For many people — myself included – Fourth of July means firing up the grill for a backyard cookout featuring hamburgers, hot dogs, apple pie for dessert and, of course, beer to wash it all down. For many years, the big, multinational breweries practically owned the holiday, because their light-bodied and low-calorie light lagers were arguably ideal for an outdoor gathering in July. Even when craft beer began appearing in the 1980s, most of the beer from small breweries were ales, which tend to be heavier and hoppier than most lagers.
Broadly speaking, beers mainly fall into two categories — ales and lagers. In the simplest of terms, ales are beers made with top-cropping yeast at warmer temperatures, while lagers use bottom-cropping yeast and are stored at lower temperatures for longer periods of time. In the early days, when small brewing equipment was either prohibitively expensive or non-existent and had to be hand-built, ales were significantly easier to brew, and almost all of the early craft breweries made ales exclusively.
But 40 years later, that’s no longer the case. Even the smallest breweries can make lagers thanks to technological advances and the proliferation of new equipment. That’s why we’ve seen an explosion in craft lagers over the past 10 years.
Now they’re so popular, they’ve started giving IPAs a run for their money. So you can go with the cheapest gazillion-pack of mass-produced lager this Independence Day. Or you can pick up one of the m.
