In 1995 Robert Rodriguez released Desperado, a sequel to the Spanish language film El Mariachi. The Mariachi, played by Antonio Banderas, is a vigilante seeking revenge on a criminal syndicate that murdered his one true love. He blazes a trail of destruction with his guitar case, filled with a smorgasbord of pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, throwing knives and a variety of explosive devices. It’s equal parts black comedy and adrenaline-fuelled action romp.

I think it’s brilliant, but I also acknowledge that it’s a movie not to be taken too seriously. The Mexico portrayed in Desperado is an almost cartoonish parody of Western stereotypes: gunfights breaking out in bars, dusty dirt roads, and mariachi bands playing upbeat tunes beneath a baking hot sun. However, the particular stereotype I wish to address here is that Mexican lager tastes like piss.

In the opening scene The Mariachi’s sidekick, Steve Buscemi (weirdly, playing himself,) walks into The Tarasco—a filthy dive bar, and a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Buscemi orders a “cerveza” and a dirty glass stein, half filled with sad, flat, pale yellow beer is slung over to him. Buscemi winces after taking a gulp.

“All we have is piss warm Chango,” the bartender declares, the fictional beer’s logo emblazoned on a lone bar tap.

Unfortunately, unlike the other stereotypes—which most moviegoers realise is a parody—the majority of beer drinkers in the UK think of Mexican lager, at best, as an easy-drinking beer with a wedge of lime stuffed uncomfortably down the bottleneck and, at worst, not tasting like much at all.

““We’re not brewing ‘Mexican lager’, we’re brewing lager.””

— Mariana Dominguez, Cervecera Macaria

Homebrew recipes for Mexican lager (like this homebrew kit from Northern Brewer) will, largely, tell you that the style has evolved from Vienna lager, but is lighter in colour and that it primarily uses pilsner and Vienna malt, plus flaked corn, German hops and Mexican lager yeast. This was initially going to be my template for this recipe. However, in beer writer Mark Dredge’s book A Brief History of Lager, he suggests that Mexican lagers are more like pilsners, and don’t have anything to do with Vienna lagers. There’s an implication that there are pilsner and Vienna style lagers produced in Mexico, but that there is no such thing specifically as ‘Mexican lager’.

“We brew all sorts of lagers in Mexico: pilsners, Viennas, bocks,” Mariana Dominguez of Cervecera Macaria, based in Mexico City, tells me as I try to get to the bottom of this Mexican lager mystery.

“What about Mexican lager? Is there such a style?” I ask.

“I think it’s something that White Labs [a yeast manufacturer and wholesaler] made popular,” she explains. “They are selling a yeast supposedly propagated from a Mexican beer as ‘Mexican Lager Yeast’. No one in Mexico really uses this as it’s too expensive.”

“We’re not brewing ‘Mexican lager’, we’re brewing lager.”

This revelation made me wonder if there were other stereotypes around Mexican beer we had just assumed were correct, so I asked the ultimate question: do Mexicans actually stuff lime wedges into their bottles?

“That’s a stereotype but not entirely,” Mariana says. “If you go to the beach you will get given a lime, but you just squeeze the juice into the beer. The first time I saw anyone stuff the wedge into the bottle I was in Edinburgh, I was so shocked.”

I asked Mariana how she felt about the stereotypes surrounding Mexican Lager.

“Well one or two of them do taste awful,” she says. “I wouldn’t drink Sol or Corona if you paid me. That’s the reason for the lime, it’s the only way to make them drinkable. We’ll often make cocktails called Michelada where we add lime and salt and maybe tomato juice or Worcestershire Sauce, and even a rim of shrimp around the glass.”

Now I was getting worried. If all Mexican Lagers are bad, then I’m in real trouble with this recipe. Thankfully, Mariana was able to put me at ease.

“[Real Mexican lagers] are the kinds of beers you can’t get overseas, some of them even in parts of Mexico,” she tells me. “My favourite is Carta Blanca, but it’s really [only] available in the north.”

I started to think that I wanted this recipe to be more like a Vienna lager, to hark to the homebrew stereotype, but I wondered if these were actually popular in Mexico, or if this was just another falsely perpetuated myth.

“They came over with imperialism and they stayed popular. Pilsners and Viennas are what 99% of people are drinking,” Mariana explains. “We’ll even mix the two together 50/50 in a glass, that’s called a Campechana.”

“What about corn?” I asked. Corn is often derided as a cheap adjunct used to save money by British brewers, but what do Mexican brewers think of it?

““What I’ve tried to do with this recipe is set right the wrong of the depiction of Mexican lager.””

“I think it’s a good way to use Mexican produce, and as craft brewers, we’re competing with mass market brewers that can make their beers much more cheaply,” Mariana says. “Using corn allows us to compete.”

I decided to brew a Vienna-style lager in the end, even though it’s nothing like how Chango is portrayed in Desperado. If you want to make a sad, yellow beer that tastes like piss, honestly, be my guest. What I’ve tried to do with this recipe is set right the wrong of the unfortunate Western stereotype of Mexican lager. Yes, there are bad beers in Mexico, just like there are bad beers everywhere. This recipe hopefully serves as an example of the fantastic malt-driven lagers that don’t get portrayed in popular culture, and that people (in the UK, at least) don’t naturally associate with Mexico.

The recipe will produce a sweeter, darker Vienna-style lager, straddling the line between the BJCP guidelines for the Vienna and Märzen lager styles. This is how Mariana told me that Mexican Vienna differs from tradition, and can include crystal malts to achieve a darker colour, and sweeter character. The corn lowers the final gravity for a lighter mouthfeel to offset the heavier malt bill.

We always love to hear if you make the beer yourself, so please drop us a line if you make your very own batch of Chango Vienna Lager!

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Recipe

Target Original Gravity (OG) — 1.054
Target Final Gravity (FG) — 1.013
Target Alcohol by Volume (ABV) — 5.4%
Target International Bittering Units (IBU) — 20
Batch Size — 20L

Ingredients

2Kg Vienna Malt
1.5Kg Flaked Corn
500g Munich Malt (10L)
500g Melanoidin Malt
250g Crystal Malt (60L)

30g Hallertau added start of boil

Mangrove Jacks Bavarian Lager Yeast (20g)

30L water total (12L for mash, 18L for sparge)

Method

Mash Duration — 1 Hour
Mash Liquor Volume — 12L
Total Grist Weight — 4.75kg
Liquor to Grist Ratio — 2.5 L/Kg
Mash Temperature — 65ºC
Sparge Liquor Volume — 18 Litres
Sparge Liquor Temperature — 75ºC
Boil Duration — 1 Hour
Fermentation Temp — 10ºC