Düsseldorf Brewers Preserve Top-Fermenting Beer During the Rise of Lager

Around 1800, brewers in and around Düsseldorf continued producing beer through the region’s established top-fermenting method as bottom-fermented beers from southern Germany and Bohemia became increasingly prominent. The older brewing tradition gradually became known as Altbier—from the German word alt, meaning “old”—to distinguish it from the newer lager method rather than because the beer itself had been aged for an unusually long time. Modern Düsseldorf Altbier combines this older fermentation tradition with techniques increasingly associated with lager brewing. It is fermented relatively cool with top-fermenting yeast and then matured at low temperatures, producing a clean, crisp beer despite its ale fermentation. By preserving and adapting the Rhineland’s top-fermenting tradition, Düsseldorf brewers created a distinctive regional style that survived the nineteenth-century expansion of lager.