Contemporary American Style Lager

It doesn’t take a bespoke lager brewery to bring the subtle complexities of decoction to craft lager—but it does take some ingenuity.

American brewers have been producing an industrial riff on bock for more than 150 years—light in strength but dark in color, usually made with corn as well as dark syrups. How might craft brewers reinterpret this tradition, based on the ingredients they have today?

From shared breweries to shared tables, the zoigl tradition of northeast Bavaria is unlike anything else in modern brewing or hospitality.

This beer style works just fine on its own as a fall or winter party tap—but it also makes a great base for winter-themed fruited or spiced beers.

Ashleigh Carter, cofounder of Denver’s Bierstadt Lagerhaus, focuses solely on lager in her own brewing, and she’s drawn to those with similarly singular approaches. Her chosen six-pack honors intentional commitment to a style, to a single beer, to presentation, and to experience.

From beer-baron bobbleheads to bespoke barrel-aged blends, here are a few recs from our editors.

In Bavaria’s lager-loving Franconian region, the Bayer family’s Theinheim Landbier is integral to their tradition of local hospitality.

A great helles is simple in composition—but simple can be surprisingly hard to get right, especially when there’s nowhere for mistakes to hide. It's a worthy challenge, and the payoff is a beer that pretty much everyone is happy to drink.

Kevin Templin, cofounder and head brewer, lays out their approach to yeast selection, spunding, managing sulfur, and preserving natural carbonation at Templin Family Brewing in Salt Lake City.

Write it down! Kevin Templin, cofounder and head brewer at Templin Family Brewing in Salt Lake City, explains how they fine-tune the tiniest details using a dialed-in sensory panel—and why it’s critical to take notes.

Strict attention to quality throughout the brewhouse, whatever the type of beer, can only help you in competitions—as can thinking ahead on maturation and carbonation. Kevin Templin, cofounder and head brewer at Templin Family Brewing in Salt Lake City, shares some key tips on how to improve your odds.

Embracing whole-leaf hops at Templin Family means stuffing them into huge game bags from the hunting store and adding them to the whirlpool. Kevin Templin, cofounder and head brewer, explains their approach to emphasizing that delicate Noble-hop aroma.

Kevin Templin, cofounder and head brewer at Templin Family Brewing in Salt Lake City, lays out his medal-winning approach to producing flavorful lower-strength beers with high standards of quality.

Brewed on the edge of the Mojave in St. George, Utah, Silver Reef’s Más Fuego Rauchbier won gold at the World Beer Cup last year. Here’s what goes into the elegant smoked beer that’s gained a following among brewers and other beer-savvy visitors to Las Vegas.

When most people hear “bock,” they think malt—and there’s no question that maibock is a malt-forward style. However, you can lean into hops and other flavor elements to add interest, and—done well—the result is much more than a “strong helles.”

Based on an early 19th century recipe, this might well have been the kind of thing locals would’ve drunk fresh from the keller. It includes an older technique called hopfenrösten, which means the brewers boiled the hops separately in a small amount of wort.

As independent brewers worldwide follow their own paths of lager rediscovery, it’s worth taking a closer look at where it all started—the keller—and the rustic tradition we know as kellerbier.

Neutrality has long been a goal of lager fermentation, but some brewers are taking steps to coax more character from their yeast. From strain selection to variable pressure and temperature, here’s how they’re adding complexity, flavor, and nuance to today’s craft lagers.

Totally unpretentious, yet challenging to execute with precision... We asked five brewers for their favorite lagers brewed with body-lightening corn or rice.

You voted, and we tallied. Here are your favorite breweries broken down in categories by beer barrels brewed.