Lost & Grounded lager Q&A with owner Alex Troncoso

Lager is the biggest selling style of beer in the UK so I sat down with lager specialist and Lost and Grounded co-founder Alex Troncoso as part of my look into innovation in craft beer to see where it sits in the independent scene.

– Your Keller Pils has become a huge success, was becoming a specialist lager maker the intention from the start?

Sometimes great things happen by accident, but Keller Pils was very much intentional. When we set out to create the brewery we decided we would focus on this somewhat obscure lager style as we needed a clear reason to exist – there would be no point to try to compete with the dozens of other filtered lagers on the market.

Starting with the end in mind – making an amazing lager – we then set out to design the best possible brewery we could knowing what we would need: we installed a mill so we could have flexibility in malt supply (currently we use Dingemans from Belgium), we knew we would need a mash tun where we could do various temperature rests or decoctions, and a very efficient boiling system to produce very clean and pale wort. But a key aspect of our lager brewing is how to deal with the alkaline water of Bristol which is definitely not ideal for brewing… to over come this we installed a biological acidification plant (lactic acid plant) which is the traditional German method of dealing with alkaline water. In this system we have lactic acid bacteria isolated from the husk of malt which is continually producing natural acid for us – we use this acid to adjust the pH of all of our beers during boiling.

So making lager was 100% the focus when we set up the brewery – this has taken a lot of dedication and a clear long-term vision as ultimately we have needed roughly double the tanks if we were to only make pale ale for instance.

– Why lager? Do you just love the style?

It was a bit of an evolution which happened over my career. When I started in brewing all I wanted to make was Pale Ale, and I had an amazing 8 years with Little Creatures in Australia where that was our focus. However, over the years I started to become obsessed with how to make the most simple of beer styles – lager.

From Little Creatures we moved to London where I took up the position of Brewing Director with Camden Town Brewery, which was a decision based on wanting to immerse myself in lager production. I spent a lot of time in Germany and Belgium, and slowly but surely I became increasingly fascinated by the world of lager.

And then along came Keller Pils…

– Tell us a bit about lager we might not know…

I think that lager is largely misunderstood in that it is really a technique and philosophy, it’s not just a matter of putting a specific yeast into some wort and it pops out as lager.

Amazing lager comes down to numerous choices – water treatment (incl our acidification plant), mashing, lautering and boiling regimes, wort cooling temperature (we go quite cold at 8C), yeast strain, fermentation and maturation profile, and lastly it’s about time – traditional, high-quality lager is a cold process and it takes time; we typically make Keller Pils in 4-5 weeks. Amazing lager also takes good production rhythm to keep the yeast happy – so much of quality really comes down to the yeast and how it is performing – it can be really difficult to produce great lager on a sporadic basis.

– How much of the business is making lager, your core beer?

Making core lager is the vast majority of what we do. Keller Pils and Helles comprise 80% of our volume. As we have 12 x 150HL lager tanks we always keep an eye on batches and it is amazing to taste Keller Pils at 2, 3 and 4 weeks and realise how much the lagering process improves the product.

– Lager has had a bad rep in the UK in the past, that’s changed right?

Ha, we wish! There is definitely more accounts that are interested in stocking amazing lager, but there is still quite a battle to be won against the bigger, well-established brands with large advertising budgets.

– Keller is thought to be the best UK indie lager, how’s that feel?

It’s feels amazing to have the recognition after setting out on what many thought was a crazy business plan, but we got there… it wasn’t easy! Our recent World Beer Cup Gold award for Keller Pils in Nashville, USA was a particularly sweet moment: the WBC is the largest competition in the world and the the judging is very rigorous – to have Keller Pils beat nearly 90 other kellerbiers from around the world was a great feeling.

– What’s it’s success?

Good question… we often talk about this and I think whilst it is refined and balanced, there is a certain boldness about it when compared to other lagers. It’s lemony and zingy, 30IBUs and definitely has a house “Lost and Grounded” character to it which stems from the raft of choices we’ve made along the way. We find once people are Keller Pils fans they seem to remain on the journey.

– Did you use anyone or anything as a base or for inspiration?

The inspiration for Keller Pils came from a trip to the hop harvest in Tettnang – I had a Kellerpils from a local brewery and had a lightbulb moment: what if we made a simple lager, unfiltered, using only traditional hops and make that our focus. Over the years little has changed in terms of recipe – still the same hops, although the base Pils malt can change from season to season. All we’ve done is gotten better at it over the years.

A little bit of inside info: the lake on the Keller Pils label is actually inspired by Lake Constance with the hop fields of Tettnang in the background

– If you’re not drinking your own lager what lager do you drink?

German lager is my favourite genre due to the clean nature – I love the classics like Augustiner and Tegernseer through to the bitter Jever – so good! On a recent trip to Berlin Weihenstephaner Helles was the beer of the trip – faultless and such a pleasure to drink.

– Who else in the industry inspires you?

For both Annie and I we love to see breweries that have a clear philosophy. Burning Sky would have to be one of our heroes as Mark and the team are very humble, make amazing beers, and have always done things their own way. The dedication shows.

– Any grand plans for 2024?

Ha, take some time off? But on the brewery front we will be installing a new keg line to keep up with demand – in summer 2023 it was tough to meet demand, so the team is looking forward to being able to keg faster, empty tanks quicker, and especially looking forward to having a new whiz-bang keg lifter as manually handling over 300 kegs a day takes it’s toll on the crew!