Lager Levels Up (Fall 2024)

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 our Love Handles files on the world’s great beer bars: In Brookline, Massachusetts, the Publick House is a chapel for the enjoyment of classic and contemporary beers.

From founder-brewer Jonathan Thibault at La Ferme in Shefford, Quebec—a rural brewery about 60 miles east of Montreal and 35 miles north of Vermont—here’s the recipe for a tart wheat beer that features nearly two kilos of a beloved local produce: haskap berries, aka camerise.

This juicy berry from the North has many names and much potential, rising from relative obscurity to become a tasty superfruit worthy of a leading role.

The former Blackberry Farm Brewery in Maryville, Tennessee, is now known as Peaceful Side, but they continue to brew Classic Saison the way it was envisioned: with Wallonian inspiration and a slight Southern accent.

The team at Peaceful Side in Maryville, Tennessee, shares the process behind the Blackberry Farm Classic Saison—including how they work with a notorious finicky yeast strain.

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.

From Otherlands Beer in Bellingham Washington, this evolving recipe represents a snapshot of head brewer Ben Howe’s ongoing quest to crack the code of Franconian lager.

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.

From Marble Beers in Manchester, England, here’s what head of production Joe Ince describes as “a lighter, hoppier bitter, northern in style.”

Today’s British brewers are melding traditional cask bitter with brighter, modern hopping for a crushable alchemy greater than the sum of its parts. Will the rest of us ever catch on?

From our Love Handles files on the world’s great beer bars: Just south of the Twin Cities, Ansari’s offers some of the country’s finest craft beers with Mediterranean food, pull-tabs, hookahs, and other diversions.

Based on input from Nattachai “Ob” Ungsriwong of the Devanom Brewing Company in Nonthaburi, Thailand, here’s a recipe for making your own sato—inspired by traditional methods, but with a few optional twists.

Amid craft beer’s rise in Thailand, brewers there are taking a fresh look at what their uncles and grandmas concocted—a folk drink fermented from sticky rice, wild yeast, molds, and a seemingly random mix of botanicals. (They’re also figuring out how to make it better.)

From our Love Handles files on the world’s great beer bars: The Silver Stamp in Las Vegas pours an incredible selection of beers in a comfy, divey atmosphere.

The accomplished brewer and president of the National Black Brewers Association shares his curated six-pack—and it’s the lineup of a geek who’d queue for special releases, get together with buddies to share hard-to-get bottles, and seek out beers of exquisite quality and flavor.

From Atlas Brew Works in Washington, D.C., here’s a recipe for their popular pilsner, a bronze medal–winner at the 2022 Great American Beer Festival. Easy-drinking yet flavorful, this pils gets subtle extra character from its Cal Common yeast strain.

An important piece of this old-fashioned lager’s puzzle is the Swiss-style lager yeast, which Elder Piper cofounder and brewer Trace Redmond says provides floral notes that accentuate the hops.

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.

Much like a great schwarzbier, the combination of color and drinkability makes this one as rewarding in winter as it is refreshing in summer.

Musing on the “Florida effect” and chocolate-chip cookie-dough as the compass North, the team at Bottle Logic in Anaheim, California, shares the thinking and process behind their coveted barrel-aged stout, Fundamental Observation.

From Bottle Logic founder and brewmaster Wes Parker, here’s a homebrew-scale recipe for their beloved barrel-aged, vanilla-laced imperial stout.

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

While the high era of beer-infused food products has passed, we still get a kick out of the creative intersection of compelling brewing and culinary adventure. Here are some highlights from our recent exploration.

Featuring hot stones in the mash, juniper, bog myrtle, and some smoke, this strong farmhouse ale may resemble what the commoners of eastern Norway brewed to celebrate Yule during the Viking Age.

From the Viking Age to the first Christmases until today, the ancient Yule customs demand the best food and beer you can provide—and it’s not all for the living. So, what did they brew and pour for the spirits and the dead?

When it comes to smoked malt, there are far more options for all-grain brewers than for those who rely on extracts. This partial-mash recipe maps out just one way to get it done.

Don’t let them tell you an extract brewer can’t brew a good rauchbier. While smoked-malt extract is a rarity, there are ways to get creative with our smoke and dial it in to make a lager that can convert the skeptics.

We’ve tested plenty of gear over the past 10 years, but which among them have taken a licking and kept on ticking? Which ones do we find ourselves still using frequently, after all this time? Here’s a look back at our favorite products over the years that still bring us joy.

As demand grows for nonalcoholic craft beer, brewers and manufacturers are answering the call with a new wave of innovations—and the results have never tasted better.

From Josh Pfriem, cofounder and brewmaster at pFriem Family Brewers in Hood River, Oregon, here’s a homebrew-scale recipe for their clean, crushable, and softly floral Mexican-inspired lager.

Craft brewers have gone from shunning adjuncts to embracing them with alacrity amid our ongoing love affair with lager. Here, we put the American and international lager traditions into context—and then we ponder which adjuncts might be the next to conquer the world.

From the weather at the farms that grow the ingredients to every aspect of brewing and on to the climate in which we enjoy it, temperature affects beer profoundly. So, whether you’re gulping an ice-cold one in the desert or sipping a snifter by the fireside, let’s ponder beer’s ethereal, delicate nature—whatever the season.

Here's a new look at the growth in the number of breweries in the United States—growth that’s been leveling off, recently—with some other data points for context.

With thanks to Brian Grossman, Scott Jennings, and the production team at Sierra Nevada in Chico, California, and Mills River, North Carolina, here’s a homebrew-scale recipe for their fresh-hopped annual throwback.

Not every beer needs to chase the latest trends and tech—consider Sierra Nevada’s Celebration IPA, the fresh-hopped seasonal that remains reassuringly old-school. here, chief brewer Brian Grossman explains how the team works to keep its profile consistent in the face of changing tastes and changing hops.