Beer Primer Black lagers

A few months back, when Beer Primer made its debut, The A.V. Club took a look at lagers, those light, easy-drinking beers that most people are familiar with. Well, that style has a less popular black-sheep cousin: the black lager. All lagers are made using yeast that does its work at the bottom of the fermenting tank to start, rather than at the top of the tank. Most lagers are also made with lightly roasted malt that gives them very mild flavors and makes them easily drinkable. Black lagers, by contrast, use dark, roasted malts that make for dark-colored beers. But don’t mistake these for other thick or heavy beers: Black lagers rely on less malt and more hops to balance them out than porters do. That means black lagers have the dark color and some of the roasted flavors you’d expect from a stout, but are much milder and easier to drink. Think hints of roasted barley and toast, but nothing to fill you up or overwhelm your palate.

Shiner’s Bohemian Black Lager, introduced late last year, is a good intro to black lagers because it’s relatively easy to find, though not quite as good as many of its German brethren, like Schwartzbier (which, yes, means, “black beer”). While the Shiner Black Lager looks pretty dark in the glass, light does shine through, giving it a dark brown-red hue. The nose is faint: There are hints of barley, but none of the complex aromas you’d find with many porters and stouts. The flavor is slightly bitter and the toasted barley is pretty noticeable, but the taste doesn’t stick around for long and the beer feels light in your mouth. While most people would gag trying to chug a pint of porter, it’s relatively easy to do so with black lager. Shiner’s Black Lager is the foot in the door to darker beers and an interesting twist on the same-old lager.

Where to find it: Sedgwick’s Bar & Grill
Try it with: California turkey wrap, because the black lager’s lighter body screams for a milder dish it can parry with.