Drinking lager at cool underground venues is natural given in German "Lager" means warehouse, an ideal environment for cold brewing these beers
"Shouting lager lager lager" is the lyric on repeat throughout Trainspotting hit Born Slippy.
What writer Karl Hyde intended to be a call for help after finding himself drunk at chucking out time at a Soho pub in London and struggling to catch the last train home to Romford during one of his song writing journeys, soon became a drinking anthem. Karl says he recorded the lyrics in one take, and when he forgot his place he just repeated the same line, lager, lager, lager, and the rest is history with the crowd raising lager cans when the track was first played live.
And much like that song recording experience, lager, especially the commercially mass produced limited flavour variety, still becomes the default beer order on repeat when people lose their way in the increasingly complex bar menu's put in front of them.
It's no wonder we still see this stock brew on ice at the warehouse parties keeping Sydney's live music scene alive in the otherwise repressed era of lock out laws, sound complaints, and broad regulatory crushing of the creative spirit.
And while at Canvas we'd love to see more of the awesome craft brewers taking lager to another level, we feel no matter the source of the drop, having lager in warehouses is a natural outcome. A genuine circle of life for the beer, true to its literal cool underground roots.
This is because lager is a type of beer conditioned at low temperatures.
It radiates cool.
In addition to the maturation in cold storage, most lagers use a bottom-fermenting yeast that ferments at relatively cold temperatures. Prior to the advent of refrigeration, cool fermentation in caves, warehouses, and cellars dates back to the middle ages. With the development of lagering German brewers would dig cellars and fill them with ice from nearby lakes and rivers, which would cool the beer during the summer months.
So give that some thought the next time you crack a cold can of lager at your next warehouse party. Shouting lager, lager, lager