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An Italian brewer named Agostino Arioli wants to start a brewpub in northern Italy, at a time when no other such businesses exist there. It’s 1996, and he decides he’ll call his brewery Birrificio Italiano, or the Italian Beer Factory. It’s a grandiose name for a 200-liter brewhouse, but something about it feels right.

Among other beers, he most notably makes a German-inspired Pilsner—but because he loves hops, he will dry hop it in the English Ale tradition. As the owner of a small brewery, he doesn’t have the equipment needed to filter it, so his beer is a bit hazy. The result is not exactly a classical Pilsner, so he calls it “a kind of a Pilsner”—a Tipopils.

That’s the origin story of the Italian Pilsner, “one of those rare styles where everything can be redirected back to just the one beer,” says Mario Canestrelli, head brewer at Braybrooke Beer Co. in Leicestershire, England, which specializes in continental Lagers. It’s rare to see a new style of beer arise in so singular a moment, with so little debate about its history. 

But if the beer style’s origins are clear, its evolution is a little more complicated. As the popularity of the Italian Pilsner grows in the ensuing years, its story is picked up by many different people all around the world, repeated in breweries and across bar tops. Wherever it takes root, the Italian Pilsner evolves based on local drinking traditions. But those making it never forget where the style first began.

‘WE DON’T CALL IT ITALIAN PILSNER IN ITALY’

On a trip to Brooklyn in September 2017, Stefano Erreni, co-founder and brewer of Denmark’s Slowburn Brewing Co-op, noticed that every brewery he visited seemed to have a dry-hopped Pilsner. Bafflingly, they were all called “Italian Pilsner.”

“I was like, ‘What’s an Italian Pilsner?’ And everyone was like, ‘It’s a dry-hopped Pilsner, like Tipopils. Aren’t you Italian?’” He replied: “Yes, I’m Italian, but we don’t call it Italian Pilsner in Italy.”

In Italy, it’s just a Pils. And if you see a Pils from a small Italian brewery, then the expectation is that it’s unfiltered and dry hopped with German varieties, just like Tipopils. (Alessio Leone, co-founder of drinks and hospitality branding studio ByVolume, adds that: “If a small brewery would make a not-so-hoppy Lager, they would definitely call it differently, so a Helles or Lager.”)

“I was like, ‘What’s an Italian Pilsner?’ And everyone was like, ‘It’s a dry-hopped Pilsner, like Tipopils. Aren’t you Italian?’ ‘Yes, I’m Italian, but we don’t call it Italian Pilsner in Italy.’”

“Most Italian brewers brew Pils, and they brew it in the Birrificio Italiano way,” says Marco Valeriani, owner of Alder Beer Co., located just north of Milan. The style has become a foundation of Italian craft beer, and Tipopils serves as its near-universal reference point. “When someone invents something good, you try to not replicate but to make something close inspired from that, to emulate something that works,” says Valeriani. There’s a rare respect for the original beer, and it’s not just venerated by Italians.

“One of my favorite beer experiences ever is drinking Pils in Italy,” says Tim Adams, founder of Maine’s Oxbow Brewing Company. “Tipopils was the beer that I was most excited to try when I first went to Italy, and that was the first beer that I had over there, and it was mind-blowing. But what we found were all these other Pils,” like Birrificio Del Ducato’s Viæmelia, “and it seemed like every Pils I had was bursting with this traditional hop character; aromas and flavors that I had not experienced in Pils before,” while the serving of it—a special glass and a two-part pour, building up the foam and knocking out the carbonation—was “just so stylish.”

He came to realize that “every bit as much as a German Pils is different from a Czech Pils, an Italian Pils is different from either of those two.” It had unquestionably become its own distinct style.

Adams was inspired. “I want to make that but different,” he says, “I want to scratch the same itch that this scratches, I want to hit some of these flavor points but approach it our own way in how we produce it. The Italian-style Pils is kind of the poster child for this notion.” He recalls Arioli’s story of how he loved German Pilsner and did something different with it by dry hopping it. “That didn’t happen [in Germany]—that couldn’t happen over there.” (Dry hopping only technically became Reinheitsgebot-compliant after Tipopils was first brewed).

Following trips to Italy in 2014 and 2015, Adams brewed his own version of the style. “We said, ‘Let’s give it an Italian name and let’s call it what it is: It’s an Italian-style Pils.” Oxbow’s resulting Luppolo—Italian for hop—was released in 2016, and was the first beer to be named as an ‘Italian-style Pils’ or ‘Italian Pilsner,’ though it wasn’t the first American-brewed Lager to be inspired by Tipopils.

Matt Brynildson, brewmaster of Firestone Walker Brewing Company, first tasted Birrificio Italiano’s Tipopils at the European Beer Star competition in Nuremberg, Germany, in 2011. At the awards ceremony he listened as, predictably, the German brewers were winning most of the Lager medals. “But then there was this Kellerpils category and the Italians were winning in it, and I was like what?,” he says. “I never thought of the Italians making good Lager beer.”

Tipopils and Viæmelia both won medals at the event, and all the award-winning beers were poured after the ceremony, so Brynildson went to find the Italians. It was there that he got to try Tipopils, and meet Arioli.

“As soon as I had the experience of tasting [Tipopils], I’m like, ‘I gotta make this beer!’ The clouds parted and I went home and it was the first thing I worked on,” he says. The resulting beer, Pivo Pils, was released in 2012, and was described as a Hoppy Pilsner. It’s the beer which introduced the Italian type of Pilsner to American drinkers, and has come to be considered an era-defining release.

Many of the brewers that have been inspired by Tipopils, and have brewed their own versions of the Italian Pilsner, have been careful to credit their sources. “I always try hard to tell people that this is somebody else’s idea,” says John Marti of Lowercase Brewing in Seattle, Washington. 

“I try to stay true to what [Arioli’s] inspiration was, so that when I call it an ‘Italian-style Pilsner,’ it gives him, and it gives other Italians, the credit they deserve for coming up with the style. I want to be as honest with it as I can, so that when it says ‘Italian-style’ on there, it means something.”

But what does it mean? 

IT’S A DRY-HOPPED PILSNER

In 2021, Unionbirrai, the association for Italian craft brewers, introduced the Italian Pilsner category to its style guidelines. The summary is: a strong hop aroma, typically from floral, spicy, and herbal German hops, and enhanced by dry hopping. They are generally unfiltered, unpasteurized, and lightly hazy; they have a supportive structure of malt, but the overall balance is towards hops. (Alongside the Italian Pilsner, Unionbirrai also added a Hoppy Lager category, defined by the use of aromatic American and New World hops; it’s the type and character of the hop which distinguishes an Italian Pilsner.)

An Italian Pilsner is a dry-hopped Pilsner, but, “It isn’t just a normal [German] Pilsner and then dry-hopped,” says Braybrooke’s Canestrelli. “It’s not as dry as some German Pilsners, it’s got that almost Czech Pilsner-like body, it’s a bit smoother, and then it has that [hop] aroma.”

“The use of dry-hopping in the style, to me, is all about accentuating the noble hop character,” says Brynildson, but “not trying to bring too much to it. They can definitely be overdone.” Low dry-hop character is true to the style.

A common dry-hop volume for Italian brewers would be under one gram per liter (0.28lb/barrel)—for comparison, Firestone’s Mind Haze, a “tame Hazy IPA,” as Brynildson calls it, is 3lb/BBL or 11.5g/l. What really matters is the quality and freshness of those hops, as Arioli will explain to anyone who asks. Given their location and small brewhouses—Birrificio Italiano’s reputation is greater than its modest 7,000-hectoliter (4,300-BBL) annual output—Italian brewers can often select exactly the hops they want, from specific farms in Germany. That’s what Arioli does, getting his from Locher-Hopfen in Tettnang.

“As a brewer, as a beer hunter, and an ingredient hunter, I think that we were lucky because we are very, very close to Germany,” says Stefano Simonelli, founder of Vetra Brewery, who previously worked at Birrificio Italiano. “From my house, in three hours by car I am in Tettnang. Every year I go there to look [at] what happened in the harvest,” he says. “We know lots of very small, and very, very good hop growers, so every year we get there, and we choose the hops we want to use the year after to create the perfect balance in our Pilsner.”

These qualities are by now familiar to many Italian brewers and drinkers, but for those brewing the style abroad, more education and explanation are usually needed.

“As a brewer, as a beer hunter, and an ingredient hunter, I think that we were lucky because we are very, very close to Germany. From my house, in three hours by car I am in Tettnang. Every year I go there to look [at] what happened in the harvest. We know lots of very small, and very, very good hop growers, so every year we get there, and we choose the hops we want to use the year after to create the perfect balance in our Pilsner.”

“One of the reasons we wanted to call it ‘Italian-style Pils’ is that we welcome those conversations,” says Adams. “A dry-hopped Pils,” would be the quick sell for Oxbow, but with more time the brewery is “talking about its noble hop character … it is very frequently discussed with our customers just how hoppy it is,” he says. “It’s not the hops you’re thinking of—it’s not going to be citrus and pine, and the American [aroma] of New World hops—but this is a very hoppy beer, and look for these beautiful floral and herbal flavors.” The cadence may feel distinct, but it’s a language the stateside craft beer drinker can identify with.

If American brewers talk up the hoppiness, conversely Italians often talk about the style as a reaction to heavily hopped beers. “Normal customers want something easy to drink,” says Valeriani. “They say, ‘I want to drink beer!’ so I say, ‘Try this [Pils], it’s a simple beer.’”

Simonelli agrees. “I like to say that if you drink my Pilsner, you can have it very easily, or you can taste it and you can find the complexity, and then keep drinking without too many thoughts.”

Those differences among international drinkers’ expectations also impact the flavor profiles of the Italian Pilsners brewed around the world. American versions are often more aggressively hopped, for instance, while Italian versions are mellower (and have grown more mellow since the style’s inception, as some Italian brewers have suggested).

Perhaps inevitably, those variations have led to recent debates about whether the Italian Pilsner is foremost defined by its ingredients or its flavor profile. Anna Managò, co-founder of ByVolume, believes that “it doesn’t need to be the traditional hops from Germany or Bohemia, but the hop profile in terms of aroma should be the same as intended by Agostino,” so the ideal would be elegant and noble, or noble-like, not intense. (Oxbow has brewed an Italian-style Pils in collaboration with Manchester’s Cloudwater Brew Co. using only English hops, for example.)

Those who would be rigidly protective of the style may be missing the point, however. Italian Pilsner resulted from merging several countries’ beer traditions and processes and creating something familiar but distinct—and new adaptations are only continuing as the style becomes better known around the world.

FESTIVITIES

Birrificio Italiano celebrated its 25th anniversary on April 3, 2021. That date is also, therefore, the anniversary of the Italian Pilsner, and effectively the 25th anniversary of the Italian craft beer industry, too. Perhaps contrary to how this story is often told, Italian craft beer is not dominated by the Pilsner, and just like elsewhere, it’s a country that loves IPAs. But it was this love of IPA and other strong beers which ultimately became the catalyst for the popularity of the Italian Pilsner.

“The Lager movement here in Italy exploded eight, 10 years ago, not 25,” says Valeriani, and it can be linked directly to a festival called Pils Pride, organized by Birrificio Italiano and first held in 2006. The aim, as the brewery’s website explains, was to celebrate “beers which could be directly enjoyed with the senses … beers to which the cultural and conceptual values were of course relevant, but always dependent from the sheer pleasure of drinking.”

“The beers invited needed to fit a certain profile, which was obviously kind of similar to what Agostino was making,” says Leone. As the festival grew, Arioli became friends with brewers around the world, and he’d invite them and their beers to Pils Pride. Later, he had the idea to hold the festival in North America, where it was renamed Pils & Love. The inaugural event took place in Portland, Maine, in 2017.

“The first Pils & Love was the single biggest identifiable moment in American beer history of the Italian-style Pils,” says Adams. Brynildson agrees. “That takes the learning curve and accelerates everything,” he says. That was also the moment when the name “Italian Pilsner” took on greater meaning for many in the industry.

Now, the Italians are embracing the new attention. “Everything it took to get this name, this recipe, this product … I think that for every Italian brewer it’s a very good thing,” says Simonelli.

“[This] is the way we brew Pils in Italy. We deserve this,” says Valeriani.

‘IN GERMANY NOBODY USED TO DO THAT’

“Birra artigianale must be a process where there’s always, always an artisan behind, and every artisan has his own senses, preferences, taste,” says Arioli. “We can use traditional beers, and use styles, to see which is our own way.” 

In 1985, at the age of 20, and while studying agriculture and food industry at university in Milan, Arioli and his friends would visit different pubs, drink different beers, and argue about their qualities. When he found “a dusty book on homebrewing” he decided to try making his own beer. “I was producing malt in my mother’s kitchen, I was picking wild hops, using the yeast they sold in the supermarket for breadmaking, so at the end the beers were very bad!” he laughs.

The following year he went hiking in Canada, ending up in Vancouver where he visited Granville Island Brewing, and his life found a new path. “I thought this is what I wanna do. I had my target in my life, I had my dream.”

He finished his degree, spent time working in large Lager breweries, then sent 40 handwritten letters to guesthouse breweries in Germany asking for work experience. He got two responses. He studied the breweries, developed a business plan, learned to make and serve Lager in small brewhouses, and worked on his beer recipes.

“A craft brewer in our really small scale, the only mission is to follow your own senses,” he says. “You take everything, you drink everything, and then you put together your own idea of the beer that you would like to drink.” That’s where his Pilsner came from, and you already know the rest of this story.

Tipopils was based on Jever, the markedly bitter German Pilsner, and also took inspiration from England, where Arioli learned how brewers dry hopped their beer by putting a small plug of hops into casks of Ale before sealing them and sending them to the pub.

“Birra artigianale must be a process where there’s always, always an artisan behind, and every artisan has his own senses, preferences, taste. We can use traditional beers, and use styles, to see which is our own way.”

“I thought this is fucking interesting. I love this way to use the hop. I didn’t know about this thing, and I am very curious,” he says. “I’m a kind of alchemist, I like to experiment, I like to try, so I thought I could do this in my serving tank.” Because dry hopping was not permitted by the Reinheitsgebot at the time, this technique represented a key departure.

“I was ignorant about beer—but I’m happy to be ignorant because I’m more free to do whatever I like. So I combined this typical English system with a typical German beer.” The result wasn’t exactly like a German Pils, nor any other kind of Pils; it was his type of Pils.

It’s the dry hop which really makes his Pilsner distinctive. “I was in love—I’m still in love—with the hop. Of any kind. I’m a maniac for hops,” Arioli says. For Tipopils today, “The hoppy soul comes from the Spalter Select,” which gives an herbal quality, alongside a small amount of Saphir with its lemony freshness.

“It’s difficult to describe the herbal character of the hops,” Arioli says, before evocatively achieving it. “Herbal character is like when you cut the grass on the mountains, on the Alps, and it dries in the sun and it’s a very big mix of different plants and they have a very special aroma.” Like he says, it’s a beer guided by his senses.

A TIMELESS PILS

In the mid-90s, at a time when Italy had no small brewing culture to follow, brewers were able to take traditions from elsewhere and make them their own. But that didn’t mean that drinkers were ready for them, and after two years Birrificio Italiano almost closed.

“I was pouring beer that, compared with a normal beer experience, was warm, cloudy, with very low gas content, a lot of foam—and they didn’t want foam—and it took 10 minutes to pour one fucking glass!” Arioli remembers.

He’d say: “Listen [to] what I’m doing here, it’s because of this and that. There’s an idea behind it. There’s a concept.” Gradually drinkers started to understand it, and other brewers started to make their versions of his beer. The great success was that a decade later, Tipopils was a normal beer. But then, like elsewhere in the world, the excitement for IPA made normal beer boring.

“Fifteen years ago in Italy, drinking a normal beer like Tipopils was shamed,” says Arioli. “If you were a beer geek you had to drink special, strange stuff like strong beers, with special ingredients, and I was thinking, craft beer can be an easy, normal beer, not only some special and fancy stuff, not only Disneyland beers.” That’s where the idea for Pils Pride came from, and then Pils & Love. Those events were catalysts in Italy and then around the world, and they’re the reason we’re now talking about the Italian Pilsner.

The story of Tipopils continues to be told, and Arioli is doing it in his own way. Birrificio Italiano is updating its branding this year, and “it was far too easy to write ‘Italian-style Pilsner,’” Arioli says. “I like joking about the styles that do not exist,” as “none of our beers is in style.” The new labels describe Tipopils as a ‘Timeless Pils’ because, “It’s not hyped beer, it’s never been, it’s always good, you always like it.”

Back in 1996, when Agostino Arioli called his beer Tipopils, it was a way of saying, “Don’t bother me if you don’t think this is a real Pils because this is a tipo Pils, okay?” Now he doesn’t have the problem of people bothering him because it’s not a Pils; they bother him because it’s the Pils.

“Now there are many tipo Tipopils around, and I’m very proud and very happy,” he says.

Words by Mark DredgeIllustrations by Colette Holston
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Solve all of yours (and your dog’s) holiday shopping needs with Stable Craft’s Holiday Gift Cards

Central Virginia’s Stable Craft Brewing at Hermitage Hill, an authentic working farm brewery and winery, is making holiday shopping safer and more seamless this season, with the offering of its Stable Craft Holiday Gift cards.  In addition to being the perfect gift for the foodies, beer and cider lovers on your list, Stable Craft’s gift card can also be used for its new dog gear featuring Beer Hound Dog collars and leashes.

The cards can be used for a variety of great gift ideas including the following:

• Stable Craft merchandise including T-shirts and hats,
• Stable Craft’s new collection of dogwear, featuring Beer Hound Dog collars and leashes.
• Cranberry Sour on draft, growler fills and bottles to go
• Brazen Cider now available in bottles
• Holiday Gift Packs of Cavallo, Stable Craft’s barrel-aged Imperial Stout
• A case of FUmpkin Ale
• Stable Craft’s delicious Sunday brunch

According to Stable Craft Brewing owner Craig Nargi, “Even though people have had to cancel or downsize their holiday plans due to COVID restrictions around the country, we still have to give each other gifts. Our gift cards are a great way to show the people you love you care.”  

To purchase Stable Craft Brewing’s perfect holiday gift card online, visit https://www.stablecraftbrewing.com/gift-cards.  Gift cards are also available at Stable Craft’s taproom.

Stable Craft Brewings’s rural location offers acres of open farmland with multiple covered and uncovered outdoor locations to keep guests physically distant while enjoying craft beer, cider, wine and food.  Several other safety measures have been implemented to provide guests with a safe and fun experience while complying with Virginia’s Governor Northam’s guidelines. 

For hours of operation and directions, visit www.stablecraftbrewing.com or follow on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/stablecraftbrewing/.  For more information, call 540-490-2609.

 

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With homebrewers continuing to push the envelope on ingredient innovation, Brewing with Cannabis: Using THC and CBD in Beer, the latest release from Brewers Publications®, is essential reading for those seeking information on the responsible and legal use of cannabis in brewing.

From Monday, July 12 – July 19, American Homebrewers Association members receive an exclusive 25% discount with a unique discount code (emailed to members on July 12) and U.S. residents receive free standard shipping on their entire order.

The post Member Presale for Brewing with Cannabis: Using THC and CBD in Beer appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

These are the words, images, and beers that inspired the GBH Collective this week. Drinking alone just got better, because now you’re drinking with all of us.

JAMAAL LEMON

READ.// “The human body is built the way it is so that we could slowly but surely run down prey for miles and miles in the heat until the animal toppled over from exhaustion. Then we’d kill it and carry it back to camp. This is why we have two legs, springy arches in our feet, big butt muscles, sweat glands across our body, no fur, short torsos, and strong grips.” Nothing speaks to my soul quite like primitive approaches to lifestyle. Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to get better at minimizing the use of technology to focus more on my innate abilities as a human being. My perspective in this regard was introduced to me through fitness, in particular, CrossFit, and its programming of rucking for some workouts.

LOOK.// Since I was a kid, I’ve always thought that “Black people only do this,” and “white people only do that,” was the dumbest way to think about anything. Back then, I couldn’t quite understand this concept enough to explain it, but I knew I never wanted adopt those beliefs. Even then, I was comfortable enough in my own skin to be “the only one” with my skin in any room. I connected with this story of Slim Pickins Outfitters, the first Black-owned outdoor outfitting shop in the country, on many levels—there’s something to be said about the advantages of “not knowing” as a child, and how it translates to confidence and self-worth as an adult.

DRINK.// Big Truck Farm Brewery’s Dually DIPA
As a parent with a toddler, and a lover of beer, farm breweries have been a consistent weekend destination for my family. They offer many acres of land that are perfect for wearing out any small human, and the beer is an added plus—especially if that brewery harvests its own 10 acres of hops, Like Big Truck Farm Brewery does. Getting to drink its Dually DIPA is only one more bonus.

RUVANI DE SILVA

READ.// “…the first Asian landlords needed a great deal of strength and resilience to go toe-to-toe with racists especially as sites which eventually became desi pubs … were formerly hubs for fascist groups like the National Front.” Despite sharing David Jesudason’s roots as a Brown immigrant growing up in post-industrial Middle England, I had never heard of the U.K.’s desi pubs until I read this fascinating history of these semi-secret Anglo-Asian safe spaces and their heroic, pioneering Brown landlords in Pellicle Magazine. I wish I’d had the chance to visit just one.

LOOK.// A rare example of Amazon Originals getting it unbelievably right, “Comrade Detective” is a pitch-perfect found-footage spoof, ripping it out of every Cold War stereotype with stylish aplomb. Two mismatched Bucharest detectives are on the trail of a killer donning a Ronald Reagan mask, fighting the corrupting forces of capitalism and organized religion, and yelling “goatfucker” at regular intervals. I am loving revisiting this 2017 gem.

DRINK.// Odd Colony Brewing Company’s Moonbeam Dark Czech Lager
I was absurdly delighted by the discovery of the freshly brewed, open-fermented Moonbeam Dark Czech Lager at Odd Colony Brewing in Pensacola, Florida. So delighted, in fact, that I bothered the bartender with so many questions about the precise conditions of the brewing process (indoor open ferment with additional yeast pitched) that something of a queue formed behind me. Moonbeam is a glorious dark, smoky, subtly funky affair, with a smooth nutty sweetness that positively insisted I purchase a pack to-go.

BRYAN ROTH

READ.// “Actual bars have decreased in number, but drinking is acceptable in all sorts of other places it didn’t used to be: Salons and boutiques dole out cheap cava in plastic cups. Movie theaters serve alcohol, Starbucks serves alcohol, zoos serve alcohol.” You, like me, can now hate-read this essay from The Atlantic that makes the argument we have alcohol in too many places and we’re consuming too much. You and I can discuss its accuracy later, but you should always read what you argue about.

LOOK.// Now that many people can travel again, we’re going to start seeing all sorts of vacation photos in our social feeds. Have a laugh with this intrepid Instagrammer who compiles collages of shots that repeat the same imagery over and over again.

DRINK.// Threes Brewing’s Regional Dialekt
It’s summer here in North Carolina, whether the solstice has occurred or not. This Kölsch was a wonderful addition to the fridge that quickly disappeared as the temperatures began their annual, humid hike upward.

Curated by
The GBH Collective

The Christmas lights are strung up (they’re still in a tangle in the garage, actually), the stockings are hung (nope), and the presents are all wrapped and under the tree (they haven’t even been ordered yet—that’s what two-day shipping is for). You’ve completed none of your holiday to-do list, and you deserve a beer.

Leave the visions of sugar plums to the little ones this year. For grown-ups, it’s all about those wonderful Christmas beers from independent craft breweries, and we’ve got a dozen classics lined up to get you into the spirit of the season. Put the kids in charge of decorating and kick back with one of these fantastic festive brews.

Great Lakes Brewing Co. | Christmas Ale

It’s difficult to explain the phenomenon of the annual Great Lakes Brewing Co. Christmas Ale release to people who don’t live in Ohio. At the brewery’s “First Pour” release event during the last week of October each year, a pint of Christmas Ale gets poured an average of every five seconds for 12 straight hours. That’s 70 kegs of beer in one day, and it’s only the beginning. Co-Founder Pat Conway says the beer has become an essential part of the season for Ohioans since first being brewed in 1992.

“When you taste it, you think of Christmas and the conviviality and warmth of the season,” he reflects. “It just seems to marry with the energy around Christmas.”

The beer is brewed with ginger, cinnamon and honey, and weighs in at a warming but gentle 7.5% ABV. The Great Lakes co-founder expresses what many Midwesterners feel about this Ohio Christmas tradition:

“When I take a sip, it’s like I’m wearing a sweater.”

Tröegs Brewing | Mad Elf

Belgian breweries often brew a special high gravity beer for the Christmas season, but strong Belgian Christmas ales from American breweries can be tricky to find. Fortunately, Pennsylvania’s Tröegs Brewing makes plenty of Mad Elf to go around. This Belgian quadrupel is brewed with cherries and honey, and the first batch in 2002 used 300 pounds of local honey from the Happy Beekeeper farm.

“That 300-pound order has increased to 25,000 pounds a year,” says Jeff Herb, who handles marketing at Tröegs.

Tröegs brews several variants of Mad Elf, including Naked Elf (the base beer without the cherries and honey), Wild Elf (a barrel-aged, mixed-fermentation version), and Mad Elf Grand Cru (a luxurious, limited edition version with Balaton cherries, wildflower honey and demerara sugar).

“We like to think of Grand Cru as our ‘Director’s Cut,’” says Herb.

(RECIPES: Traditional Christmas Desserts Made with Beer)

Revolution Brewing | Fistmas

Remember shopping malls? Revolution Brewing remembers shopping malls.

Rather than a conventional holiday party at one of their Chicago taprooms to celebrate their Fistmas Holiday Ale, the folks at the largest independent brewery in Illinois are hosting a mall crawl. Attendees of the Fistmas Bar Crawl at Woodfield Mall on the northwest side of Chicago will don elf hats and meander between the mall’s restaurants and bars sipping the titular spiced ale, and stops along the way will allow for gift wrapping and DIY Christmas ornament decorating.

Fistmas is 6.5% ABV and is brewed with ginger and orange peel. The beer has stayed more or less the same since it was first brewed in 2010, though it spawns a bolder taproom-only version called Fist of Krampus that changes year to year.

Bell’s Brewery | Christmas Ale

This legendary Michigan brewery is best known for its to-style classics, some of which helped define those styles in the first place. While beers like Two Hearted Ale have earned their status by standing firm on classic flavor profiles in a shifting beer landscape, Christmas Ale has changed with the times and received a significant update in recent years. While the beer was formerly a somewhat “timid” (as far as Christmas beers are concerned) 5.5% ABV, it jumped to 7.5% to better reflect consumer expectations for comforting holiday beers.

“Christmas Ale was revamped in 2017 to be a more rich, impactful and stronger beer for celebrating the holidays, stylistically inspired by non-peated Scotch Ales,” says Josh Smith, communications manager for Bell’s. The rich malt base and warming strength makes Christmas Ale a suitable companion for those cold Michigan Decembers.

(BEER TRAVEL: Plan Your Next Beercation)

Deschutes Brewery | Jubelale

This year marks the 32nd edition of Jubelale, even though Deschutes has only been open 31 years. That’s because Jubelale was the first beer the brewery in Bend, Oregon, ever bottled, all the way back in October 1988. That first year, founder Gary Fish hand-bottled the beer (with some help from his first employees) at his small brewpub. Production has grown a bit since then, but the recipe–based on traditional malty English winter ales–has remained the same.

Since 1995, the label art for each vintage of Jubelale has been designed by a different regional artist and inspired by Oregon winters. This year’s label by Mark Rada depicts birds in a forest, which Rada says represent the Jubelale artists of previous years, and a deer with robotic antennas, which speaks to being attuned to our environment.

“The earth is speaking to us here in Bend,” says Rada. Luckily for us, one of the languages it speaks is beer.

Sierra Nevada Brewing | Celebration Ale

Few beers are as iconically linked to the holiday season across the country as Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. This fresh hop IPA was first brewed in 1981 and the recipe has stayed the same for nearly 40 years, offering festive flavors of citrus and pine with a brisk hop bitterness that matches the cold winter air. Celebration includes plenty of fresh Chinook, Centennial and Cascade hops from the hop fields of the Northwest. Sierra Nevada spokesperson Robin Gregory says the arrival of those succulent hop cones is cause for its own annual celebration at the brewery in Chico, California.

“The fresh hops usually arrive at our dock in the middle of the night, and you should see our brewers,” says Gregory. “They are running around like kids on Christmas morning.”

Even for one of the largest independent craft breweries in the country, the excitement about great ingredients and great beer never fades.

The Lost Abbey | Gnoel de Abbey

The Lost Abbey of San Marcos, California, first brewed Gnoel de Abbey in 2017, but in just a few years, it’s already earned its place in this esteemed brewery’s venerated line-up. The beer isn’t spiced as many holiday beers are, but it stands out from the crowd due to its unusual concept. The brewery takes an imperial stout that’s been aging in bourbon barrels for over a year and blends it with a younger and lighter brown ale.

The resulting 8.5% ABV brew has the strength and roast of the imperial stout and the oak notes of the barrel but in a lighter, easy-drinking body, even at this formidable strength.

(MORE: Splurge-worthy Beer Gifts)

Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales | Noel de Calabaza

The sour ale pioneers at Michigan’s Jolly Pumpkin put their own personal stamp on a classic Christmas-y style with Noel de Calabaza. They brew a Belgian dark strong ale, a style many Belgian brewers release as a holiday seasonal, and then put it in oak barrels for six months where it receives the signature Jolly Pumpkin mixed-fermentation treatment.

What emerges is a dazzlingly complex 9% ABV beer with richly layered malt and barrel character, some acidity and subtle funk, and notes of dark fruit and chocolate.

Boston Beer Company | Samuel Adams Winter Lager

Sam Adams Winter Lager is certainly one of the most widely available Christmas beers, and likely one of the first such beers many drinkers ever tried, much as their Octoberfest introduced many American drinkers to that German autumn style.

Winter Lager is a “warming bock with festive spices,” and while its 5.6% ABV is lower than many other beers on this list, its comforting malt flavors and spices make it a fine choice for a casual holiday party or watching a Christmas movie or football game on a December afternoon. The good folks at Boston Beer use ginger, cinnamon and orange peel to lend Winter Lager its festive character.

Victory Brewing | Winter Cheers

When you think of traditional winter or holiday beer styles, hefeweizen probably isn’t one that comes readily to mind. That uniqueness is exactly what makes Victory‘s Winter Cheers Hazy Wheat Ale stand out. While Christmas beers are often spiced, Winter Cheers gets its subtle clove spice from its Bavarian weizen ale yeast, which produces banana-like esters and clove-like phenols.

The beer is a little stronger than many hefeweizens at 6.7% ABV, and its high effervescence and balance of fruity and spicy yeast notes make it an excellent pairing beer for holiday dinners. It even has a nice kick of Citra hops to give it an American twist. You might not have thought of this style as a winter beer at first, but a few sips of this expressive Pennsylvania wheat ale will make you a holiday hefeweizen convert.

Warped Wing Brewing | Esther’s Lil Secret

Warped Wing Brewing from my hometown of Dayton, Ohio, brews a few excellent Christmas and winter seasonals, including a spiced amber lager called Holiday Special and a smooth and comforting doppelbock called Abominator.

The crown jewel of holiday brews from this Gem City brewery, however, is Esther’s Lil Secret, which releases in November each year and is brewed in collaboration with 90-year-old Dayton chocolate company Esther Price Candies.

The recipe for Esther’s Lil Secret changes every year and, true to its name, is a closely guarded secret until the annual “release and reveal” party at the brewery taproom. This year’s edition is a Scotch ale brewed with chocolate, caramel and sea salt.

“We wanted to mimic the flavors of Esther Price’s now-famous Sea Salt Caramel,” says Warped Wing co-founder Nick Bowman. The rich and layered beer is a secret worth keeping.

(READ: Affordable Beer Gifts)

Great Divide Brewing | Hibernation Ale

While most of the beers on this list are themed around Christmas, the big holiday is just the beginning of a long winter. For most of the country, there are months of cold weather ahead after the presents are unwrapped. Folks in Colorado know this better than most, and Denver’s Great Divide Brewing releases a beer to carry us through the long, cold winter.

Hibernation Ale is an English-style old ale, a hearty beer with rich, layered malt flavors and enough strength at 8.7% ABV to brace us through those dark, cold evenings. This beer has been brewed since 1995 and has won multiple awards. It’s perfect to enjoy as your Christmas Eve nightcap, but be sure to hold onto enough cans of this traditional English style to last till to crocuses begin to peek through the frosty soil in spring.

Published Dec 11, 2019.

The post 12 Beers of Christmas appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Find your next beer recipe among these 5 Belgian-style blond ales, including a National Homebrew Competition winner and sour apricot interpretation.

Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) style description: a moderate-strength golden ale that has a subtle fruity-spicy Belgian yeast complexity, slightly malty-sweet flavor, and dry finish.

Brilliant Blond

Belgian Ale

Brilliant Blond

ABV: 7.20%

IBU: 19.9

SRM: 5.1

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Kalyke Blonde

Belgian Ale

Kalyke Blonde

ABV: 5.50%

IBU: 18.3

SRM: 3.6

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Sour Blonde with Apricot

Belgian Ale

Sour Blonde with Apricot

ABV: 6.60%

IBU: 3

SRM: 4

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Bald Belgian Blonde

Belgian Ale

Bald Belgian Blonde

IBU: 19

OG: 1.049

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Sully’s Belgian Blonde

Belgian Ale

Sully’s Belgian Blonde

ABV: 9.84%

OG: 1.087

FG: 1.012

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The post 5 Belgian-style Blond Ale Recipes appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

There is an urgent beauty to certain New England mornings. It dazzles then disappears. The sky seems to awaken before the sun appears, like a child rustling in their bedroom before coming downstairs for the day. Brilliant pinks, blues, and oranges lighten, then linger and astound, but in their own way suggest, yes, now is the time to work. The sun first rises over the craggy coastline of southern Maine, over the shipping boats on the Piscataqua River, the first light over all the country.

“I have been drinking Tod Mott’s beer for my entire life.”

This is what I think to myself as I cross the Piscataqua via the Memorial Bridge, on my early morning journey from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Kittery, Maine, the state’s southernmost incorporated town. That thought isn’t entirely true, but the trajectory of my drinking life has always included beers made or created by the gregarious Mott, owner and brewmaster at Tributary Brewing Company.

It’s not uncommon to walk into Tributary and be greeted by someone from the Mott family. That includes their eight-year-old yellow lab named Katie, who meets me when I arrive. “She spent her entire life in this taproom,” the blue-eyed Galen Mott might tell you, as she tells me. As the family matriarch walks toward the porch where Mott and I have met to chat, the 62-year-old perks up. “That’s my wife,” he exclaims, as if they’d been married 38 minutes and not 38 years.

The taproom is dark and quiet this morning, save for streaks of sun coming in from a side door, casting light on a large illustration of Mott. It depicts the label for Mott’s highly regarded Russian Imperial Stout, and shows his face, head slightly tilted, beard in its wild glory.

Later, we head to the brewhouse, where Mott’s son Woody and assistant brewer Dan Stampone stop to chat. It’s a leisurely beginning: Today’s brew, a Session IPA made with Michigan-grown Magnum hops, is “the easiest of brew days,” Mott says. The day’s schedule will soon grow hectic when a delivery is halted because someone, who cannot be located, has blocked the loading dock with their car, but in the meantime, Mott grows reflective in the quiet early morning.

“I’ve been at this for 30 years,” he says. “I still love coming to work, but my body is starting to get old. I’m not lifting kegs anymore. I used to pride myself on the fact I could stack the kegs myself. Yeah. And that was just three years ago now. I had my knee replaced last September. I skied on it this year, 54 miles an hour. It takes a longer time to recover.”

While Mott’s physical body might not be where it used to be, his body of work stands tall in the New England brewing scene. The so-called “journeyman” brewer not only introduced the India Pale Ale to the region, but crafted a Russian Imperial Stout that turned casual beer drinkers into fervent beer hunters.

Before we get into that, though, we must remember that this is a family affair first. And you can’t tell the story of Tributary without starting from the beginning. 

“Galen runs the business,” Mott assures me. “There’s no way this happens without her.”

‘A 30-YEAR HOBBY’

Tod and Galen Mott met toward the tail end of their time together at Denison University in central Ohio. He’d gone west from Greenwich, Connecticut to study ceramics; she’d traveled east from the Chicago suburbs to study art. Schooling took the pair to Sun Valley, Idaho then back to Chicago to paint houses. After Mott earned his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, they moved to Boston. Galen bounced around art museums in the region and ran her own decorative art studio based out of Boston.

“I have way too much schooling,” says Mott. “She was a breadwinner for a number of years.”

Life changed for the Motts, who were married in 1983, when Galen purchased Mott a homebrew kit while he was in graduate school. They were both tired of drinking Budweiser, but they couldn’t afford otherwise. “Yeah, it was probably a little of both, but I knew he loves to cook and make things,” she says. “So I knew that that would be kind of a fun hobby for him.”

She stresses “a hobby” in air quotes and adds, with honed comedic timing and pronounced sarcasm, “A 30-year hobby.”

After going it alone initially, Mott later found his place in the local homebrewing community, competing against the likes of Garrett Oliver and Phil Markowski, of Brooklyn Brewery and Two Roads Brewing Company, respectively.

“There were some amazing brewers in that homebrew club,” he says. “At the time, I had no idea who they were and they were just so gracious. They were energetic as hell. And I joined them and started brewing and the next thing I was like, man, I can parlay the ceramics into brewing and make some money.”

“We needed beer. They didn’t have any Harpoon, but I found this six-pack of Ballantine IPA. We set off and I popped it open. ‘What’s the smell? It’s the hops. It smells like weed. Whoa.’ I took a sip. I’d never tasted anything like it. I’d never had an IPA. It just floored me.”

Mott’s first professional gig was at Catamount Brewery in White River Junction, Vermont, where he learned the most important part of a brewing job is cleanliness. But Catamount was ahead of its time. The brewery had a lab, and stringent quality control standards. “Quality was the name of the game,” Mott says. “It still is. But [at Catamount I learned] you can’t make bad beer.”

The “Wally Pipp” moment in Mott’s career happened when he was asked to step in for an injured brewer at Harpoon Brewery in Boston, Massachusetts. (Pipp, who played professional baseball for the New York Yankees, famously asked to be pulled from the starting lineup because of a headache. His replacement, Lou Gehrig, went on to a Hall of Fame career at first base, and started the next 2,130 games in a Yankees uniform.)

As he tells it, Mott had an epiphany as he was getting into the groove devising recipes in his new gig. “We were up at Vinalhaven, Maine,” he says. “We needed beer. They didn’t have any Harpoon, but I found this six-pack of Ballantine IPA. We set off and I popped it open. ‘What’s the smell? It’s the hops. It smells like weed. Whoa.’ I took a sip. I’d never tasted anything like it. I’d never had an IPA. It just floored me.”

Mott decided he wanted to brew an English-style IPA, and crafted his recipe the way he still does: by beginning at the end. “What do I want this beer to taste like?” he asked himself. “What are the vital characteristics I’m looking to showcase? How do I get there?” 

Convinced to use American hops, Mott settled on Cluster and Cascade because “that’s what Sierra Nevada does.” The result was a beer called Harpoon IPA, which quickly became ubiquitous in the region. 

“I invented the IPA in New England,” Mott says. “It wasn’t a New England IPA. It was just a beer made in New England that just happened to have some hops in it … That was in 1992 or ’93. Jesus Christ. That was 30 years ago.”

Mott’s early experiments eventually snowballed into the avalanche that is the New England IPA. But his creation of another beer—one that followed him every step of the way in his brewing career—brought a distinct darkness, and boldness, to the beer landscape.

CALL ME ISHMAEL

After Harpoon, Mott worked at Back Bay Brewing Company in Boston (which was an offshoot of Commonwealth Brewing Company, where he also spent time on the brew deck). There, he created the first iteration of a beer called Boston Strangler, a Russian Imperial Stout. The name, which referenced the perpetrator of 13 grizzly murders in Boston in the early 1960s, fortunately didn’t stick. 

The recipe, which continued to evolve over time, followed him to a short stint at a brewery called Quincy Ships on Massachusetts’ South Shore and then briefly to a new start-up brewery in Haverhill, Massachusetts called Haverhill Brewery. “It’s followed me to every single brewery I’ve been at,” he says. “Then,” he shrugs, “to P-Brew.”

P-Brew is short for Portsmouth Brewery. Located along the main drag in the small waterfront town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the brewery is owned by Peter Egelston (who also owns Northampton Brewery, another brewpub, in Northampton, Massachusetts, and, from 1994-2018, owned Smuttynose Brewing Company). It was the height of the brewpub era, defined by house-crafted beer and good food in a convivial atmosphere built around the community. There were pint club memberships, happy hour apps, and community nights that centered on local philanthropy. 

By this time, Mott had cultivated an esteemed reputation, and was seen by many in the industry as a brewing maestro whose influence resonated across the region. During his eight-year stint at Portsmouth from 2004-2012, he drew brewers who wanted to work with him. One of them was Tyler Jones.

“When I finished brewing school [at UC Davis], I knew I wanted to work for Tod,” says Jones, who now owns Black Hog Brewing in Oxford, Connecticut. “I called and left messages every two weeks.”

Jones speaks with reverence about Mott, calling him his “best friend” during their time together from 2007-2011. When Mott left Portsmouth to open Tributary, Jones took over as the lead brewer before leaving the post to open Black Hog. After learning the science side of the trade in school, Jones says he discovered a different side from Mott.

“Tod coming from the art side showed me how much of this is an art,” says Jones. “He taught me things you can’t learn from a book.” 

Everything changed when, in 2007, BeerAdvocate called Mott’s Russian Imperial Stout—known then as Kate the Great, after the 18th-century empress of Russia, Catherine II—the second-best beer in the world, and the best in the U.S. The number-one spot was held by another Russian Imperial Stout named Black Albert, made by De Struise Brouwers in Oostvleteren, Belgium. In 2011, Mott journeyed to Belgium to brew a blend of Kate and Albert, which was called Kabert.

“Tod coming from the art side showed me how much of this is an art. He taught me things you can’t learn from a book.”

An oil-black, double-digit-ABV masterpiece made with 12 different malts and aged on oak spires, Kate the Great became one of the first white whales in craft beer. Every year, lines wrapped around the block on “Kate Day,” held in March.

“It really blew me away the first time people lined up,” Mott says. “Oh my god, [it was] insane. We used to sell that beer in growlers.”

Woody, Mott’s 29-year-old son and the assistant brewer at Tributary, shares a high school drinking story that’s distinct from, well, any other high school drinking story I’ve ever heard. He claims that, while his parents snoozed upstairs, he and his friends poured glasses of Kate the Great from the kegerator in the family basement. While the rest of us snuck bad macro beer into the woods, there were teenagers drinking one of the finest beers in the world, on draft, in a finished basement.

The beer exists now as Mott the Lesser. It’s since become a blend: A portion of the beer is aged in stainless steel while the remaining amount rests in four separate oak barrels rather than on oak spires. “[It’s always] two fortified wines and two distillates,” says Mott.

The specific barrels used vary year to year, from port and Madeira to rum and gin barrels. In true Kate Day spirit, there are still lines around the building when batches are released twice a year, one in the spring and another in the fall. (During COVID-19, bottles were sold online and buyers could stop by the brewery to pick them up at their convenience.) The fall 2020 batch of MtL, on tap close to six months after the release date—and just in time for my visit—features big cherry notes on the nose, but ends with a clean botanical finish from the gin barrels.

But when Mott and his staff pulled beer out of the barrels to do a sensory tasting for the spring 2021 edition of Mott the Lesser, something was off. After they detected a tartness in the Madeira barrel, the same happened with the sample from the port barrel. An infection had ruined the oaked portion of the beer (no infection reached any of the beer fermenting in stainless).

“It’s totally devastating,” Mott says. “You know, I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen everything but the spoilage in those barrels. Now I’ve seen everything.”

Fortunately, there were enough kegs filled with previous versions of the beer that Mott and his crew were able to salvage the release by blending the stainless quantity with older, fully realized batches of the beer. The result showcases “complex aromatics ranging from coffee, Belgian and milk chocolate, with fruity overtones. As one tastes this full-bodied stout, flavors of jammy plums and stone fruit give way to tannic and leather oak derivatives of the blended barrels.” 

A CERTAIN LINEAGE

By 2012, Mott had a loyal following, had spent years mastering his craft, and was ready to leave Portsmouth to make beers “on his own dime.” He called his project Tributary, and added the tagline, “One Tributary Leads to Another…” In a literal sense, the brewery resides near the water, and that descriptor alludes to its sense of place: Every tributary leads to another tributary before the waters reach the ocean. In the metaphorical sense, the name seems to speak to the lineage of certain important beers. And, hopefully, if you have one of Mott’s Tributary beers, you’ll want another.

The timing was perfect for starting the business. “Borrowing money was cheap,” says Galen. Southern Maine had also just passed legislation to allow for a brewery to operate without serving food, and the state’s craft beer industry was hitting its stride. “I told Tod, ‘This is the time to do it,’” says Galen. “And we really wanted to be the first ones in southern Maine.”

Tributary’s quaint taproom resides in a small corner space within what used to be a supermarket, inconspicuously sandwiched between a bank and a hardware store in a shopping plaza. In an era when pastoral settings do well on social media, Mott’s spot is an unassuming one.

But he had a vision for his brewhouse. He knew what he wanted, and had the contacts to make it happen. The main goal, according to Galen, was the desire to “keep it as local as possible.” To get Mott’s beer, per usual, you had to go to him.

“Draft is best,” Mott says. “The best place to drink beer is at the source. Obviously, packaging has gotten good lately, cans are fantastic, but there is just something about draft beer. It really shows a beer’s qualities. There are a lot of great neighborhood bars that are great to drink at, a beer at home is fine, but when you can sit at a bar and talk about the beer you’re drinking with the brewer, it’s a much better experience.”

“That’s maybe why he’s not as well-known within the brewing world outside New England,” says Jones. “You always had to go to where he was brewing. Maybe you sit next to him at the bar and let him talk to you about beer. He’s a true artist. He wants you to experience the beer with him. He knows the story of his beer is told correctly by him.”

Coincidentally or not, the brewery opened on Woody’s birthday, during his senior year of college at Northeastern University in Boston. “That semester, I was taking a family business course. I wonder why I did that,” he says with a grin.

“Draft is best. The best place to drink beer is at the source. Obviously, packaging has gotten good lately, cans are fantastic, but there is just something about draft beer. It really shows a beer’s qualities. There are a lot of great neighborhood bars that are great to drink at, a beer at home is fine, but when you can sit at a bar and talk about the beer you’re drinking with the brewer, it’s a much better experience.”

Galen facetiously laments that her son, who holds a business degree, chose to work on the brewing side of the operation rather than the business side alongside his mother. But as he tells it, sitting in a cubicle turned him off from business, so he told his parents he wanted to brew. In turn, they told him, “Great, go find a job.” 

Woody cast his line at a couple local breweries in Boston, including Harpoon, but got no bites. Eventually, he took a job at Wormtown Brewery in Worcester, Massachusetts, and then at Stoneface Brewing Co. in Newington, New Hampshire. When an opening finally came up at Tributary, he was recruited to join his family business.

“He is very much like Tod,” says Galen. “He is passionate about brewing and he did have some experience homebrewing and so forth. So the passion, the fire was there. He’s a great worker and he’s got a great palate and all that. He is definitely a chip off the old block.”

A father-and-son dynamic in the workplace can present some unique challenges, but Tod and Woody blend their differences and work well together in the brewhouse, they say.

“[Tod] is an iconoclastic, boisterous guy,” says Woody. “The intensity for which he expresses his desire for quality, and being this community man, and, you know, you’ll see him out there in the tasting room just chatting with customers at any opportunity. I’m a little more reserved. I am a bit of an introvert, but, nonetheless, having that balance where I’m very methodical in things where, you know, he’s like the Italian grandmother that knows how to add just enough of this, just enough of that to a recipe.”

The tap list at the tasting room reflects the brew team’s commitment to quality, but they refuse to make it easy on themselves. Instead, they’re more likely to pull from Mott’s book of recipes—according to Woody, it’s over 200 pages long—which can make Tributary feel like a bit of a throwback to the brewpub days of craft brewing. On tap the day I visit, I find an IPA, Pale Ale, California Common, Maple Porter, Helles, Belgian IPA, and the fall 2020 version of Mott the Lesser. 

Maintaining quality and consistency is key to managing such a diverse tap list. In fact, Mott claims to have only dumped two batches of beer at Tributary. 

“Quality, quality,” Mott says, before reemphasizing the point. “It will always be the quality of the beer, first and foremost. We’re not saving money on our malt. We’re spending a bit more to add that certain character that we want in our Pale Ale, to add that residual character. Well, we only want a little bit of it, but we want it in there because it is a flavor profile. And that’s where designing beers, you have to know what you want to do and how to get it there.”

“The big thing he taught me was recipe development,” says Jones. “His malt bills are awesome. He gives you that experience of teaching like, ‘Okay 2% of this, 5% of this, all in order to provoke this flavor.’ It’s the little things, like adding British malt into the toaster oven in the kitchen just to get a really subtle malt nuance.”

At the brewery’s opening, the New England craft beer community showed up in droves. Even still, opening a brewery was, to Mott, a “huge bet.”

“It’s so humbling,” he says. “The line for the first Mott the Lesser was, I mean, I was just blown away. There was a line literally around the building and I high-fived everybody. I think I had a beer with everybody. I was two sheets to the wind.” 

‘THE GRANDMA LOOKING INTO THE KITCHEN’

Though tucked away in a shopping plaza, Tributary is less than a mile from the waters that lead to the Atlantic Ocean. Just as Mott has seen tides come and go in his native New England, he’s seen the ebb and flow of the craft beer industry over his 30-plus years in the game. The number of craft breweries has risen like a rogue wave, cresting and hitting a high-water mark. Now, as the water begins to recede, some will survive and many will sink back into the sea. From his time in the industry, Mott has learned that there are a few constants inherent to longevity.

“You put your ax to grindstone, you love what you do, and it’s not really work,” he says. “There’s a brewery in every little neighborhood. And it’s so amazing. Most of the brewers are really genuine, good, wonderful, loving, kind, fantastic people.” 

These days, there are few legacy, family-owned and -operated breweries like Tributary left. And there are even fewer, if any, that feature an iconoclastic figure like Mott passing the proverbial perforated paddle to his son. There’s a legacy to preserve in every glass at Tributary.

“I’m sure continuing Tod’s legacy has been in the back of Woody’s mind,” says Jones. “But I think [Tod will] always be like the grandma looking into the kitchen. Maybe he is not mashing in, but you know he’s there, making sure you’re doing it right.”

Mott laughs at this idea and acknowledges its truth. He admits it may be close to time to pass on his recipe book. “I’ve done what I set out to do,” he says, growing reflective. “Setting up Tributary is leading to those final steps, which is handing it to Woody. He’s going to take it over after my final farewell. I have done so much for so many others, and we think it’s time to do it for ourselves.” 

Making plans to step back is bittersweet, but the timing feels right. “Woody gets to carry it on,” Mott says. “I’m definitely taking a step back. I don’t have the energy I used to have. It’s time to slow down. Do some traveling. I’ve been married a long time, but we haven’t been able to enjoy a life outside of working. [Retirement] should be a wonderful journey. I’m excited to travel, and spend more, better time together.”

For his part, Woody is ready to tackle the challenge. He’s armed with that prolific recipe book, for starters. The youngest Mott was born into the beer world, and was even tutored in chemistry by the UC Davis brewing school-educated Jones as a high schooler. He knows about vagabonding around New England, about Harpoon IPA and Kate Day. He’s been around beer all his life, and recognizes how important preserving the Mott reputation is. 

“Keeping the legacy that [my dad has] created for himself in proper stewardship is imperative for Tributary,” he says. “I look at myself as the steward of that legacy.”

Words by Matt Osgood
Photos by Mike Lianza

When the Brewers Association released the results of their Brewery Operations Benchmarking Survey last year, the data confirmed that there’s still work to do when it comes to diversifying the industry. Based on the responses, 77 percent of breweries were owned by men and only 9 percent of breweries owned by people of color. More than 90 percent of production staff were males while front-of-house staff, like bartenders or servers, showed a greater balance of a gender. The responses also reported that less than 24 percent of employees are from the BIPOC community.

It was another set of examples of gender disparity that has traditionally plagued the beer industry in the U.S. and around the world.

Despite being male-dominated, women are finding ways to navigate the industry and share their love for craft beer with others. These women increasingly shape the future of U.S. beer, one that’s guided with themes of diversity and inclusion.

Unfortunately, these same women regularly encounter situations that place their safety at risk. Working in a male-dominated industry puts women at a higher risk of experiencing sexual harassment on the job. The service industry is responsible for 14 percent of all sexual harassment complaints, according to Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. It’s reported that 90 percent of women in the service industry have experienced some form of sexual harassment. Because of this, many women in beer are looking for ways to maneuver uncomfortable and sometimes threatening circumstances.
Some women shared how they’ve adopted a heightened awareness of their surroundings. They rely on regular check-ins with friends and co-workers, and some women have sacrificed everyday convenience for safety. While these extra precautions provide a layer of protection, spending extra time and money to avoid unsafe situations puts an undue burden on women working in the craft beer industry.

Amanda Oakes | Regional Sales Director | Montana

Amanda Oakes, a sales representative for Red Lodge Ales Brewing Co. in Red Lodge, Montana, used to spend two-to-five days on the road representing her brewery at beer events, maintaining accounts, and sharing Red Lodge Ales’ beer with drinkers across the region before COVID-19. Oakes loves selling beer because she’s really good at it, but life on the road isn’t always glamorous.

“Your safety is always at risk when you’re a single female, especially selling an alcoholic beverage product,” says Oakes, who has worked in beer for six years.

One night in 2006, Oakes packed up her car and headed back to her hotel after hosting a tap takeover at The Drink in Mandan, North Dakota. What she didn’t realize was a man from the event followed her back to the hotel’s front desk, where he pretended to be her husband to get a key to her room. When he unlocked the door, Oakes had the safety latch on, so he was blocked from gaining access to her room.

“One lesson I learned from that one situation is I never want it to happen again. So now when I check into a hotel room, I either will hand write a note or verbally let someone know that I am traveling alone,” says Oakes.

Since then, Oakes shares her story with other women in the industry and provides advice on ways to stay safe on the road. Unfortunately, Oakes’ story is not an isolated incident for women who travel for work. According to research from the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) in partnership with AIG Travel, 83 percent of women experienced one of more safely-related concerns or incidents while traveling for business in the past year.

Danya Bonner | Director of Sales | Montana

Danya Bonner, a director of sales at Lewis & Clark Brewing Co. in Helena, Montana, started working in the beer industry 15 years ago. Bonner understands the hazards of the job because of her friendship with Oakes. She typically feels safe when she’s out on the road for the brewery, but has been followed by men in an easy-to-spot work vehicle, which gets a lot of attention on the road for its beer-label design.

After being followed home one night summer, Bonner decided to leave her vehicle at the brewery instead of driving it home. “Now, I don’t take my work vehicle home. I usually park my work vehicle at my hotel if I’m in a different town or a different state and then Uber. I’ve probably spent a fortune on Uber at this point,” Bonner says.

But it’s not just an undue financial burden placed on her. She also checks in regularly with the brewery on the way home and encourages them to do the same, especially if they haven’t heard from her in a while. These extra precautions have become a way for Bonner to safely do the job she loves.

Sarah Swenson | Sales and Brand Manager | Arizona

Sarah Swenson, a sales and brand manager in Arizona, often volunteered to drive friends and colleagues home after an event. That changed after Swenson was allegedly sexually assaulted by a male colleague after dropping him off at his house.

Since the assault, Swenson has re-evaluated who she can trust. She used to see herself as a caretaker for her male friends. Now, she’s careful about who she drives home—whether a coworker or friend. Women should be able to feel safe with men they know, but statistics show that familiarity isn’t as safe as one would expect. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), 80 percent of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim.

Because they work in the same industry, Swenson would run into him at events. “He would make it a point . . . to sit down right next to me and act like we were best friends. He knew that if he would start a conversation in front of my bosses, that I would be professional and tolerate it,” says Swenson.

Like many, Swenson has taken on the burden of maintaining her professionalism in the face of a man who assaulted her. Research shows that 60 percent of women have experienced workplace sexual harassment and assault, but it’s rarely reported. Another study shows that Black women experience sexual harassment at work at three times the rate of white women—approximately 23 percent of Black women. While 20 percent of Latinx workers have reported experiencing sexual harassment.

The affects of experiencing sexual assault in the workplace are damaging and puts unwarranted stress on the women who have to work in proximity to their assaulter.

Nikki Johnson | Beertender-Certified Cicerone | Maryland

Life in the taproom comes with its own challenges. One summer evening in 2018, Nikki Johnson was closing up the taproom at a Georgia brewery. Initially, Johnson was having a friendly conversation with a lingeringmale patron. But as she started to close, she expected the patron to pay his tab and head home.

“He just was like hanging on. He asked for one more beer . . . and I was like ‘No, dude, I’m closing up. Sorry. I’m trying to be polite,’” Johnson says. After 20 minutes of waiting for him to leave, Johnson told him to leave. The patron told Johnson he was waiting on his Uber, but she got him to step outside and she locked the doors.

“There’s no one around,” Johnson recalled. “I could scream as loud as I wanted, and no one would hear it.”

While Johnson wasn’t to blame for the situation, she’s taken on the burden of being the solution. Now when she closes, Johnson is firm from the start with patrons. “I was afraid that being blunt with that guy would make him mad and [want to] retaliate,” says Johnson. “I wish I would have more vocally requested to not close alone anymore.”

Making the Beer Industry Safer for Women

It’s hard to estimate the toll unwanted encounters have on women, especially women of color who often have to navigate these situations along with the mental and emotional stress due to working in majority white spaces.

Eugenia Brown works full time in mental health and part-time as a beertender at Charlotte, North Carolina’s Free Range Brewing. While people have made provocative, sexual comments toward her, the most upsetting situations she has experienced are those where she’s ignored or dismissed by customers when trying to serve them.

“Trauma is trauma no matter what,” Brown said. “So when talking about the emotional trauma that happens when you feel invalidated as a person, when you feel like your existence isn’t being recognized and celebrated. You internalize that, and then you start to question if you do belong in that space.”

Instead of shifting the blame towards the perpetrators, often women reexamine and second-guess their actions, believing they have some part to play in the incident. Studies have shown that self-blame is highest in cases of sexual assault, which leads to higher cases of PTSD. For Black women, the combination of racism and sexism can heighten depression and PTSD symptoms.

Brewery owners and managers can help create a safe environment by empowering their employees to advocate for themselves if their safety is ever compromised. To do this, HR Professionals Kristen Ireland and Erin Mies of People Spark Consulting recommend breweries start by identifying their culture and values and keep them front of mind for leadership and employees.

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t ask for help if you don’t feel comfortable,” says Tracey Bardugon, a taproom manager at Atlanta’s Fire Maker Brewing Company. She keeps an Atlanta Police Department’s non-emergency number on speed dial. And while this is great advice, women of color are less likely to seek out law enforcement than their white counterparts due to the systemic discrimination and oppression experienced by the police.

One common challenge for women, Nikki Johnson, a Beertender-Certified Cicerone from Maryland, says, is where breweries are located. With so many breweries in industrial zones, working late nights in a warehouse far from other businesses or people is daunting. “I would’ve had to run a block to reach a building with another human being in it,” Johnson says.

Swenson also encourages women to speak up about their experiences. Many women who survive sexual abuse feel guilty or ashamed after the experience. Instead of coming forward, they maintain their silence, which can be isolating.

However, reporting incidents of sexual harassment comes with the fear of retaliation from the employer or abuser. Retaliation could include low performance reviews, undesirable shifts, spreading of false rumors, threats, or firing. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, retaliation is the most frequently filed issue constituting 51.6 percent of charges in FY 2018. The numbers are sobering and reflect an issue that extends beyond the beer industry.

”Don’t ever be afraid to tell someone what happened and what your situation was. And don’t be afraid to ask questions about how you [can avoid] being put in that situation again,” says Oakes.

This story was made possible by the Diversity in Beer Writing Grant, established by the North American Guild of Beer Writers in partnership with CraftBeer.com. Additional support for the grant comes from Allagash Brewing Company.

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Single infusion mash at 150° F for 60 minutes. Target 5.3 pH. Lauter then boil for 15 minutes.  Chill to 90° F and lower wort PH to 4.3 via Lactic Acid additions. Pitch Omega Lactobacillus blend, OYL-605. Once soured to 3.5PH, return wort back to kettle and boil for another 15 minutes. Chill to 65° F and pitch yeast starter. Ferment at 65° F. On day 5, allow temperature to free rise to 70° F.  Just before FG reached, transfer to secondary and rack on top of Passion Fruit Puree for 2 weeks. Cold crash when fully attenuated, add gelatin for 2-3 days. Transfer to Keg, Force carbonate to 3.0 vol. CO2.

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On a given Friday in Denver—especially in neighborhoods like Baker, RiNo, or the historic LoDo—you’re likely to find a mix of students and young professionals, road-tripping tourists and outdoorsy locals, all mingling among the city’s mix of dives, brewery taprooms, and cocktail lounges. But as compelling as the people-watching can be, it’s got nothing on the Rocky Mountain backdrop, on Denver’s ineffable sense of place.

Bartender Skylar Dorman describes Denver as a “big city [with a] little-town feel,” one that’s known for its elevated drinks and dining options while still retaining a cozy, local feel. “We are able to get the best products, do really cool things, and change people’s expectations or ideas of us being still a cow town,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong—Denver still has plenty of ‘Cheers’-style bars, with everyday regulars. However, we have grown up, and have bars and bartenders that are competing nationally and internationally.” 

Dorman discovered his love of bartending, and of cocktail development, while working at The Kitchen Denver. “Our leader at that time, Dustin Lawlor, had such a passion for spirits and what each one brought individually. Training under him was one of the greatest experiences I could ask for, and I learned so much. He ignited a passion [in me] for the history and art of spirits.” This same spark is common among the many talented bartenders in Denver, he says. “I love all the creativity there is around the city. It’s such a small and close community that truly supports and drives each other to try new things and continue to better ourselves.”

Still, most outsiders would be forgiven for not associating the Mile High City with cocktails. Denver is home to an array of breweries—around 150—and hosts the Great American Beer Festival every autumn; its long-established craft beer scene is one of the city’s calling cards. But for some local distilleries, that isn’t so much a reason to worry as a point of inspiration.

“I don’t think Stranahan’s would be here without the craft beer culture that’s sprung up in Denver,” says Stranahan’s master distiller, Owen Martin. “So, even our base ingredients kind of touch on that culture here, because we use all these specialty malts to basically brew a Porter here, and that’s what we distill. As a single malt producer, I usually say you can trace our roots—100% malted barley, so we’re like Scotch; new charred barrel, so we’re like bourbon in that respect; but I think craft beer is our third big influence, and that is specifically tied to Denver.” 

UNEXPECTED MEETINGS

Stranahan’s was officially founded in 2004, but the idea to start a single-malt whiskey distillery in the Rocky Mountains took root much earlier. On April 2, 1998, the future co-founder of Stranahan’s and founder of Tincup Whiskey, Jess Graber, remembers the unexpected meeting that changed the course of his career. “I was a volunteer firefighter at the time, and responded to a neighbor’s barn fire down the road. That barn belonged to George Stranahan—he was a philanthropist, rancher, and microbrew owner. We became friends following the event and discovered we had a shared passion for the Colorado outdoors and fine whiskey.” 

“I was a volunteer firefighter at the time and responded to a neighbor’s barn fire down the road. That barn belonged to George Stranahan—he was a philanthropist, rancher, and microbrew owner. We became friends following the event and discovered we had a shared passion for the Colorado outdoors and fine whiskey.”

Barn fires aren’t typically how business partners come together, but the connection stuck, and the idea started to take shape. The late George Stranahan owned a brewery in Denver, and the nascent whiskey distillery moved in next door. It went on to become Colorado’s first new legal whiskey distillery since Prohibition. “We knew whiskey-making and craft brewing share a number of similarities,” Graber says, noting that there wasn’t much of a leap between the two businesses. “In both cases, a mash is made from a recipe of grains and yeast, then transferred to a fermentation vessel.”

The duo began by using George Stranahan’s facilities to brew the base for their first expression, the aptly named Original. The inaugural whiskey was released in 2006, and Stranahan’s was officially open for business. “This was a new Colorado whiskey different from anything east or west of the Rockies, and the rest is, as they say, history,” Graber says. “We built Stranahan’s to create a Colorado whiskey, finding a style to best utilize pristine, Colorado-sourced ingredients.”

In another moment of beer-adjacent serendipity, Owen Martin, now Stranahan’s head distiller, initially planned to become a brewer. During the craft beer boom of the early 2010s, he looked into attending brewing school, but he soon hit a roadblock: All the programs he could find domestically had year-long waiting lists. As a result, he sought schooling abroad, and ultimately decided on Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University in 2013. 

“I’d say I was introduced to good whiskey while I was over there,” Martin says. “I had previously done an undergrad, so I was familiar with drinking very bad whiskey, but [Scotland] was the first time I really had a quality single malt.” The first dram he remembers appreciating was a 12-year-old single malt whisky produced by Balvenie. 

“I shot it back and as soon as I shot it, I realized, ‘Oh, shit, this isn’t Fireball,’” Martin laughs. So, he went right back up to the bar, bought the same dram, and then proceeded to sit there “very nice, slowly, and respectfully after that.” By the time he graduated with a master’s degree in brewing and distilling and came back to the States, he had changed course and decided to tap into the whiskey industry. 

Upon his return, Martin took on the role of lead distiller for the Little Rock, Arkansas-based Rock Town Distillery in 2014. He crafted bourbon and rye whiskey for the distillery for a couple of years before pursuing his calling: single malt whiskey. “Bourbon and rye weren’t really my passion, but it was good to kind of jump into the industry,” Martin says. “Having lived in Scotland and really got an appreciation for barley and single malt … I’d been looking at that point, and Stranahan’s had a job posting. I knew that was one of my places I really wanted to work. So, I immediately jumped on that.” 

The full-circle moment occurred when the gentleman who bought Martin his first Balvenie dram in Scotland turned out to work for Stranahan’s, and vouched for Martin’s expertise and skill set. The recommendation worked in Martin’s favor: Colorado has no shortage of excellent brewers and distillers, and out-of-state hires can be uncommon. However, Stranahan’s made an exception, and Martin came on board in 2016.  

THE ORIGINAL SETS THE STAGE

This year, Stranahan’s celebrated its 15th anniversary. “There’s not a whole lot of places with the history in the U.S. that Stranahan’s has,” Martin says. That’s particularly true given that the distillery is technically a couple of years older than that, since Stranahan’s decided not to release any whiskey until it had aged for at least two years. 

“I feel like that’s pretty rare, especially nowadays—most distilleries that are starting up need money, as most businesses do, right?” says Martin. “You either have to make gin and vodka or something that you don’t have to age, or you have to buy whiskey from another distillery and repackage it.” As a forerunner in the American single malt category, Stranahan’s didn’t go down the gin or vodka routes; instead, it made a conscious decision not to release anything until the whiskey was ready, for fear of diluting its brand and mission.

The Stranahan’s portfolio is led by its flagship Original, as well as its Blue Peak, Sherry Cask, Snowflake, and others. All of its whiskeys are distilled, aged, and bottled on site at the Denver distillery, and are made using 100% malted barley and local water sources. 

“[W]e believe that true American single malts can compete with the best Scotches and bourbons from around the world,” says Graber. “American single malt deserves its own category next to bourbon and Scotch because of the high-quality ingredients that go into it. Scotch has the purity of Speyside, and we have the high altitude and cleanliness of the Rocky Mountains in our water and barley.” 

Colorado is famous for its elevation and mountains, and those regional characteristics have a distinct impact on the overall whiskey character as it matures. The state’s high altitude leads to a unique angel’s share loss, which is the amount of distilled spirit that evaporates out of the barrel over time. Stranahan’s loses more out of its casks than if it were aging at sea level, and the result is a higher-proof whiskey with a robust and complex flavor profile. 

“I think we make whiskey that’s just as good, if not better than most bourbons and Scotches out there,” says Martin. “So, I think it’s really about—on an educational level—trying to get consumers aware of what a single malt even is, and what makes us different than the standard categories that people are aware of, and pushing their palates to show what we’re capable of. Being such a young category, one of the things that’s most fun for me is that we get to kind of push it and define it as we grow.”

“As a single malt producer, I usually say you can trace our roots—100% malted barley, so we’re like Scotch; new charred barrel, so we’re like bourbon in that respect; but I think craft beer is our third big influence and that is specifically tied to Denver.”

At first whiff, the Original offers a subtly sweet combination of caramel and maple notes. The creamy, flavorful palate slightly mirrors the aroma with hints of rich caramel, but this time married to brown sugar, with a delicate punch of oak. Blue Peak is just as approachable, but is matured a bit longer, at four years. The whiskey is marked by a golden apple and warm caramel aroma, graced with an inviting palate of butterscotch and candied nuts. 

“Being from Colorado and in the industry, I remember the pride a lot of us felt having a single malt made right here at home,” says Dorman. “Even better was watching it grow and gain recognition around the States and now the world. [It’s] just a beautiful place making beautiful things.” Dorman appreciates the versatility of the whiskeys crafted by Stranahan’s. Though he enjoys a neat pour, he also mentions that the spirits are “the cornerstone of some of the best cocktails.” One he recommends is a riff on the New York Sour called the Summertime Sour. The drink consists of 1.5oz of Stranahan’s Sherry Cask, 0.75oz of lemon juice, 0.5oz of strawberry shrub, 0.25oz of simple syrup, and a float of rosé wine.

FORGING AHEAD

Though COVID-19 has stifled many of the in-person events historically held at the distillery, including the launches of limited-edition bottles in its Cask Thief series—exclusive, rare expressions from distinct barrels in the rack house—Stranahan’s has still been able to pivot and innovate.

“Being from Colorado and in the industry, I remember the pride a lot of us felt having a single malt made right here at home. Even better was watching it grow and gain recognition around the States and now the world. [It’s] just a beautiful place making beautiful things.”

“This year has been a big year of change for us—in a good way,” Martin says. Stranahan’s recently released a distillery-exclusive whiskey made in partnership with Bushmills. The Bushmills’ casks were filled four years ago in 2017, and the bulk of the blend is eight years old and consists of four-year-old Stranahan’s whiskey. Prior to the Bushmills partnership was the release of Mountain Angel, Stranahan’s oldest, rarest bottle to date, and its first 10-year-old American single malt. “I am super fortunate and super lucky to be able to play with all this older whiskey. So, being able to blend the first ever 10-year-old release was freaking amazing,” Martin says. 

The Stranahan’s team continues to innovate within the category of American single malt, and that no doubt leaves an impression on the whiskey industry. “As a proud co-founder, [our] contribution to whiskey propelled the American single malt category through innovation, setting trends, and showcasing a refined craft spirit with creativity and a range of flavor,” says Graber, who describes it as a distinctive whiskey category that can play alongside Scotch, Japanese whisky, bourbon, rye, and Irish whiskey. “Stranahan’s defines the next generation of great whiskey making. It’s the true definition of an American single malt.”

Words by Gabrielle Pharms
Illustrations by Ryan Troy Ford