Josh Weikert

Here we take a simple grist, often a single hop, and a long fermentation process, and we turn it into a classically grainy, floral lager. You’ll be glad to have this one on tap.

• Beer Recipe
• Pilsner

Don’t fear the smoke: This recipe leans heavily into cherrywood-smoked malt for a surprisingly smooth and balanced character with the power to convert the skeptics.

• Beer Recipe
• Rauchbier
• Smoked Beer

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.

• Rauchbier
• Lager
• Smoked Beer

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.

• Beer Recipe
• Saison

Let the pedants complain, but cold IPA is both fun to drink and fully coherent as a style. Josh Weikert walks us through the elements and methods behind the lean, bright IPA that’s “wester than West Coast.”

• Cold IPA

This is an outstanding all-purpose beer that pairs well with a variety of foods, is low in alcohol, and can be turned around relatively quickly. If you have a few taps in your home, you might consider dedicating one to the dry stout—it won’t let you down. Sláinte!

• Beer Recipe
• Stout
• Dry Irish Stout

This throwback recipe has a tad more malt backbone and sweetness than today’s leaner West Coast–style IPAs. (It tastes like America.)

• Beer Recipe
• IPA
• American IPA

This riff on an altbier recipe includes three different types of rye malt, making it a great way to get to know the ingredient and what it can contribute to a beer.

• Altbier

Why ask rye? Is it actually all that tricky to use? And what does rye really taste like, anyway? Let’s simplify this complex, evocative, old-fashioned ingredient—and make some great beer with it.

• Rye
• Roggen
• Malt

From Josh Weikert’s Make Your Best series: The dose of sugar and mash regime should help get this dry, while the Crystal hops and light esters add pleasant character to a clean background. The result is a beer that drinks well by the liter.

• Beer Recipe
• Cream Ale

Opening your fermentations to a wider array of yeasts and bacteria can add great complexity to your beers. It can also add complexity to your brewing process—but the challenge is both surmountable and rewarding.

• Homebrewing
• Mixed Culture
• Mixed Fermentation

Full of malt depth yet dry, leaner than a doppelbock yet sneaky in strength... Once you brew a dunkles bock, you’ll wonder why you don’t have one on tap year-round.

• Beer Recipe
• Bock
• Dunkel