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I think an American Lager is personally one of the hardest styles to perfect. Easily one of my favorite styles of beer to date. Easy drinking, crisp, refreshing, and is everything I want when it comes to beer. Probably why I love all types of lagers.

An American Lager was my first all-grain brew back in 2022. Using pils malt and flaked corn I set out to try to make a Miller Lite clone. Arguably the best commercial lager to exist. I enjoyed the final outcome so much that I brewed it again about a year later using the same grain bill but with different hops and yeast. Really taking a dive into lagers in 2024 I thought it was time to make another American Lager with flaked rice this time. This beer placed bronze in the 5th GRiST NoVA Classic earlier this month. We could have had gold, but I had a little oxidation issue during the canning stage.

Recipe:
5.5 Gallons
Original Gravity: 1.046
Final Gravity: 1.008
IBU (Tinseth): 22
Color: 2.4 SRM

Mash:
Protein Rest — 125 °F — 15 min
Alpha Amylase Rest — 148 °F — 30 min
Beta Amylase Rest — 156 °F — 30 min
Mash out — 170 °F — 15 min

Malts (10 lb):
6 lb (60%) — MCM Pilsner Malt 
4 lb (40%) — Crisp Flaked Torrefied Rice 

I recommend adding some rice hulls to your mash. I did not have any, and both batches I got a stuck mash and it caused some hiccups in the brew day.

*Flaked Torrefied Rice consists of rice grains that have been cooked at high temperature, resulting in gelatinization of the starchy endosperm, and then flaked. It lightens wort color, reduces protein levels and imparts a characteristic dryness to finished beers.

Hops (2.7 oz):
1.2 oz (21 IBU) — Liberty 5% — Boil — 60 min
1.5 oz (1 IBU) — Liberty 5% — Aroma — 20 min hopstand @ 140 °F

Yeast:
2 pkg — Fermentis S-23 SafLager

I love this dry yeast. This is my go to dry lager yeast. Some great subsititions would be White Labs WLP840 American Lager, Lallmend Diamond, Wyeast 2035 American Lager, and even Imperial L13.

Fermentation:
55°F for [roughly] 7 days
58°F  for 4 day diacetyl rest
38°F  for 3 day cold crash  (If you can get down to 32°F then do that. My glycol chiller was unable to crash that low.)

*It is always best to monitor the fermentation by taking samples and checking the gravity.

After fermentation has completed, transfer it to your keg and let it lager at 36°F at 10PSI for 4 weeks, and then bump the PSI up to 15 for another 2 weeks.