Most malts of the day were kilned (heated after germinating) over fire, which produced dark smoky malts, which in turn produced dark smoky beers. They drew up plans for a state-of-the art brewery, complete with a relatively new invention, the “English-style” kiln. Before that, beer in the town was suffering from severe quality issues - so bad that town officials publicly dumped dozens of barrels of sub-par ale into the town square and then resolved to take some serious corrective action. It was born in the town of Pilsen, in what is now the Czech Republic, in 1842. Other types of lagers range from the inky darkness of a doppelbock to the copper depths of a Vienna lager to the bright, champagne gold of a pilsner. (Today there’s the added benefit of the relative cheapness of corn and rice vs barley, which helps keep that 18-pack of Bud Light so dang affordable.) Adding corn or, on the west coast, rice helped the mash more readily ferment and managed to keep the proteins from mucking up the brew. When lager brewing first came to the US, a heartier barley was grown (six-row, instead of two-row) that was harder to brew with - it was higher in protein and lower in carbs. Adjunct is simply the name given to ingredients like corn and rice that supplement the grain bill in a beer. Coors, Bud, Miller, and friends all fall under this category. The most popular lager out there goes by the rather unsexy name of American adjunct lager. In general, any lager you drink (Budwieser included) has been lagered or aged for a good while before it gets shipped out for drinking. Because of the way lager yeast ferments the malt, the beer needs to be conditioned for weeks, or sometimes even months, to smooth out the coarse and rough flavors. The other distinguishing factor for lagers is storage - in fact, “lager” in German is related to warehousing and storing. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that refrigeration allowed brewers to cool their fermentation vats so cold loving lager yeast could thrive in any well-equipped brewery. In other beer-making places like France and England, it was too warm to get a good brew from the lager yeast so they stuck with brewing ales.
In places like Bavaria where there’s enough cold weather and cool caves, dark lagers were happily brewed since before the 1500s. It’s a cold-fermenting yeast, active at temps around 50☏ which would make regular ale yeast go to sleep. It was named for Louis Pasteur and his work with yeast in the 1850s - but brewers had been using lager yeast for centuries before that. To earn smarty points at your next barbeque, you can whip out the name of the yeast: Saccharomyces pastorianus. Two things distinguish lagers from ales - the type of yeast used to ferment the malt, and the storage of the fermented brew before bottling or serving. “All pilsners are lagers but not all lagers are pilsners.” What is a lager? A very important and successful expression. So what’s the difference between a lager and a pilsner? Lager covers a wide variety of beers (though not as many varieties as ale) and Pilsner is one specific expression of a lager. Just like all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs, all pilsners are lagers but not all lagers are pilsners. So that Natty Ice, Coors Banquet, or can of Hamm’s you tried (when you were possibly too young to do so)… that was a lager. Bud, Coors, Miller, even imports like Heineken, Corona, and Fosters are all lagers. While ales - IPAs, double IPAs, imperial stouts, saisons - seem to get all the attention thanks to craft brewing, a few big breweries still dominate the beer market by a considerable margin.
It’s very likely that the first beer you ever drank was a lager.