Weyermann® Almanac Beer Recipe

Beer recipe: American Lager Light

We are lucky enough to have been granted permission to share beer recipes from the Weyermann® Almanac of World Beers with our audience. Please try them out, enjoy and feel free to tag or contact Weyermann® with your finished brew. This months recipe is a light American Lager, a lower-calorie and often lower-carbohydrate adaptation of the standard American
Lager. It has a very light body, a straw-yellow colour with a neutral malt and hop flavour. Perfectly refreshing and thirst quenching.

Hops in the beer recipe

Saaz hops and Liberty hops are classic choices for crafting this light American Lager, however Mount Hood and Cascade are also popular choices.

Saaz brings flavours of spice, herbs and wood to this brew, balanced well with the addition of Liberty hops enforcing similar flavours to this crisp lager recipe.

When these hops are used together within this America Lager recipe they produce a thrist-qurnching refreshing brew, one which is straw yellow in colour and a neutral hop and malt flavour profile.

Fermented using Fermentis W-34/70 a German strain renowed for producing neutral beers. Providing clean and highly drinkable beers.

Browse the Fermentis range here

Light American Lager

As many large breweries often claim, American Lager is the classic American version of the original Czech Pilsner. Therefore, it has become one of the most recognised beer styles around the world. However, there are several key differences between American Lagers and traditional Pilsners.

An American Lager may be brewed as an all-malt beer using either two-row or six-row barley. In addition, brewers often include adjuncts such as flaked, torrefied, or unprocessed rice and/or maize. As a result, the flavour and body may vary depending on the ingredients used.

This style is usually heavily filtered and may have a slight residual sweetness, especially when maize adjuncts are added. Although not all American Lagers are low in alcohol, the recipe below produces a relatively low-alcohol, all-malt version. Furthermore, it excludes adjuncts.

Nevertheless, brewers can substitute up to 40 percent of the malt with rice and/or maize if desired.