Part One: Creating the Lager

Brewing is as old as civilization. For centuries beer and ale were synonymous.

Lager brewing was the latecomer. But a little over five hundred years ago lager beer emerged from its humble cave origins to challenge ale's superiority. Today, over 90 per cent of the world's beer production is lager.

The earliest mention of lagering is found in the statutes of the city of Munich dated 1420. The discovery was one of chance, perfected by human ingenuity.

The church and monasteries were the early seats of learning. The Monks no doubt discovered the secrets of brewing techniques, but their vows of silence prevented them from getting the credit.

Traditionally, grains were sown and harvested in the spring and summer. Ale was brewed in the autumn and winter, and then stored in ice cellars. It was customary for the Bavarian monks to brew beer in their abbeys isolated in the Alps. They carved beer cellars into the rock, which provided an ideal storage place during fermentation. The low temperatures caused the yeast to sink to the bottom and ferment more slowly. The German verb lagern, means "to store, or keep, in a cool place". Hence, this new bottom fermented beer became known as lager and a true alternative to ale was born.

By 1840, thanks to Gabriel Sedlmayr and Anton Dreher, lager brewing moved from the caves to large-scale production in Munich and Vienna. The lagers of that time were relatively dark due to the local hard water and lack of pale malt. This would change with the creation of a new pilsner-style lager at a brewery in Bohemia. A combination of the town's low alkaline soft water and pale malted barley resulted in a happy accident -- a bright, golden lager.

It is interesting to note this creation was coincident with the invention of affordable, mass-produced glassware for drinking beer. Prior to this beer had been served in wooden, ceramic or pewter tankards. Now, for the first time, the beer drinker could see the appetizing colour of the beer he was drinking.

Here's another bit of trivia. No other beer style can lay claim to having a distinctive beer glass. The pilsner-style glass has a heavy base, tapered sides with a large open mouth that allows the creamy foam to top off the golden brew.

Pilsner's popularity would make it the most imitated beer style in the world.

Brewers back in Munich copied it, creating the style we recognize as Helles.

Today, popular variations of this original pils-style are among the world's top-selling beers: Budweiser, Heineken, Carlsberg, Labatt Blue and Corona.

While lager beer was all the rage in Europe, ale was still the beverage of choice in the colonies among the English, Scots and Irish settlers. But the population balance would change dramatically. Decades of political and economic problems in Central Europe forced a massive migration from Germany. In the 1850s alone, nearly one million emigrants came to America. The majority settled in the "German Triangle" of Cincinnati, Milwaukee and St. Louis. Central Ontario's Waterloo region was home to Canada's largest German-speaking settlement. The county seat was named Berlin, and was acknowledged as "Canada's German Capital". The town's name was Anglicized to Kitchener after the First World War.

The German colonists brought a thirst for lager and a skilled workforce that launched the golden age of brewing. The "lagerization" of North America was underway.

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Sneath is the award-winning author of "Brewed In Canada: The Untold Story of Canada's 350-Year-Old Brewing Industry"; signed copies of his book are available by emailing him at ad-vantage@rogers.com

Photography by: Bouke Salverda