Cold Comforts: Unique Insights From Lager Brewers (June-July 2022)

Pale, hoppy, smoked, or strong—brewers’ favorite lagers run the gamut. Yet drinkability and balance are primary traits that tie them all together.

From our Love Handles files on beer bars we love: In the capital of Alberta, a broad and rotating selection of local and North American craft beers are just the thing to go with square-shaped, thin-crust, hot-chicken pizzas.

For a winter warmer that can lay down and improve for many months—brew it now and try it at the New Year, and the next one—here’s an American-style barleywine that gets a clean profile from the use of lager yeast.

These cool customers have co-evolved with us as brewers and drinkers, traveling and prospering while producing some of the world’s most popular beers. Behind these yeast strains and their important differences, there is a unique genetic story.

“Fermented cold and clean with our German lager yeast,” say the team at Live Oak Brewing in Austin, “this beer highlights the complexity that smoke adds to traditional dark lagers.”

Here are four recent finds that will help you to make better beer—or to better enjoy it, with snacks.

Developed by Keith Villa, this recipe for a nonalcoholic peanut butter–flavored porter provides a significant dose of THC from dry-hopping with cannabis.

Legal hurdles aside, there are also technical obstacles to getting the main psychoactive component of cannabis into beverages in a stable, predictable way. John M. Verive explains the challenge, the science, the gear—and why it’s coming to a brewery near you.

From our Love Handles files on beer bars we love: Gist offers finely honed ales, music, and atmosphere just off the Brussels tourist path.

It’s one of the beer world’s great flavor combinations: malt in harmony with the primal appeal of smoke, coolly and cleanly fermented. Best of all, brewing a great smoked lager isn’t all that difficult—as long as you know your malt.

The highly respected brewmaster from Wisconsin’s New Glarus guides us through six monumental beers that always lead to disappointment—because, inevitably, your glass is empty too soon.

No need for spices when hops and yeast can do the trick, and an attenuation-monster yeast strain helps to complete the profile for this big but dry saison.

It’s like they belong together: one of the most food-friendly styles on the planet—Vienna lager—and the food whose ancient origins are comingled with beer’s own at the very roots of civilization.

“Pintje is an homage to the type of pilsners brewed in Belgium,” says Joran Van Ginderachter, the Belgian-born cofounder of Halfway Crooks Beer in Atlanta.

Overshadowed by the global fame of Belgian ale and lambic, pils is nevertheless the country’s most popular kind of beer—light, inexpensive, and available at every corner café. It’s also uniquely Belgian, with many independent breweries making distinctive versions worth seeking.

This recipe from Drinkers for Ukraine includes grist percentages but leaves the strength up to the brewer—Jump Ship in Edinburgh, Scotland, even brewed an alcohol-free version, taking “anti-imperial” in another direction. We, on the other hand, went big.

Earthy yet sweet, beets can add color, fermentable sugar, and comfort to your next brew—an anti-imperial stout, perhaps?

With thanks to brewer Jenny Pfäfflin and the team at Chicago’s Dovetail, here’s a homebrew-scale recipe for the tmavé pivo that they like to call their “Pilsner in a sweater.”

These former homebrewers brought their talents from Venezuela to Miami, sharing a family-like conviviality while steadily dialing in their vibrant fruit beers and refreshing lagers.

“What’s important is that the beer is not overly sweet,” says Štěpán Kříž at Pivovar Hostomice in Czechia. “That’s the most important thing that we’re trying to do. The fullness of the dark malts has to be balanced with hops.”

Beautiful in the mug, rich on the palate, yet—when properly brewed—so easy to drink in quantity, Czech dark lager is a niche even in its home country. Writing from Prague, Evan Rail talks to the pros to understand the elements and methods that go into a great one.

¡Viva la cerveza checa! A splash of Czech-style dark lager adds malty Maillard depth to the mashed black beans in this flavorful tostada preparation.

From remote Setesdal, Norway, this recipe comes from a special series of beers dedicated to honoring different kveik cultures and the farms and traditions from whence they come.

From remote Setesdal, Norway, Torkjel Austad launched his Bygland Bryggeri so that more drinkers could experience those hard-to-find traditional farmhouse ales. Here, he explains how it happened—and shares practical tips for brewing your own.

From the stark, isolated valleys of western Norway, this traditional farmhouse beer brings together juniper and kveik while skipping the boil. (The yeast scream is purely optional.)

From our Love Handles files on beer bars we love: Northern Michigan has no shortage of great breweries, but there’s really just one top-notch beer bar at the tip of the Mitt—and 7 Monks in Traverse City is it.

Here’s an elegant homebrew recipe for a super-lean and dry rice lager, ideal for warm summer nights or enjoying with virtually any meal.

You don’t need an industrial Japanese brewery—nor even an all-grain homebrew system—to make a clean, light-bodied, refreshing rice lager ideal for sushi and summertime.

This take on pan-fried meatballs gets a splash of pilsner—and tastes great with it, too.

“This beer was our ode to new meets old,” says Landon Swanson, head brewer of Pueblo Vida in Tucson, Arizona. “It’s a classic light lager with a punch of Lórien hops in the fermentor.”

Here’s a recipe for the hazy double IPA that started as one of Brian Rooney’s homebrews and went on to win silver at the 2021 Great American Beer Festival (and become a Kansas City favorite).

BKS has won national acclaim for its supple IPAs and gained ardent local fans for its classic ale styles and—now—for its lagers. Undazzled, the Rooneys say they are determined to grow slowly, keep a laser focus on quality, and continue to make beer in their own careful way.

From Odell Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado, here’s a recipe for their modern take on pilsner featuring two newly developed hop varieties.

Brewers today are used to choosing punchy hops for their IPAs. However, great lagers require a different approach and a different kind of bitterness—yet, they need not copy the classics. Here’s how some new varieties are pointing the way toward lagers that still taste like lagers, “but with a twist.”

Courtesy of the team at Tripping Animals in Doral, Florida, here’s a recipe for a beer in their Limonada series, inspired by Latin-style lemonades—pink lemonade, in this case. Tart, crisp, and refreshing, Rosada is aged on lemons, raspberries, and strawberries.

In this yearly update, we plot the moves in the Brewers Association top 50 craft brewers by production volume, from 2007 to the present.