discuss the huge impact German Adjunct lager brewing had on the rise of lagers in the US over a short period of about 20 years to become the dominant style in the US, as well as the important role of German brewers who emigrated to the US.
We talk about the impact of WWI on both German and US brewing.
Greg explains how US brewers expanded and perfected the large scale brewing of adjunct lagers prior to prohibition, and this eventually spread worldwide.
Greg tells us where to get his first two volumes.
He shares his closing thoughts.

Important Correction: while Ludwig Haecker was run out of town in Indiana in 1863 when the local German-American community got wind of the use of corn grits as an adjunct in pilot lager beer trials, during the taping I inadvertently referred to “rice beer”, not “corn beer” as the beer which had him exit quickly. The reference to “rice beer” was pertinent to the August 28, 1871 article in Our Home Journal directly below the image of Haecker’s July 1, 1862 United States Patent 35,752 entitled “Improvement In Brewing When Indian Corn Is Used”. Noting both the use of decoction or infusion mashing in his diary, the image depicting Nicholas Baumann’s May 18, 1869 patent represents the earliest period reference I found depicting the quintessentially American double-mash process.

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