Fat Head’s Brewery in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, has won more than its share of medals over the years. One of its most decorated beers is Goggle Fogger, the Bavarian-inspired hefeweizen that’s won three major gold medals in the past four years. Here’s how its pieces fit together.
Perhaps the oldest way of preparing grain for brewing, drying malt in the open air was traditional for lambics, white beers, and various rustic ales scattered around Europe, Africa, and beyond. Today, brewers and maltsters interested in history, terroir, and old-fashioned methods are taking their malt back out into the sun.
From Philadelphia’s lager-centric Human Robot, here’s a recipe for a Czech-style amber lager that came to life almost by accident—and one that uses a method they call “enhanced decoction.”
The past few years have been challenging for brewers who depend on European hops, with concerns that the frequency of bad harvests could be accelerating. So, we asked two brewers who know a thing or two about getting the most from Noble hops to share how they maintain quality, from working with growers to developing novel workflows.
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Steve Parker, cofounder and head brewer of Fidens in Albany, New York, reveals their preferred yeast strain and what it contributes to their IPAs—including the right balance of hop and yeast expression, a slight acidity, and a stable haze.
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Go for the gold with these gold medal–winning recipes from the American Hombrewers Association.
It’s Czech, it’s amber, and it’s a lager—but where did it come from? Nobody seems to know the origin story of polotmavý, or even whether it has one. Yet it’s here today, and the traditional Czech brewing process defines it every bit as much as that rich garnet color.
Jan Chodkowski, co-owner and head brewer at Our Mutual Friend in Denver, shares this recipe for their Polish-inspired grodziskie. Brewed with only in-state ingredients, it includes wheat malt from Colorado Malting Company—half of it oak-smoked—and Colorado-grown Tettnanger hops.
De Dolle Brouwers has a reputation for colorful branding and characterful, high-gravity beers that hold up beautifully in the cellar. Yet their process is intentionally laborious and layered, from the coolship and Baudelot cooler to the open copper fermentors and more in an old, classic Flemish brewhouse.