Lagers comin' out to get you. Ooh yeah!

The Chicago Tribune ran an article a couple months ago entitled "Lagers finding way in an ale world". It gives a brief overview of how microbrewers are delving into the style which I approve of heartily.

If you've enjoyed a craft beer lately, it probably wasn't a lager.

The craft pendulum, however, is swinging back. Many major brewers — such as Bell's, Dogfish Head, Lagunitas, Avery and Victory — have at least one lager in their portfolio. Chicago's Metropolitan Brewing makes primarily crisp, brilliantly executed lagers.

Then there are Coney Island beers. Sensing a hole in the craft lager market, Jeremy Cowan — who had previously launched He'Brew Jewish-themed ales ("The chosen beer") — started a line of robust lagers four years ago.

Those Coney Island brews sound tasty. Mermaid Pilsner is made with rye while Albino Python is sort of a take on the Belgian wit with its use of orange peel along with ginger and fennel. I believe they distribute here in Madison. And it's nice to see Metropolitan get press because I like their brews. Unfortunately they don't bottle any of their more experimental beers such as the coriander-orange peel Kölsch or the rye doppelbock.

There's one bit here that I think is misleading:

Cowan's lagers would probably appall 16th century Germans — who clung to a mere four ingredients, water, barley, yeast and hops — with recipes that include up to eight malts, 10 hops and ingredients like ginger and orange peel.

There wasn't a country called "Germany" in the 16th century like there is today ergo the (in)famous purity law didn't apply to all brewers in the area we think of as being Germany these days. The Reinheitsgebot applied to Bavaria so most brewers up north had no misgivings about brewing beer with something other than water, barley, yeast and hops. Here's a list of extinct German styles catalogued from a book dating to 1784 along with some styles delineated in 1900. Fruit beers, herb beers, sour beers – not all German brewers were clinging to four ingredients.

Regardless of this little oversimplification, it's nice to see not only that more people are brewing lagers, but that they are tweaking and playing with tradition as well.