This Whole Mexican Lager Thing
One thing that never fails to irritate me is the annual whining about Americans and drinking that surrounds Cinco de Mayo. So what if it’s not “the Mexican Independence Day,” so what if it’s “not even celebrated in Mexico” (suck it anyway, because it is definitely celebrated in parts of Mexico), and so what if we use it as an excuse to eat tacos and drink Mexican beer? After all, we celebrate the birthdays of our two most revered presidents with discounts at shopping malls. Have some fun!
But as a beer geek, you know what irritates me that’s right there tucked into the middle of Cinco? This whole “Mexican lager” thing. ‘Oh, you gotta have a Mexican beer with them tacos!’ ‘We’re gonna get a case of Mexican lagers and celebrate this right!’
Let’s get this straight right now: the only thing “Mexican” about “Mexican lager” is that it’s made in Mexico. Mexican beers are right out of central Europe in heritage, like most of the other best-selling beers in the world. Chinese beer, Thai beer, African beer, Australian beer, Brazilian beer, and the mass market Canadian and American beers: all central European at their core. You want to drink one because it’s made in Mexico, fine, but it’s not like it goes better with enchiladas because of that.
We get that, as beer geeks, I hope. (This is where you nod your head and say, “Hell yes, Lew, we get that.”) Which is why I gotta ask: what’s with all the so-called “craft breweries” suddenly making so-called “Mexican lagers”? Have they decided to start ripping whole pages out of the mega-brewers’ playbook? “Make BIG MONEY on Cinco de Mayo! Pile the Mexican lager high, and WATCH THEM BUY!” Ay Dios mio…
You must have seen them by now on your beer store shelves.
Full Sail Sesión Mexican Style Lager: “Loco bueno cerveza.”
Sweetwater The Hatchery #2 Mexican Lager: “…true Mexican style lager!
Oskar Blues’ own malty sanchez, BEERITO.
Lone Tree: “…new Peach Pale Ale and Mexican Lager cans.”
Anchor Los Gigantes: “…crisp, clean and crushable Mexican lager.”
What the hell, even Anchor?
Some brewers do note the European linkage, and you have to think it’s with a bit of shamefaced honesty.
Lakefront El Wisco: “Since the early Mexican lagers were based on Vienna lagers, we felt that a Mexican lager was a natural extension of Lakefront’s American take on European lagers.”
Seriously, guys? I’ve never quoted Desmond Tutu in a beer piece before, but desperate times require desperate measures. “When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate.”
Yeah, that’s right: we piled tons of hate on mega-brewers, their beers, on the people who drank them, and what’s happened? The same thing that we hated: stupid beer marketing.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve had the Full Sail Sesión Cerveza, and it was perfectly good stuff, a clean light lager. But to call it “Loco bueno cerveza” is, pardon the expression, cultural appropriation. We were the people who were supposed to know better! This is German/Austrian beer being brewed in Oregon, and then called “Mexican.”
I remember once when we talked about a genuine Mexican lager style, one that had evolved from Austrian roots: Oscura. The dark and malty kind of beer that used to be Noche Buena, Negra Modelo, the kind that’s being made by Mexican craft-brewers like Huatulco. These beers I’m talking about? Not oscura.
It’s like 805 gone mad around here. Firestone Walker finds surprising success with a lighter beer, and suddenly everyone wants to jump in. Hey, it’s Cinco coming up, and Latino is very cool, let’s (flush our long-built status as being true to beer history and authenticity and credibility and) do this!
Well, stop. For the sake of your street cred, stop. These are not Mexican lagers. To quote a friend of mine when asked about an ‘Irish pub’ in Philadelphia: “This is not an Irish pub. It can’t be. An Irish pub would be a pub in Ireland.”
A Mexican lager would be a lager made in Mexico.
Lew Bryson has been thinking about beer and whiskey for over 20 years. Follow Lew: @LewBryson on Twitter and Instagram, Lew Bryson on Facebook. His book “Tasting Whiskey” makes a great gift, too!
What Is A Mexican-Style Lager? – Read Beer
May 11, 2020 @ 1:55 pm
[…] three groups? The three main categories I described above all have critical flaws. Lew Bryson’s strongly-worded op-ed, which concludes that “A Mexican lager would be a lager made in Mexico,” spurred me to go find […]
What Is A Mexican-Style Lager? • thefullpint.com – ColorMag
May 11, 2020 @ 1:50 pm
[…] three groups? The three main categories I described above all have critical flaws. Lew Bryson’s strongly-worded op-ed, which concludes that “A Mexican lager would be a lager made in Mexico,” spurred me to go find […]
What Is A Mexican-Style Lager? | Beer Snawb
May 11, 2020 @ 12:33 pm
[…] three groups? The three main categories I described above all have critical flaws. Lew Bryson’s strongly-worded op-ed, which concludes that “A Mexican lager would be a lager made in Mexico,” spurred me to go find […]
Reviewed: Cervecería de Colima Cayaco Tropical Lager | Beer Brewing Kit
December 4, 2019 @ 12:02 am
[…] can in preparation for a longer opinion piece on the style as a whole. After reading Lew Bryson’s strongly-worded op-ed, which concludes that “A Mexican lager would be a lager made in Mexico,” I went on the hunt for […]
Reviewed: Cervecería de Colima Cayaco Tropical Lager – Read Beer
December 3, 2019 @ 10:48 am
[…] can in preparation for a longer opinion piece on the style as a whole. After reading Lew Bryson’s strongly-worded op-ed, which concludes that “A Mexican lager would be a lager made in Mexico,” I went on the hunt for […]
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June 22, 2017 @ 3:10 pm
[…] READ: This Whole Mexican Lager Thing […]
May 9, 2017 @ 6:37 am
So you are against Light Amerifan Lagers, NEIPA’s, white IPAs, RIS’s, etc…?
April 3, 2018 @ 5:52 am
No, of course not, and your question doesn’t make sense. Those beers are actually different from their origins. Mexican lager isn’t significantly different.
May 5, 2017 @ 10:59 am
On the validity of the term “Mexican lagers” beyond simply “A lager brewed in Mexico”: No arguments obviously on Mexican lagers’ heritage coming from Europe, but… would you agree that one can recognize that the taste profile of the set of “lagers brewed in Mexico and imported to the US” is distinct enough from “Bud/Miller/Coors and their light variants” and both these sets are distinct taste-wise from “Molson/Labatts and their variants” and all three are distinct taste-wise from “Heineken/Grolsch/etc.”… ? I think drinkers know what they expect a “Mexican lager” to taste like, consider it different enough from the various other sets of lagers, and thus have a reason to say “hey, have a Mexican beer with that food you’re calling Mexican food.” We can disagree or agree on the food pairing, but I’m pretty sure you’d recognize that there’s… well, not terroir, but something that helps you recognize a beer as “Mexican” when you drink it, the way you’d assume another lager was a Euro-lager when you drank that. And I think US breweries are presumably trying to replicate that flavor profile when they brew a “Mexican-style” beer. Yep, also, they’re chasing $$$. And yep, maybe calling “Mexican-style lager” a “Style” is going too far. But I bet you could drink one and say, “no, they missed the mark” or “yeah, tastes like Modelo Especial”.
April 3, 2018 @ 5:56 am
“would you agree that one can recognize that the taste profile of the set of “lagers brewed in Mexico and imported to the US” is distinct enough from “Bud/Miller/Coors and their light variants” and both these sets are distinct taste-wise from “Molson/Labatts and their variants” and all three are distinct taste-wise from “Heineken/Grolsch/etc.”… ?”
Well…no. Did you read what I wrote? That’s pretty much my whole point. I don’t believe that you or I could pick out the Mexican-made beers from American, Canadian, or most European mass market lagers in a blind tasting.
May 2, 2018 @ 7:03 am
I would (politely) disagree with the assertion that a person can’t discern the taste of a brewery’s ‘Mexican Lager’ vs a Bud/Coors/Miller macro variant. They are distinctly different, and if you were to contact a brewer (brewery) at Oskar Blues or Full Sail, or wherever else, I would bet you that the malt bill, hop schedule, yeast strain, etc are not all that similar to any macros. I personally know what I’m getting when I drink a Beerito and I surely don’t think it tastes ANYTHING like a macro variant on the shelf at my local supermarket. Not even on the same planet in terms of taste, in my opinion.
If your piece has done anything for me, it’s actually brought up MY annoyance with breweries that are now starting to make beers that they playfully coin as ‘Our lightest beer’ or some variation of that as many brewpub seekers in the US still saddle up to the bar and are looking for something that tastes like Coors Light. So, I suppose as a way to try and appease the masses and make a buck, a lot of breweries are starting to make a fairly bland tasting, rice adjunct, watery beverage so that a person that walks into a brewery can experience a beer that tastes like Keystone, I guess. To each there own, I suppose, and it probably winds up being one of the brewery’s best sellers in the pub, but I think it goes away from the creative and experimental nature of why breweries even exist if we are trying to clone SAB or Anheuser.
May 5, 2017 @ 10:41 am
No arguments obviously on Mexican lagers’ heritage coming from Europe, but… I’d assert that one can recognize that the taste profile of the set of “lagers brewed in Mexico and imported to the US” is distinct enough from “Bud/Miller/Coors and their light variants” and both these sets are distinct taste-wise from “Molson/Labatts and their variants” and all three are distinct taste-wise from “Heineken/Grolsch/etc.”… I think drinkers know what they expect a “Mexican lager” to taste like, consider it different enough from the various other sets of lagers, and thus have a reason to say “hey, have a Mexican beer with that food you’re calling Mexican food.” We can disagree or agree on the food pairing, but I’m pretty sure you’d recognize that there’s… well, not terroir, but something that helps you recognize a beer as “Mexican” when you drink it, the way you’d assume another lager was a Euro-lager when you drank that. And I think US breweries are presumably trying to replicate that flavor profile when they brew a “Mexican-style” beer.
May 4, 2017 @ 1:14 pm
What kind of nonsense is this?
You start the article carrying on about how people from Mexico that want to point out the true meaning of Cinco de Mayo are basically people that should get over themselves. In the same breath you have a problem with people not being specific about what a Mexican Lager truly is?
Are you intentionally being a hypocrite, or are you just a moron? And your moron readers agreeing with you are just as bad.
April 3, 2018 @ 5:59 am
Right, because 1) it’s about beer, which in context (this is a beer website, I’m a drinks writer) is more important; and 2) the whole thing is an over-the-top rant. Okay? No morons or hypocrites.
May 3, 2017 @ 3:56 pm
Hey Bob, clearly you have no idea who Lew Bryson is. Unlike you, Lew has been one of the most respected beer and whisk(e)y writers on the scene for twenty years.
Clearly he rustled your jimmies, to use a phrase I’m sure near and dear to your heart.
Now why don’t you think about it before you cut yourself on that edginess.
(Also, anyone who uses the term ‘SJW’ in an argument automagically loses said argument. )
May 3, 2017 @ 3:11 pm
Definitely takes some courage to take a stance like that in the days of the Internet. I hope people can see that you did say it’s a good style of beer. I’ll definitely be discussing this with my friends. Great read!
May 5, 2019 @ 7:08 pm
Haha. Hey Lew…have a source on those yeast strains? #homeworkisnotfunanddoesnotrule
May 3, 2017 @ 3:10 pm
Great piece, Lew! My husband, a third generation Cuauhtemoc employee, brewed for over 25 years at Cuauhtemoc and Coors. Ever since we first heard of U.S. Mexican-style lagers, he’s said exactly what you did. They’re basically macro-style Vienna lagers with–gasp!–corn. Tell me again, whatever happened to all that high-minded talk about how craft brewers will never cheapen their beers with adjuncts?
Signed,
Not a #1 fan of U.S. Mexican lagers or Mexican Mexican lagers
April 3, 2018 @ 6:00 am
Thanks! Best to your husband, thanks for all the beers!
May 2, 2017 @ 11:31 pm
You’re a fucking jackass. This is the equivalent of an SJW screaming cultural appropriation. What’s next no Italian food? It’s beer you idiot, stop taking the fun out of it. To quote myself – “you suck and your opinion is dogshit.” Thankfully you’re in a cubicle and not running a brewery because god knows the world needs another BA beer.
April 3, 2018 @ 6:05 am
I’m not a brewer. I’m a guy whose job it is to think about beer, and then scribble it down. That’s all. Sometimes I’m trying to make a point, sometimes I’m just screwing around. Movie critics don’t make movies, restaurant critics don’t run kitchens…we know that, and we get the difference. On the other hand, we aren’t selling beer, either. We have independence from that.
As for taking the fun out of beer…sorry, Bob, I had a lot of fun writing this, and reading your response made me laugh too. Fun rules!