Beer Styles

Which beer styles belong to Lagos? Two lead the market: pale lager and Foreign Extra Stout. Then come the household millet beers, which fall outside any formal style guideline.

Star Lager represents the pale lager. Like many beers of its kind worldwide, it's golden, lightly bitter, and fairly light-bodied. The BJCP competition guidelines classify such beers under International Pale Lager, at 4.5 to 6 percent ABV.

Foreign Extra Stout is a strong, dark beer with roasted character. Guinness was already brewing it for export before the Nigerian brewery opened in Ikeja in 1962. The term stout originally just meant strong, and it dates back to 18th-century London — Ireland made the style famous, but didn't invent it.

The difference between the two is easy to sum up. The lager is bottom-fermented, pale, and light. The Foreign Extra Stout is top-fermented, black, and robust, with higher original gravity — meaning more dissolved sugar in the wort — and therefore more alcohol.

Pito and Burukutu are millet beers. They're slightly sweet and lightly sour, ranging from amber to dark brown. There's no formal style standard for them, and that's as it should be: every household has its own hand.

You can spot the difference from the neighboring style just by looking at the glass. Hold a stout and a lager up to the light: the lager lets it through, the stout doesn't. On the palate, the stout delivers coffee, cocoa, and bread, while the lager shows grain and a light hop spice.