Ever since I was asked why there are never any lager festivals I have thought that there should be.   Maybe the wrong crowd might show up & then turn nasty when all the beer turned out to look like their favourite corn-based, ice cold homeopathic lager but actually have an interesting flavour.   The best thing to do is hold your own.

Mark, myself, Asun, Gillian, Aidan, Geoff & Anna gathered to taste 22 differing straight forward lagers (no weissebiers, lambics or black lagers).   Rather than focus on what each beer tasted of we just tasted the difference between them & read from the BJCP style guidelines to see what we should expect;

Bakalar Czechⁱ Pils - this was a perfectly ordinary Czech pils.   Eyebrows were raised when I revealed it cost £1 per bottle & we agreed it was certainly well worth the price.

Arcobau German Lagerⁱ - not a super dry German Pils and not a malty Helles style beer.   Just a good example of how a lager can be.

Augustinerbrau Helles Bier - as expected; a more malty beer with less dryness & bitterness than a Pils.

Pilsner Irquell Czech Pilsner - a good example of a grassy-hoppy, fairly bitter pale lager.   None of us thought it was as good as we remembered now that we were surrounded by good examples of lager.

Fruh Kolschⁱ - perhaps the most well known of the Cologneⁱ beers.   One of the group tasted marzipan & had to give the beer away.   I've never thought of the fruity beer style that way before but now I'm thinking that that is a good decriptor for it.

Hofbrau Octoberfestbier - as you would expect, a much bigger malt body than the Helles biers with balncing bitterness.   Definitely a creaminess to the sweetish malt flavour.

Veltins Pilsner - one of my favourite beers.   Extremely pale lager with a very subtle hoppiness.   A good dry beer with a very clean taste.

Tergenseer Spezial - a little like a cross between a Helles & an Octoberfest bier in that the maltiness dominated.   The bitterness was still present in a fair amount though.

Sternbrau Hurlimann - I thought this was a Swiss lager but the small print on the bottle declares that it is from Shepherd Neame in Kent).   Not the best beer of the night by a long shot but certainly in with a chance of being Britain's best lager.

Warsteiner German Lager - A typical German lager as tasted abroad on holiday.   Cold, clean, dry with a delicate bitterness in the aftertaste.

Thurn & Taxis Rogger - my German not being what it could means that I picked this up in the off-license without realising it was a rye beer.   It poured a chestnut brown beer with a big malt taste.   A little cloying after only a few mouthfulls.

Spaten Oktoberfestbier - another typical Octoberfest beer.

Sunner Kolsch - The previous taster who found marzipan in the Fruh declined this.   Again I found a hint of marzipan in the fruity beer.

Pivovar Herold - another cheap Czech Pilsner.   Another success story, but mostly based on knowledge that it was around £1.30 a bottle.   Less noble hoppiness than the Bakalar & cetainly not as bitter as the Pilsner Irquell.

Staroproman Czech Pilsnr - like the Irqell it is a good bitter, aromatically hopped beer.

As with my other lager festival from a few years ago, only a few bottles of beer were drunk each.   When only a little beer is poured into each glass & you savour it to try & find the flavours in the style guide, then you end up having an interesting night having sampled many different brews but without wasting your sobriety.   Of course having to wait for the slowest drinker slows everyone down a little too.

What got shown by this evening was that there are many differences to taste between even pale, golden lagers before more exotic ingredients than malt, hops & water are added or unusual brewing techniques used.