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the UK as an 18-year-old. He had a very clear vision and understanding of his local market. “New Zealand in 1992-1993 was a 4% ABV Lager, Dark and Draught market, pretty plain and sweet malty stuff. Cheap and downed by the gallon. I wanted to increase the intelligence level of [the beer-drinking] New Zealander by getting people to drink less and enjoy better beers.” The market was ready to some extent, for what he had to offer. His recipe was similar to a Pilsner Urquell, but fermented with a local yeast strain he got from Ken Logan at Wilson’s Distillery (an at-the- time legendary operation that shuttered in 1997). He called this strain the KL Yeast Strain because they didn’t really know the origin of it. “It was a remarkable yeast that fermented well around 18-20C with clean flavours.” And the new beer was a hit! “It wasn't difficult to sell to the Kiwis as the country are familiar with lager styles, but a hoppy [version] certainly attracted attention. A hoppy lager style was almost non-existent in New Zealand at the time. When I started, I wanted to price our beers above the local draught beers but priced under the imported beers and Guinness.” Due to its success, the making of the beer eventually had to be rushed to the point where the KL Yeast Strain was no longer suitable because it required time to clear up and expel certain aromas. Further changes had to be made, such as moving away from purely organic ingredients. “The success of Emerson's Pilsner forced us to modify the recipe beyond the singular hop to protect ourselves from the fragile nature of the hop industry. We have [had] several years that we were unable to obtain our hop quota so had to 'cherry-pick' the flavours of other New Zealand hops to emulate the same signature flavour outcome.” The above is essentially a very different beer from a Pilsner, and in Emerson’s own words, “I have to admit it is a pseudo- lager but it tastes damn good, though! The recipe used several different New Zealand hops, New Zealand malt as I wanted it to be a true Kiwi Pilsner.” So why is a New Zealand Pilsner considered to be a style? “People probably don't understand what it is. It's not just a German Pilsner with New Zealand hops. It has a balance somewhere in between German and Czech Pilsners in that the body is bigger than a German Pils but not as much as a Czech Pils, and it doesn't have the crisp finish of a German Pils,” Strong explains. “It is often made with cool-fermented neutral ale yeast, so it isn't really a true Pilsner. And yes, it does feature New Zealand hops but that isn't all there is to the style. To focus on only one element ignores the totality of the style.” BOHEMIAN LAGERS In Bohemia in the 1840s, an interesting beer was developed out of a drive for quality. The story of Pilsner Urquell and the way that a Czech Pilsner (or as BJCP classifies it, a Czech Premium Pale Lager) came into being is of particular interest in understanding the human impulse to conquer challenges. (The local colloquialism for the style is světlý ležák, which literally translates to light or pale lager. This is an essential context to the history of the style.) The story goes that the town of Pilsen had such terrible beer that the town fathers literally dumped roughly 36 barrels of bad beer and built their own brewery with the aim of reproducing “good” beer. Specifically, they wanted to emulate Bavarian lagers. They eventually found a man named Josef Groll (his father called him the “rudest man in Bavaria”) to brew this beer and in 1842 he set out to do just that. The beer was hard to make at first due to issues in temperature control, as well as unreliable malt quality, as it was often undermodified, resulting in less sugar extraction and other essential enzymatic activity. This made for poor and inconsistent results when brewing, as well as leaving a haziness in the beer. Groll fixed these issues by using triple decoction. Decoction is a process of removing and boiling portions of the mashing grains to aid with the enzyme release on undermodified malt, but also serves the purpose of heating the mash. The main purpose of the decoction was to improve the enzymatic activity of the undermodified malts, but the ontapmag.co.za | Summer 2023 | 47