Table Beer

This rich amber ale, featuring layers of roasted orange spice mingling with hops, is a vamp on the English winter warmers that are stronger, darker, and toastier than pale ales or bitters.

Featuring dried shrimp, salted crabs, fish sauce, fresh lime juice, tamarind paste, tomatoes, peanuts, and bird’s eye chiles, this one’s not for vegetarians... or anyone with a peanut allergy... or a shellfish allergy... or anyone who doesn’t like “spicy.” But that’s Thai food for you.

From owner and head brewer Rich Nuñez at Radicle Effect Brewerks in Rock Island, Illinois, here’s a homebrew-scale recipe for the local cult favorite they release only twice per year—four kegs, and it’s done.

This plant from the ginger family can add subtle spice to your beer—or turn it so gold that it could have been brewed at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.

Topher Boehm, cofounder and brewer at Wildflower in Marrickville, Australia, shares this recipe for their low-strength yet satisfying ale—an ideal framework for conveying a sense of place via local malt and a foraged house fermentation culture.

With local malt and a mixed fermentation culture foraged and harvested from native Australian flowers, Wildflower is focused on producing satisfying table beers with a true sense of place. Cofounder and brewer Topher Boehm explains their approach.

Checking in at just 3.2 percent ABV, Bourgeois Daydreams is the delicate, aromatic table beer at Chicago’s saison-focused Is/Was Brewing. Cofounder and brewer Mike Schallau describes it as “a balance of rustic grains, fresh-hop character, yeast esters, and a sprinkle of Brett funk.”

Simple yet dazzling, farmhouse-inspired beers on the lower end of the ABV spectrum present brewers—and drinkers—with an enthralling riddle.

The recipe for this globe-spanning collab—a ginger-laced hefeweizen with influences from Brazil, Germany, Japan, and the United States—comes from Freigeist’s Sebastian Sauer and his friends at Japas Cervejaria in São Paulo.

Gorilla Brewing in Busan, South Korea, shares this recipe for a tart and spicy celebration of a cherished local staple.

It can be a polarizing dish for those who didn’t grow up with it, but there are some affinities between certain styles of beer and this fermented Korean favorite. Can you brew with it? Of course you can.

The beers of Wunderkammer get their own rustic character via locally foraged ingredients, mixed cultures that include Brett, and a stripped-down, old-fashioned process featuring direct-fired kettles and fermentation without strict temperature control.

From de Garde Brewing in Tillamook, Oregon, head brewer Trevor Rogers shares this recipe for a spontaneously fermented beer flavored with foraged spruce tips—though the process is easily adapted for mixed-culture pitches or clean, single-strain fermentations.

Courtesy of Jeff Stuffings, founder of Austin’s Jester King Brewery, this homebrew-scale recipe for their highly regarded rustic table beer uses funky bottle dregs combined with a blend of saison yeasts to approximate their unique house culture.

In this video course, Jester King founder Jeff Stuffings lays out their whole approach to brewing and fermenting saisons, table beers, and other dry, full-flavored, rustic ales that taste of their place.

This Belgian Dark Strong recipe is Scratch Brewing’s favorite tomato beer. The dried cherry tomatoes retain their perceived sweetness and become raisiny and prune-like. They blend perfectly with a Belgian yeast strain.