Mexican Lager Recipe

How to brew a Mexican Pale Lager, and what is a Mexican Lager recipe? That’s a broad statement and a difficult question. This is not an easy to define style, and there is no single Mexican beer that you can point to, and say “That defines the brewing of that country”. Sure, the most internationally recognised Mexican lager export is Corona Extra. However, that’s an unfair umbrella to put over a country that has a very broad and actually interesting brewing history.

I’m not here to delve into the history of Mexican brewing. I’m not qualified, and this site is not really dedicated to that. This is more about recipes, and how to’s. That said, I really need to touch on some of the brewing development in Mexico, to explain how and why I got to my final recipe. Much of this information was learned from an indepth article on the history of Mexican brewing, which you can read here.

Beer, in it’s modern form, is a relative new comer to Mexico. It only dates back to the 1600’s, and even then, there is very little documented history of beer brewing. It was introduced by the Spaniards, and would have been ales only.

That’s not to say that a type of beer was brewed prior to that. There is an ancient beverage called Tesgüino. Tesgüino is a form of beer made with corn, which is still brewed today, but it is nothing like beer as we would recognise it.

The Start of Mexican Lager

The 1800’s brought immigrants from areas of northern Europe, such as Germany, Switzerland and Austria. With them came their brewing. This was the real start of Mexicos modern beer brewing traditions. It has been heavily European influenced from the beginning. However, due to the hot climate, and no ability to refrigerate, the styles being brewed were ales. At this point, we can start to develop a broad recipe base. The ingredients being used and preferred were European malts and hops, this was to continue into the future. For my recipe, I will use European two-row barley and also European bittering hops.

The Vienna Lager ‘myth’.

It wasn’t until the early 1880’s that the first ice making machine was imported to Toluca (by Cervecera de Toluca y México), that we have documented evidence of lager being produced. There are stories of Vienna lager being produced in 1864 under the orders of an Austrian that was installed as the Emperor at the time. However, there appears to be no evidence of this, and as stated above, there was no way to cold ferment at this time, so it seems implausible.

Another brewery, Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, was established in the 1890’s. This (along with Toluca), was possibly one of the most influential breweries in establishing a Mexican brewing style. At the time, they were extremely successful with what was referred to as “American” beers. Exactly what was meant by this is unclear, but it is quite probable that it referred to the pale lagers that were popular in America. These were produced with six-row barley and adjuncts.

Six-row barleys were high in proteins and contributed a haziness and slight astringency to beer. This was negated by replacing some barley content with Rice or Corn. Even though the Mexican brewers were largely using German barley and some home grown two-row (they were also importing substantial American 6-row), the recipe influence still carried over. This gives us our second piece to the ingredient list, adjuncts. I’m going to use corn, as I feel it’s appropriate given Mexico’s long history of brewing with corn.

The yeast choice

The last piece in the recipe research comes from Grupo Modelo. Modelo was founded in 1922, and acquired Toluca in 1935, after the Toluca brewery had suffered hard times for a number of years. Many of the Mexican breweries were employing brewing staff that had trained at Wahl and Henius, and Modello also employed the same. Along with those brewers came a yeast strain from Wahl and Henius.

In the book Taste, Politics, and Identities in Mexican Food, there is reference to the yeast being used at the time, “the preferred variety of brewer’s yeast in Mexico was Wahl and Henius’s pure lager culture, known as Chicago Number 1.” This would have mutated over time and, I suspect is what we now refer to as the “Modello strain” of yeast. This is what I will be using in my Mexican lager recipe.

Even though this is a very distilled version of Mexico’s beer brewing, and I will largely be following this as a guide for my Mexican lager recipe creation, that’s not to say that modern brewers are not innovating. Obviously there is creativity in Mexico, as there is anywhere in the world, and their modern brewers are embracing new ingredients and flavours from all over the world. As a nod to this, I’m going to include a new world variety of hop from New Zealand, just to give my beer a subtle difference.

So, on to the recipe itself.

Mexican Lager Recipe Ingredients

The Mash

As I’m using an electric all-in-one brewing system, I’ve doughed-in at 40°c / 104°f with all the grains.

The temperature is then raised to 67°c / 152°f and held for 60 minutes. On completion of the mash, it’s mashed out at 77°c / 171°f for 5 minutes.

The Boil

The wort is then brought to the boil, and boiled for 60 minutes. My Saaz addition goes in at the start of the boil for the full 60 minutes.

At 5 minutes to go, add the Motueka hops.

Cool the wort to yeast pitching temperature. I pitch this yeast at 10°c / 50°f

Fermentation

Low and slow is the key here. I ferment this at 10°c / 50°f, but the yeast is recommended to be fermented between 10-13°c / 50-55°f. For me, I hold this for about two weeks, then start to ramp the temperature slowly up to 16.5°c / 62°f over a week. I then hold it at this temperature for about a week for a diacetyl rest. Then I cold crash, fine and carbonate.

The Results

This beer clears brilliantly, especially with the help of some finings. When I say clear, I mean absolutely crystal clear. I don’t filter my beer, but this appears as if it could easily have been filtered. A fitting tribute to those super clear and light Mexican pale lagers we all know.

The colour is of straw, but not as light as something like Corona, due to the dark munich malt giving a beautiful golden hue to it.

The Taste

The first taste that comes through is the light citrus and lime of the Moteuka hops. It’s not strong, it’s subtle, a bit like a small slice of lime. I’m not a fan of the lime gimmick in a bottle of Corona, however, in this beer the taste fits perfectly, as it should, being derived through the addition of hops. It also makes it feel more crisp and refreshing. Great for hot summer drinking.

Then the light bread flavour of the Pilsner, and some of the light malt character comes through. There is enough malt flavour, surprisingly so for such a pale lager, which means that Munich malt is showing it’s presence. However, the corn is doing it’s job to really lighten up the whole beer, whilst still retaining all that flavour.

At no point does this feel heavy. It’s a light, extremely crisp lager that could easily be consumed in large quantity. (If you were so inclined….). I’ll certainly brew this more often, and if you haven’t brewed a Mexican Pale Lager, I highly recommend trying this one.