Subscriber Content

Brewing a helles is a worthy challenge. If your process is consistent and your ingredients fresh, you can make this beer sing on command.

Shaun Kalis, cofounder and brewer at Ruse Brewing in Portland, Oregon, shares this recipe for a fresh-hopped version of their bright, West Coast–style, Mosaic-heavy IPA.

With a gluten-free grist of 100 percent rice malt, this homebrew recipe comes from Jim Eckert, the rice-malting pioneer who founded Eckert Malting & Brewing in Chico, California.

From BreWskey in Montreal, this hazy double IPA leans into lushly fruit-forward Rakau and Riwaka hops, with a varied grist meant to promote haze with the lightest possible color.

Based on a description from Norway in the late 18th century, this recipe represents the practicality of local farmers at the time—and the grist is 100 percent oats, which would’ve been malted in a smoky kiln.

This award-winning Northwest IPA is a flagship for Von Ebert in Portland, Oregon, with a berry-forward hop flavor driven by lots of Mosaic, plus Simcoe and Strata in the dry hop.

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.

From Barrique Brewing & Blending in Nashville, Tennessee, head brewer Spencer Longhurst shares this recipe from an Anchor Steam–inspired collab brewed with their friends at Von Trapp in Stowe, Vermont.

From Brewlihan in Oakland Park, Florida, here’s a recipe for one of their most popular session-strength meads—packed with fresh cucumber and lime juice, and nearly always found on draft in their taproom.

Mike Lukacina, founder and brewer at Magnanimous in Tampa, shares this iteration of the ever-evolving stout they brew especially for aging in whiskey barrels.

From award-winning homebrewer Annie Johnson, this partial-mash recipe for a lightweight porter—at 3.5 percent ABV—demonstrates how you can pack plenty of malt flavor into a low-strength beer.

Kevin Ely, brewer and cofounder of the Wooly Pig Farm Brewery in Fresno, Ohio, shares this recipe for his unfiltered German-style pilsner—light, fresh, floral, and subtly malty, with a moderate bitterness. Plus: See the notes for why he prefers an unusually thin mash for this beer.

One of the most industrialized parts of Germany has a surprising farmhouse brewing tradition, but information about it is scarce. Based on interviews with surviving farmhouse brewers, conducted in the 1950s by the Folklore Commission of Westphalia, here’s our attempt at a recipe. We also include some variations in the notes below.

From Josh Brengle and his team at Cervecera Hércules in Querétaro, Mexico, here’s a recipe for the export stout that won gold at the 2024 World Beer Cup—plus, a method for adding fresh wort at packaging for a beer that lives longer in the bottle, cask, or keg.

From the team at Silver Reef in St. George, Utah, here’s a homebrew-scale recipe for the smoked lager that won gold at the 2024 World Beer Cup.

Bret Kollman Baker, cofounder and chief operations officer of Urban Artifact in Cincinnati, slices into the core of what goes into brewing the kind of fruited sour beer that keeps people coming back for more.

Michal Minarik, cofounder of Firstep Beer in Slovakia, shares this recipe for their bottom-fermented IPA with a “central European twist”—a beer that recently won Best of Show at the King of Craft competition in Budapest.

The finished beer should be light on the palate yet offer plenty of rich biscuit and toffee flavors with some herbal-earthy hops. This is an excellent beginner style, as simple to brew as it is enjoyable to drink.

From their state-of-the-art production brewery in Northglenn, Colorado, this Bavarian-style weissbier remains one of the most popular beers in Prost’s beer gardens.

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.

Josh Weikert prowled his local produce aisle following a simple principle: Buy what looks best, and go with the freshest fruit you can get. That led him to guava and passion fruit, a dynamic for this Brazilian-inspired tart fruit beer.

From Dádiva brewery in São Paulo with BRLO in Berlin, this German-Brazilian take on the Catharina sour combines fresh mango and cherry-like acerola for bright, tropical fruit flavors.

Inspired by the tasting notes of the beer writer Michael Jackson, Breakside in Portland, Oregon, recently brewed this West Coast–style IPA to honor Jackson and raise funds for the Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling.

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.”