In the mid-19th century, Gabriel Sedlmayr took British pale ale brewing and malt making techniques back to the Spaten Brewery in Germany and applied them to existing lagering methods.

[citation needed] In the period 1820–1830, a brewer named Gabriel Sedlmayr II the Younger, whose family was running the Spaten Brewery in Bavaria, went around Europe to improve his brewing skills.

This technique was applied by Josef Groll in the city of Pilsen, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, (now Czech Republic) using less-roasted grains, resulting in the first pale lager Pilsner Urquell in 1842.

In particular Sedlmayr's friend Anton Dreher adopted new kilning techniques that enabled the use of lighter malts to improve the Viennese beer in 1840–1841, creating a rich amber-red colored Vienna-style lager.

The main ingredients are water, Pilsner malt and noble hops, though some brewers use adjuncts such as rice or corn to lighten the body of the beer.

In 1842, a new modern lager brewery Měšťanský pivovar was built in Plzeň (German: Pilsen), a city in western Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic.

In 1894, the Spaten Brewery in Munich noticed the commercial success of the pale lagers Pilsner and Dortmunder Export; Spaten utilized the methods that Sedlmayr had brought home over 50 years earlier to produce their own pale lager they named helles in order to distinguish it from the darker, sweeter Dunkelbier or dunkles Bier ("dark beers") from that region.

[8][9][10][11][12] The earliest known brewing of pale lager in the United States was in the Old City section of Philadelphia in 1840, by John Wagner, using yeast from his native Bavaria.

Owades developed an enzyme that could further break down starches, so that the finished product contained fewer residual carbohydrates and was lower in food energy.

"Diet" in the instance not referring to being "light" in calories or body, rather its sugars are fully fermented into alcohol, allowing the beer to be targeted to diabetics due to its lower carbohydrate content.

Since the 2012 revisions to the Diätverordnung [de] (Ordinance on Dietetic Foodstuffs), it is no longer permitted to label beer as "Diät" in Germany, but it may be advertised as "suitable for diabetics".

Malt liquor is an American term referring to a strong pale lager brewed to an unnaturally high alcohol content through the addition of such high-carbohydrate adjuncts as corn, rice, and sugar.