Jacob Sembrano, head brewer at Chicago’s Cruz Blanca brewpub, shares this recipe for their American lager—a showcase of Bloody Butcher red corn, grown and malted at Sugar Creek Malt in Lebanon, Indiana.
Corn has long held an important place in brewing across the Americas, from chicha in the Andes to Mexican and American adjunct lagers. Today, craft maltsters and brewers are seeking more flavorful heirloom varieties to see how far they can push those flavors.
From Good Word Brewing & Public House in Duluth, Georgia, owner and brewer Todd DiMatteo shares the recipe for their subtly roasty, highly drinkable dark lager that can be served from cask or stichfass (or keg, can, bucket, whatever you have handy).
Bottom-fermented beer, served in the British ale tradition? There’s precedent for it—and the rise in lager interest may be just what’s needed to stoke drinkers’ curiosity.
What’s old is new again for Chicago’s Dovetail—direct-fire decoction, open fermentation, and coolshipping hoppy lager with whole-cone hops are just a few of the ways this classically focused brewery finds ways to build character in their lagers.
In looking for tips on what makes for a great pale bock, Josh Weikert reaches out to owner-brewer Stefan Zehendner of the highly regarded Brauerei Zehendner, makers of the Mönchsambacher beers.
From Misfit Outpost in Cypress, Texas, this beer celebrates South Asian flavor in the form of sweet, creamy jackfruit, which adds its tropical accent to a light, crisp, rice-lager frame.
From its outpost an hour outside of downtown Chicago, Art History has quietly built momentum by focusing on a range of Czech- and German-inspired lagers as well as bitters, milds, and other English styles. In this episode, head brewer Greg Browne and cofounder Tom Rau share their approach to making traditional beers cool again.
Whether you want to brew a more convincing Czech-style lager, or you simply want to borrow a few tricks to shape the kind of beer that seems impossible to stop drinking, here are some elements to consider.
This reverently Czech-style lager is triple-decocted and brewed with imported Moravian malt and whole-leaf Bohemian Saaz. Green Bench cofounder and head brewer Khris Johnson says the beer “was inspired by a life-changing week spent in the Czech Republic with an incredible group of people.”