What’s in Stein’s Stein: Bluejacket Midwest Condensation Czech Style Pale Lager

For as long as I’ve known director of brewing operations Ro Guenzel and brewer Colin Jordan, Bluejacket has been striving to make their beers the best they can possibly be. An amicable, admirable goal.

Billed as a Czech-style pale lager, Midwest Condensation is pale and has many hallmarks of the Czech style. It is around 4% (printed on Bluejacket’s menu and can is 3.8 % ABV). Perhaps most importantly, it is brewed with a very special malt.

According to Valley Malt co-owner/founder Andrea Stanley, only two batches of Jalowetz Malt have been made (in the US) so far. Professor Eduard Jalowetz was a scientist who wrote the book “Pilsner Malt,” which was Stanley’s inspiration. She took heed of Professor Jalowetz’ directions. Valley Malt writes:

After being given a historic text called Pilsner Malt written by Professor Eduard Jalowetz in 1931, we set out to follow exactly his recipe for the production.

Type: Base

Uses: Decoction mashes, Czech Pilsners

Color: 2 SRM

Protein: 11.2%

Flavor:  Grainy, cereal, touch of husk

Professor Jalowetz was born in Moravia, the eastern part of what is today the Czech Republic, or Czechia, in 1862. 1862 was the year Pilsner – the beer made famous by Pilsner Urquell– turned 20, having their founding date (and thus the founding date of Pilsner style beer) in 1842. The western part of Czechia, Bohemia, is where the famous Czech pale lager brewers Czechvar and Pilsner Urquell are located. Or if you’re in Czechia you’d say Budvar in České Budějovice, and Plzeňský Prazdroj in Plzeň. The jingoistic line goes something like: with Moravian malt and Bohemian hops, the Czech pale lager is the glue that outlasted Nazism and Communism. The Pilsner from Czech lands was around when my Czech grandfather was born in 1904, and when my Czech father died in 2024. Coincidentally, Jalowetz died in 1936, the same year my father was born in Prague. By then Jalowetz’ work on Pilsner malt had been felt by everyday people, his technical and scientific influence was in practice throughout what was then Czechoslovakia and surrounding countries (and most of the lager-brewing world). Jalowetz wrote the book “Pilsner Beer…” in 1930 and “Pilsner Malt” in 1931, and edited journals like “Austrian Brewing Calendar,” and the journal “The Brewing and Malting Industry,” as well as co-founding the Vienna Institute for Fermentation Industry.

95 years after Jalowetz’ “Pilsner Bier im Lichte von Praxis und Wiss., 2” was published in 1930, Bluejacket of Washington, DC and Little Lager of St. Louis, MO have brought us Midwest Condensation based on the historic work of Jalowetz and the contemporary work of Stanley.

Presenting pale, the beer looks like a sun drenched bowl of egg noodles in color, oozing with the malted goodness only provided by a caring maltster with meticulous attention to a micro lot of special barleys. It’s so pale and so clear, if it were hazier it could easily be mistaken for a witbier: though only in looks and not in aroma. Sniffing the glass the aroma wafting out is of mild hops. The kind of hops you need to use A LOT of to make just a slight scent of hay, lemon, and grassy meadow come forward. This is a subdued lemon, the kind of lemon that needs to be rolled on your cutting board and maybe even zested before the citric acid begins to perk up a dish. If the aromatic character of this beer could be summoned in one word it would be: subtle.

There is a subtle sweetness with—you guessed it— a subtle bitterness. The beer is balanced with a neutral lager yeast and if you’ve spent time pouring, selling, or purchasing Czech style lager you know Midwest Condensation comes down on the side of having not-a-ton-of diacetyl. Diacetyl is a byproduct of fermentation and some brewers go to great lengths to get it out of their beer. This beer to me presents with a mild sulphur character and an even more restrained hit of diacetyl. Many brewers would hate me for saying it but it could even use some more! If you’ve ever had Pilsner Urquell, you know diacetyl in the beer is a trait of the final product and not a fault.

As the beer grows on the palate, the malt and hops come out more. If you made the mistake of crushing this beer–a very easy mistake to make–you might think it more along the lines of an American light lager, though it is void of the green apple character that is common in beers like Coors Light and Miller Lite. There is, of course, a depth of malt character here that is lacking in the Bud and Millers of the world.

For as light as the beer presents on the tongue there is a palate richness; you’re getting your protein fix. This beer gives me a reminder, a common experience during my time in the Czech Republic, that the Pilsner Urquell I was having in and outside Prague tasted better than the stuff at home. At the source, this beer is an exceptional representation of Czech beer—Cesky Pivo—it is intended to be served on draft and at the source.

The longer you sit with the beer, the more the bitterness grows, a hallmark of Czech brewing–a subtle bitterness that amplifies the more your palate tunes into it. I’ve heard Czech brewers say the reason they use first wort hopping—a technique of adding hops as the beer is running from the mash to the kettle, rather than starting boiling and adding hops after the start of boil—is to impart a bitterness so subtle that the final product is more calmly bitter rather than say the bitterness found in a West Coast pale ale.

Midwest Condensation pairs well with Bluejacket’s beet salad, the bitter arugula blends nicely with the mild bitterness from hops. Earthy beets and hazelnuts also complement the beer as the beets smell of freshly fallen rain and the hazelnuts add even more earth, playing up the cereal and grainy nature of the malt. The meaty, earthy, and rainy smells remind me of the hearty barley in use here. At the same time, the citrus orange in the salad is sweet. That reminds the palate to perk up… malt is sweet!

A four pack of Midwest Condensation will run you $15.40 at the source.

Michael Stein paid for his initial draft beer and four pack for his review, but Bluejacket provided a free meal to Stein and photographer Brandy Holder in addition to two complimentary four packs.