Josh Weikert

A carefully added spice tincture and a splash of pomegranate juice bring festive flavor to this comforting ale perfect for the winter holidays.

• Beer Recipe
• Winter Ale
• Holiday Ale

An important underlying principle when using spices: Don’t throw in the kitchen sink. A winter beer should still taste like beer, and too many spices or too much alcohol can quickly hinder drinkability.

• Make Your Best
• Winter Ale
• Spiced Ale

Bavaria’s original lager demands a balancing act that can make us all better brewers.

• Dunkel
• Dark Lager
• Lager

You have a lot of flexibility here with the specific ingredients, especially the hops—just about any Noble (or Noble-ish) variety should work well in either addition. Play around with it: Much like an American amber ale, the malty backbone is forgiving, and there are a lot of ways to get this right.

• Beer Recipe
• Bière de Garde
• Amber Ale

The “keeping beers” of French Flanders can be found in a spectrum running from blonde to brown—with corresponding shifts in the hops-malt balance—but *ambrée* is arguably the classic hue.

• Make Your Best
• Bière de Garde

With today’s advanced hop products, there are no silver bullets. Yet they can be powerful tools in the brewery—if used carefully, intentionally, and while heeding the advice of fellow brewers.

• Hops
• Hop Products
• Flowable Hop Products

With its bright, fruity esters but restrained phenolic spice, the Ardennes ale strain is the perfect yeast for this sneaky-strong Belgian-style blonde ale.

• Beer Recipe
• Belgian Ale
• Belgian-Style Blonde Ale

This blonde ale is fresh and clean, using the “Belgian” character as an accent but not the headline. Brew it for your next party and bust out the chalices—and when it kicks, you’ll know that it lived its short, happy life to the fullest.

• Make Your Best
• Belgian Ale
• Blonde Ale

This honey ESB makes for a fun ride on the palate: Between the ample crystal malts, the honey flavors—buckwheat is rich and spicy—and yeast, you end up with a lot of candy, strawberry, earthy, spicy, and malty flavors.

• Beer Recipe
• ESB
• Bitter

Highly fermentable yet often quite flavorful, with many types available, honey is the queen bee of alternative sugars in the brewhouse. So, let’s ponder how it can shine in conjunction with a particular base style—in this case, an ESB.

• Make Your Best
• Homebrewing
• Honey

Here’s a fairly classic take on an American seasonal tradition: a solid amber-brown ale that includes both the real (pumpkin) and the evocative (pie spice).

• Beer Recipe
• Pumpkin Beer
• Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer

Summer ends too soon, vacations are over too soon, fall seasonals hit the shelves too soon—all reminders that while it may feel too soon to drink a pumpkin beer, it’s just the right time to brew one.

• Make Your Best
• Autumn Seasonal
• Pumpkin Beer