Lager first emerged in central Europe, in the triangle of Munich, Pilsen and Vienna. Brewing was banned between 23rd of April and 29th of September. So the last of the beers brewed each year were stored in cellars dug deep into the Alps by monks as part of the Benedictine requirement of self sufficiency. At these low temperatures the beers fermented really slowly and the yeast sank to the bottom. Over the generations the monks cultivated the best batches of this yeast that fermented at the bottom of the barrels and unknowingly developed a whole new style of beer.

The storing also led to the beer absorbing the naturally produced carbon dioxide, making it a more gassy drink.

For a long time lagers were not pale in colour but brown. Pilsner was the first pale lager and appeared in 1842. It was brewed by a chap called Joseph Groll with the same sort of malt as was being used for Pale Ale production in England and was so popular that by 1874 it had even reached the US.

In the German speaking Bohemia region “Pilsner” means “from Pilsen”. Just the same as “Frankfurter” means “from Frankfurt”, “Hamburger” means “from Hamburg” and “Budweiser” means “from Budweis”. The German speaking nations played fair with the descriptions given to beers but other nations however were not so meticulous. The Burghers brewery in Pilsen had to register the name of its beer as “Pilsner Urquell” meaning “original source pilsner”. The American brewer Anheuser-Busch started brewing its Budweiser in St. Louis in 1876, claiming in its adverts and promotional material that its beer is the “Original”. Back in the fifteenth century there were 44 breweries in the town of Budweis. In 1547 King Ferdinand I summound a Budweis brewer to make a beer for him and by the time of the industrial revolution Budweiser was a generic term for the beers produced in the towns two remaining breweries. In 1847 these two breweries merged and started selling Budweiser as a beer in it’s own right some 29 years before the “Original” American offering. It was in 1895 however that a rival brewery was set up in Budweis and started selling the beer known as Budweiser Budvar.

The American Anheuser-Busch and the Chezch Budweis breweries have been in court for the majority of the twentieth century arguing over who has the right to the name “Budweiser”.