Josh Weikert

The style parameters here are actually pretty simple: high bitterness, intense hop aroma and flavor, and just enough malt character to provide some background.

• Make Your Best
• Double IPA
• American IPA

Give this one some time. After about three months, you’ll find that the malt and hops are so perfectly integrated that you’ll want to just sit and smell this beer for a while.

• Beer Recipe
• American-Style Lager
• American-Style Pilsner

With this relatively obscure historical style, you can think of it as a fresher, drier, slightly lighter version of a clean bière de garde—or you can go for a more lambic-inspired version, bringing in some mixed cultures to have a say.

• Beer Recipe
• Farmhouse Ale
• Bière de Mars

Mild wasn’t always dark, smooth, and low in strength, but that modern incarnation is one well worth brewing and appreciating. Rich in flavor yet drinkable in quantity, mild is a tradition waiting for its next evolution.

• Mild
• British Ales
• Dark Mild

Dry and lively with earthy-herbal hop flavors, saison should be refreshing, with any spicy character better driven by yeast and hops than by actual spices.

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• Saison

While the recipe is big for a Czech pale lager—it’s really 14°P rather than the typical 12°—it drinks well below its strength and makes a bright showcase for that floor malt and ample Saaz hops.

• Beer Recipe
• Pilsner
• Czech Pale Lager

Crisp, dry, herbal-bitter, and clean, this is a lager you’ll want to have on tap all year long—but especially as the weather starts to warm.

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• Pilsner
• German Pilsner

Kentucky common is a smooth, drinkable, light-amber hybrid that’s closer to Kölsch, cream ale, and California common than it is to Jack Daniels.

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• Kentucky Common
• Common

At last year’s World Beer Cup, the team at Atlas Brew Works brought a gold medal home to the nation’s capital with Silent Neighbor—a “pumpernickel stout” brewed with rye and blackstrap molasses. Here’s how they put it together.

• Stout
• American Stout
• Export Stout

This rye riff on the classic American IPA is plenty hop-forward but with a more substantial grist than most. Rye’s an excellent ingredient that pairs beautifully with bright, clean hop flavors.

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• IPA
• Rye IPA

Trial and error led to a winning combo of grist and hop bill in this recipe, and the result is a fun and interesting rye rewind on the ubiquitous IPA.

• Beer Recipe
• IPA
• American IPA

Last year was a great one for dark beers from Incendiary in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While their Schwarzbier earned its spot on our list of Best 20 Beers in 2023, this porter also nabbed gold at the World Beer Cup. So, what makes it tick?

• Porter
• Brown Porter
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