Style family · 11 styles · node 03 of 11

Lager

The biggest tent in beer. Everything from adjunct light lagers filed by the giants to the craft lager revival — Mexican-style, Italian pils adjacent, dark and smoked oddities. Watch this family: when lager filings rise, breweries are betting on drinkability over intensity.

Ask the register about Lager →

On record: 2,553
This week: 19
Median ABV: 5.0%

Styles in this family

Looking for the light ones? Light lager — every lager filed as Light or Lite, and what that word obliges the label to print.

Pilsner 565American Lager / Light Lager 489Lager (other/unspecified) 424Oktoberfest / Märzen 214Mexican Lager 167Amber Lager / Vienna 165Dark Lager / Dunkel 145Fruited Lager 117Helles 98Bock / Doppelbock 86Rice Lager 83

Pilsner565 on record: German, Czech, Italian and American pilsners: pale, hop-bitter, clean lager fermentation, nowhere to hide a flaw. A rising style in the register as breweries chase precision and drinkability. Labels increasingly name the tradition — Bohemian, Italian-style, Keller — and the hop, Saaz or Saphir or Tettnang, the way IPAs name theirs.
American Lager / Light Lager489 on record: The standard and light American lager — adjunct-lightened, cold, clean, and filed at enormous volume by the largest producers alongside a growing number of craft houses making their own. Light and Lite on a label carry legal obligations about calories and carbohydrates, which is why the fine print on these filings is unusually specific.
Lager (other/unspecified)424 on record: Labeled lager with nothing more specific: kellerbier, zwickel, hoppy lager, or just the word lager. A big node because many houses write craft lager and stop there. The ABV and any hop or malt named on the can are the clues; where the label offers none, this is where the filing rests.
Oktoberfest / Märzen214 on record: Märzen, festbier and anything labeled Oktoberfest-style. The most calendar-bound filings in the register: they cluster in summer for a September release, and a label cleared in July is telling you exactly when to look. Festbier is the paler, modern Munich shape; Märzen the amber, maltier one.
Mexican Lager167 on record: Mexican-style lager, usually with flaked maize, sometimes a lime on the label and sometimes just the word cerveza. One of the fastest-growing lager filings of the last few years, and an easy one to read: the style is right in the name. Filed as a year-round shelf beer more often than as a seasonal.
Amber Lager / Vienna165 on record: Vienna lager and the American amber or red lager: toasted malt, a copper color, a clean finish. A style that sells better than it trends, so filings are steady rather than spiky. Vienna on the label is a good sign of a brewer who cares about malt; red lager is more often a shelf name.
Dark Lager / Dunkel145 on record: Dunkel, schwarzbier, black lager, Czech tmavé: dark malt on a lager body, roast without the weight of a stout. Filings are modest and seasonal, heavier into autumn. The label names the tradition more often than not, which makes this one of the easier nodes to read confidently.
Fruited Lager117 on record: Lager where fruit is the identity: fruited light lagers, tropical and citrus lagers, the better-for-you wave that arrived as an answer to hard seltzer. The register can't tell you whether one of these presents more like a lager or a flavored malt beverage; the label class and the fruit language are what we have, and we file on those.
Helles98 on record: Munich's golden lager: soft malt, restrained bitterness, a beer built to be drunk by the liter. Filed as helles, Munich-style or simply German-style golden lager. Its presence in a house's register usually means a brewer who has spent time with the tradition, and these filings tend to recur year after year.
Bock / Doppelbock86 on record: Bock, doppelbock, maibock, eisbock: strong lagers built on malt, from the spring maibock to the monastic doppelbock. Few filings, high intent — a brewery that files a doppelbock has committed tank time to it. The -ator naming convention still shows up on labels, which is a small joy of reading this node.
Rice Lager83 on record: Japanese-style lager with rice in the grist, dry and light on the palate. A small but distinct filing set, often from breweries with an izakaya or sushi pairing in mind, and the label will usually say rice or Japanese-style plainly. Look for it where a house has a food program.