As many of you know, our Bavarian lager yeast strain has been back in house for several weeks now, and Dylan and Brandon have been hard at work brewing some of your very favorite lagers … just in time for summer. First up is the Civil Life’s much loved Vienna Lager, on tap now at our pub and available at some of our city’s most discerning purveyors of fine ales and lagers.
 
Vienna Lager is the case of a beer whose history is known in some detail. We know, for example, the first Vienna Lagers showed up in Germany and the Austrian Empire in 1841. A couple of enterprising brewers by the names of Dreher and Sedlmayr went to England to research recent improvements in kilning techniques that allowed for even, pale-roasted malts. Up until then, German beers, whether ales or lagers were dark (dunkel). Malted grain was dried by direct exposure to heat, roasting was uneven with some grains being scorched, and lightly roasted malts were not possible.
 
Dreher and Sedlmayr brought these new techniques back to Germany and got to work on some closely related styles of beer, Vienna Lager, Marzen, and Oktoberfest. Pale ales were starting to dominate the English market and Czechoslovakia would release Pilsner the next year. All these beers were pale in color, relatively dry, drinkable, and very popular.
 
Then Vienna Lager began to lose ground as a style after World War I, and Helles and Pilsner became the stein-fillers of choice. For a while, the most commonly seen Vienna Lagers in the US came from Mexico, Negra Modelo and Dos Equis Amber being the most famous examples. American craft brewers started to bring the style back. The only problem was that many of these breweries were using little or no Vienna malt.
 
And here is where an apparent digression is actually central to our discussion of the subject at hand. Your friends at the Civil Life are, as you know, a bunch of malt fanatics. And it just so happens, Vienna malt is one of our favorites. You’ll find some in many of the beers we brew (including our celebration of the great malts, “The Angel and the Sword”).
 
So why is Vienna malt so special? It imparts a deep orange color (it almost seems to glow) and a layered complex flavor with pronounced toastiness and nutty and bready notes. It’s a natural foil to the big spicy notes of traditional German noble hops. It also has excellent attenuation (meaning most of those fermentable sugars are readily converted to alcohol by the yeast). The result is a beer that, despite having a rich malt character, also has a delightfully dry finish. And while some Vienna Lagers may skimp on the Vienna malt, ours is composed of a whopping 76%. The Vienna as well as the other five malts used in the beer all come from venerable maltster Weyermann, from Bamberg Germany.
 
We finish the beer with Hersbrucker hops, a variety of noble hops indigenous to Bavaria for hundreds of years. They are spicy with subtle floral hints.
 
Civil Life Vienna Lager is toasty and spicy and oh so drinkable. It’s food friendly and extremely refreshing without being lean. Please come down and try some. Find out why we like Vienna malt so much. Just make sure to come before Charlie gets back from his work trip or before Alex drinks it all, because when she’s not fulfilling her daytime role as one of St. Louis’s most renowned architects, she’s down at the Civil Life drinking Vienna Lager and filling the world’s largest growler with this tastiest of brews. 

​Spicy, complex Roggenbiers were once commonplace in Bavaria, way back in the Middle Ages. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Beer, it was the Reinheitsgebot (Germany Purity Law) of 1516 that put the kibosh on using rye malt for beer. Apparently these tasty brews didn’t make a comeback until the 1980s. But as with anything beer related, the history turns out to be far from certain. The purity law seemed to be primarily directed at bottom-fermenting beers (lagers) not top-fermenting ales (like Roggenbier).
 
Some suggest that the law was originally created, not just to ensure the quality of beer, but also to make sure there was plenty of wheat and rye to use in bread baking, bread being the culinary mainstay for European peasants for hundreds of years. And coincidentally, when all the rye was baked into bread instead of being added to the mash tun, cases of ergotism went through the roof.
 
Ergot is a type of fungus that infects various grains, especially rye. Ergotism could cause hallucinations, convulsions, and burning sensations in the extremites (thus the medieval nickname for ergotism, “Saint Anthony’s Fire”), not to mention death. And it would be an ergot alkaloid that was first used by Albert Hofmann to create the first laboratory LSD.
 
Esoteric history aside, Roggenbier returned to a handful of German breweries toward the end of the twentieth century. Intrepid American craft brewers were ready to give it a go as well.
 
So what is a Roggenbier? The style typically contains at least 30% rye malt and is generally fermented with a wheat-beer yeast strain. Our version, which we brew as an exclusive for the Block Restaurant, uses 40% rye, including some flaked and chocolate rye, on a mixed base of pilsner, Munich, and Vienna malt. It’s fermented with the same Weihenstephan yeast strain we use for our German wheat and finished with saphir hops. This one-of-a-kind brew is dark and spicy with a slightly sweet under-note and a dry finish.
 
This year, brew day went off without a hitch. The first batch, on the other hand … Let’s just say the brewers struggled with a nine-hour stuck mash. Rye is notorious in the mash tun, basically making a sticky porridge. We use plenty of rice hulls to keep the grain bed from being too dense. Maybe this is the real reason why those Bavarian brewers took a few-hundred-year break from brewing it. It can be temperamental, but its complex, spicy flavor makes it worth it.
 
If you haven’t tried this delicious taste of brewing history, head on down to the Civil Life for a pint. Or if you find yourself in the Central West End or Webster Groves, visit our friends at the Block Restaurant. They’ll be happy to pour you a pint of this exclusive ale. Either way, see you soon at the Civil Life.
 

Although Civil Life beer finds itself as far west as Kansas City and as far east as our nation’s capital, most of the beer we brew is consumed right here in Saint Louis by thirsty locals. That’s due in no small part to the great local bars and restaurants that have supported us since the day we opened.
 
Over the years, we’ve partnered with some of our best accounts to produce exclusive beers for them, available only at their establishments as well as the Civil Life itself. We’ve brewed a Goal!-den Ale (coming back next month!) and an American ESB for our soccer loving friends at the Amsterdam Tavern. We’ve brewed a pilsner for Dave Bailey’s Range. The Royale served a Kölsch we brewed for one of their St. Louis Feast Day parties. We’ve brewed a special APA for Mangia Italiano. We’ve brewed a hoppy wheat for Dressel’s, an “Extra Special Beer” for Llewelyn’s, the “Proper Pint” for I-Tap, and a Dunkel for Global Brews. The Stagger Inn in Edwardsville has served a special ESB we brewed just for them. And soon, our Roggenbier will be back on tap at the Block.
 
This week, two of our exclusives return to the taps at the Civil Life. When Saint Louis’s own James Beard Award-winning chef Gerard Craft was opening his new pasta place, Porano, downtown, he asked us to brew a beer for him to serve there. Our Porano American Wheat beer is the only draft beer served at Porano. Meanwhile, Steve Gontram of Five Star Burgers is getting ready to expand his burger empire with a new location on Olive in Creve Coeur. Like his other two locations, it will be serving the exclusive Stevie’s Five Star Amber Ale, a beer as American as burgers themselves.
 
Porano is an American style wheat beer. We originally used an ESB yeast strain but have switched to the yeast we use for our British Bitter. It’s the same beer you love but a little cleaner. The brewers also scaled back slightly on the hops. We use pale malt as well as two types of wheat, all grown in Wisconsin. Porano is hopped with centennial and zythos. This refreshing, food-friendly beer is dry with a little wheat tartness as well as some floral, citrus, and tropical notes.
 
Stevie’s Five Star Amber Ale is a medium bodied beer brewed primarily with pale, amber, and crystal malts and hopped with chinook and simcoe. It’s a little darker and more flavorful than many ambers and has a rich bready, toasty malt profile and some subtle notes of pine and citrus from the hops.
 
Next time you dine at Porano or Five Star Burgers, grab a pint of Civil Life Beer. They are both currently on here at the pub, too, so come down and see us. We thank you, as always, for enjoying a pint or two at our pub, but every time you order one of our beers at one of the many great local bars and restaurants that carry Civil Life, you also support us. Keep up the good work.

​p.s. I’ve just received a communique from our very own Barley Ship Captain. This summer, we will brew a special lager for Guerrilla Street Food. Civil Life will be the only beer they serve! Make sure to grab a pint and a snack from these most civil guerrillas.