American craft breweries overwhelmingly favor ale. Walk into your favorite bottle shop or brewpub, and you’ll find a supply of IPAs, imperial stouts, and barrel-aged Belgian Brett bombs that no one person could even dream of exhausting (although that should not keep us from trying).
Until very recently, though, the lager devotee might have only found a craft Pilsner here or an artisanal Bock there. Drinking a Helles would have meant either (1) risking lightstruck green bottles and questionable transport conditions or (2) hopping on a plane to Munich.
But the times, they are a-changin’. Craft-beer aficionados are learning that lager doesn’t have to mean anemic, fizzy liquid. Even as adjunct macro-lager continues to dominate domestic beer consumption, craft beer steadily chips away at its market share. And the brewers responsible for this shift are increasingly rediscovering the joys of lager.