The meaning of lager may not be as important as the meaning of life but to beer lovers understanding the process that produces the world’s favourite alcoholic drink is critical to its appreciation.

Lager is a German word meaning storage. Historically, lager beer was stored and aged for several months. The early lager brewers stored their beer in icy caves in the Alps in Bavaria, southern Germany.

But with industrialisation in the 19th century, breweries were built with deep cellars cooled by refrigeration. There the beer rested, aged and matured for lengthy periods.

The first golden lager was brewed in the middle of the 19th century in the Bohemian town of Pilsen, which gave its name to Pilsner beer.

Today the brewery ages its beer for 44 days. In the south of the Czech Republic, the Budweiser Budvar brewery takes even longer, ageing its beer in ice-cold cellars for a remarkable 90 days.

In sharp contrast, most of the beer produced by giant global brewers can’t really be called lager. In 2021 Gregg Wallace’s Inside the Factory programme followed the brewing process at the Molson Coors plant in Burton-on-Trent where Carling is made.

The beer was ready to drink in just 12 days, which has become the norm for most of the major brands such as American Budweiser, Carlsberg, Foster’s and Stella Artois.

At a meeting at Carlsberg in Copenhagen, a top brewer told me bluntly: "We’ve taken the lagering out of lager" and said his beer could be made as quickly as ale.

But a number of smaller British breweries are now making properly aged lager beer. Chief among them is the Utopian Brewery near Crediton in Devon, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a special beer called Augsburger Export.

Utopian was founded by Richard Archer, who couldn’t find a suitable site in London and moved to Devon.

He was fortunate to team up with Jeremy Swainson, who had trained with several breweries in Germany and who was passionate about the right way to make lager.

Over the following five years Richard and Jeremy have produced such authentic lager styles as Helles and Dunkel – meaning Pale and Dark – Maibock, brewed in the spring, and Vienna, a halfway house between Helles and Dunkel.

As a result of his German training, Jeremy believes passionately in a method of brewing known as decoction mashing.

This involves taking a portion of the mash of malted barley and heating it to a higher temperature before returning it to its original vessel where it raises the temperature of the whole mash.

It’s a slow method, starting at seven in the morning and finishing at 10 in the evening but it leads to a thorough conversion of starch in the grain to fermentable sugar.

The mash is drained and the liquid, known as wort, is then clarified and pumped to the brew kettle for the boil with hops.

For the celebration beer, Richard and Jeremy came across a fascinating recipe for a beer brewed in Southern Bavaria in the 1830s that predated the development of decoction mashing. This involves the entire mash of grain being transferred to the kettle for the hop boil.

Jeremy Swainson says the method creates a rich body in the beer and complex aromas, with proteins from the grain released into the wort.

Augsurger Export is 5.4 per cent alcohol. Utopian’s signature is to use only British ingredients and Export is brewed with lager malt from Warminster Maltings in Wiltshire and just one hop, the classic English Fuggle.

The bronze beer has a rich biscuit aroma with floral hops, a sweet palate balanced by spicy hops, and a finish that’s a fine balance of biscuit malt and bitter hops.

It can be bought online for £20 for six beers at www.utopianbrewing.com. Taste the difference!