Jester King Releasing First Pale Lager Cans: Unfiltered Pilsner

From Jester King:

We’re very excited to release our first ever pale lager in cans — Jester King Unfiltered Pilsner!

Like a lot of brewers and beer geeks, pale lagers have had a special place in our hearts for a long time. For instance, when we receive a box of beer from our brewer friends in other parts of the world, it’s usually the pale lagers that get picked through the fastest. We remember waiting on our loading dock for our first ever shipment of Live Oak Pilz cans to arrive at Jester King and celebrating the moment. At beer festivals, we’re quick to locate the breweries pouring Pilsner or Helles. In central Texas, we’re pretty spoiled to be home to some of the best lager brewers in the country.

For our Unfiltered Pilsner, we embraced some familiar values — patience and simplicity. As we’ve written over the years, many of our favorite results come from adding time to simplicity. We brewed a wort with Hill Country well water (which we softened), White Horn Pilsner Malt from our friends at Blacklands Malt, and Hallertau Mittelfruh hops. We did a single decoction mash, which involves removing part of the main mash and cooking it separately for a period of time, in an effort to yield malt complexity and melanoidin production. We fermented the wort with German lager yeast from Community Cultures Yeast Lab in San Antonio, then lagered the beer for six weeks in a horizontal dairy tank (pictured below). We left the beer unfiltered and unpasteurized. Making pale lager was familiar to making farmhouse ale in the sense that there’s no substitute for time.

Jester King Unfiltered Pilsner will be released tomorrow (Wednesday, April 8th) when we open at Noon. It’s available for drive through pickup in four packs of 16oz. cans. Order online (https://www.toasttab.com/jesterkingbrewery/v3) or call 512-661-8736. Four packs are $13. We have about 200 cases available with no purchase limit. Under the circumstances, we anticipate a portion of the batch will see distribution.

Artwork by Josh Cockrell

Photo by Granger Coats