Pale lager

American Light Lager

BJCP 1A

The most-brewed beer style on earth and the hardest to hide behind. There is no hop character, no malt complexity and no yeast expression to cover a flaw, so every process error you have ever made shows up in the glass.

Vital statistics

Each bar is drawn against the full range of all 98 styles

Original gravity

1.028 - 1.040

Final gravity

0.998 - 1.008

Bitterness

8 IBU - 12 IBU

Colour

2 SRM - 3 SRM

Alcohol

2.8% - 4.2%

Colour also 4-6 EBC

What goes wrong

Treating it as easy. A light lager is a technical exercise in clean fermentation, and it will expose oxidation and diacetyl that a stout would swallow whole.

Commercial examples

Bud LightCoors LightGrain Belt Premium LightMichelob LightMiller LiteOld Milwaukee Light

Reference examples of the style, as listed in the BJCP 2021 Style Guidelines. Availability varies by market and year.

Vital statistics as published in the BJCP 2021 Style Guidelines. Not yet checked against the published guidelines: treat these ranges as a planning aid and read the source at bjcp.org before entering a competition.

The rest of the pale lager family

American Lager

4.2-5.3% · 8-18 IBU

Cream Ale

4.2-5.6% · 8-20 IBU

International Pale Lager

4.6-6% · 18-25 IBU

Czech Pale Lager

3-4.1% · 20-35 IBU

Czech Premium Pale Lager

4.2-5.8% · 30-45 IBU

Munich Helles

4.7-5.4% · 16-22 IBU

Festbier

5.8-6.3% · 18-25 IBU

German Leichtbier

2.4-3.6% · 15-28 IBU

Kolsch

4.4-5.2% · 18-30 IBU

German Helles Exportbier

4.8-6% · 20-30 IBU

German Pils

4.4-5.2% · 22-40 IBU

Plan a batch to these numbers.

Bitterness Colour Alcohol