Lager

[2] The term "lager" comes from the German word for "storage", as the beer was stored before drinking, traditionally in the same cool caves in which it was fermented.

Until the 19th century, the German word Lagerbier (de) referred to all types of bottom-fermented, cool-conditioned beer in normal strengths.

[5] While cold storage of beer, "lagering", in caves for example, was a common practice throughout the medieval period, bottom-fermenting yeast seems to have emerged from a hybridization in the early fifteenth century.

To further protect the cellars from the summer heat, they would plant chestnut trees, which have spreading, dense canopies but shallow roots which would not intrude on the caverns.

[11] The first large-scale refrigerated lagering tanks were developed for Gabriel Sedelmayr's Spaten Brewery in Munich by Carl von Linde in 1870.

[citation needed] While prohibited by the German Reinheitsgebot tradition, lagers in some countries may include a proportion of adjuncts, usually rice or maize.

Adjuncts entered United States brewing as a means of thinning out the body of beers, balancing the large quantities of protein introduced by six-row barley.

Adjuncts are often used now in beermaking to introduce a large quantity of sugar, and thereby increase ABV, at a lower price than a formulation using an all-malt grain bill.

In late 1840, Anton Dreher started renting a cellar to mature his beer under cold conditions, a process that is called "lagering".

[18]: 61–62 The Vienna lager style has survived to this day, mostly thanks to the emerging microbrewing, home-brewing and craft beer scene in the United States of the 1980s and 1990s.

[20][better source needed] Dark lagers may be called Dunkel, tmavé or Schwarzbier depending on region, colour or brewing method.