The French Pilsners of Alsace

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Ryan Pachmayer

In the 1920s, American writer Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris. In his book A Moveable Feast, he talks about regularly visiting Brasserie Lipp, an Alsatian restaurant operating in Paris and frequented by fellow writers and poets, perhaps because of its affordability. There Hemingway enjoyed cold beer, food, and social scene. While he doesn’t name specific brands of beer, it is likely he drank beers from Alsatian breweries such as Kronenbourg, Schutzenberger, Perle, and Meteor.

It wasn’t long after the original Pilsner was created in Pilsen in 1842 that Alsace, a historical region in eastern France, would see its first Pilsner-type beer. Just five years later, lager was being made at the Schutzenberger brewhouse just outside of Strasbourg, the heart of the Alsace region. In the decades to come, Alsace was part of the lager revolution that was sweeping the world. These beers were sometimes made with only barley malt, but other times with corn or rice as a supplement.

Access the full article in the May/June 2025 Zymurgy magazine.

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