NoDa Gordgeous Pumpkin Ale will make its seasonal appearance on August 13th. This North Carolina brewed pumpkin ale touts 100+ pounds of organic sugar and caramelized brown sugar, freshly cracked spices, and 42 pounds of pumpkin.
The recipe started as head brewer Chad Henderson’s homebrew recipe more than a decade ago. (At one point he told Beer Street Journal a giant pumpkin was involved in the process, either in brewing or tapping. Never did get clarity.) NoDa Gordgeous has been a fall offering each year since debuting in 2013.
NoDa Gordgeous is available in 16-ounce cans (4 packs) and draft as an early fall seasonal.
Earlier this summer, as the U.K.’s third COVID-19 lockdown slowly eased, I visited London’s newest Czech beer pub, Pivo. It was a joyous evening, one spent sinking pint after pint of Czech Lager served from side-pour taps. For those of us in the capital, it was the first chance to drink beers like Cvikov Sklar 8°, Kutná Hora Gold 12°, and Muflon Semi-Dark 12° without boarding a plane to Prague.
The Kutná Hora in particular was a glorious beer, gleaming a deep, burnished gold beneath its generous and glossy plug of foam. It was rich with grainy maltiness, with a satisfying toastiness and caramel sweetness, but somehow still fresh and light, all perfectly balanced out by noble hops. And it was gone before I was ready for it to be over, every damn time.
I ended up drinking the most beer I’d had in a single session since the early days of the pandemic, if only because everything I ordered was so damn drinkable. But that wasn’t incidental—for the brewers of these beers, that trait is very much by design.
Adam Brož, the brewmaster at Budweiser Budvar, says drinkability is one of the most important characteristics in beer. “I define it in the simplest way: to enjoy the beer and to want to repeat the experience,” he says.
Speaking over Zoom, Brož comes across as a neat and careful man. With his shaven head and buttoned dress shirt, he reminds me of the sort of chemist-brewer who might stalk the brewhouse in a white lab coat. But don’t mistake careful for dry; there’s passion, too. He cares very much about both Budvar specifically and beer in general.
“I hope that [all] Czech beers, not only Budvar, have very high drinkability,” he tells me. If you’ve ever enjoyed a foam-capped glass of deep golden Pilsner in the Czech Republic, you’ll know what he’s talking about.
THE ROOTS OF DRINKABILITY
Could this quality have something to do with the way these beers are brewed? Many credit the character imparted by decoction mashing—a technique frequently used when brewing Czech and German Lagers—for making these beers so utterly quenching. Surely it’s no coincidence that the Czechs drank the most beer per capita of any nation in 2019: 188.6 liters each (that’s 399 pints, stateside). The Germans came fourth with 99 liters, or 209 pints per head.
At its core, decoction mashing consists of taking part of the mash (the grain and water mixture that becomes wort), boiling it separately, and then mixing it back into the main mash to raise its overall temperature. As it boils, the decocted mash develops Maillard-reaction flavors, which deepen the longer you boil it. A minute gives the finished beer an extra hint of grain character. Ten minutes will get you toasted bread crust, toffee, and caramel notes, similar to those that brewers seek from specialty malts.
Double decoction is just as it sounds: You do all this twice, as brewers at Budweiser Budvar have been doing for over a century (Josef Groll likely also did so to brew the world’s first Pale Lager, Pilsner Urquell). You can even do it three times. Triple decoction was so popular in Munich during the early 1800s that brewers called it “the Bavarian method,” while Anton Dreher, who developed Vienna Lager, also used it.
Decoction mashing is still so integral to Czech beer that it is mandated for any breweries that want to use the České pivo Protected Geographical Indication. PGIs like this are legally enforceable seals of quality based upon how and where a product is made, as well as which ingredients are used.
Budweiser Budvar goes one step further and uses the stricter Českobudějovické pivo and Budějovické pivo PGIs. Those indications enforce standards that Brož refers to as the four pillars of traditional production: quality ingredients, decoction mashing, cold fermentation, and long maturation.
“All of the pillars of tradition [are vital] in the brewery,” says Brož. “If you change it, you break the effort of the previous nine brewmasters of this brewery, and you break the joy of the customers because you break the taste profile. So I feel it’s vital to keep it.”
But how did decoction become so popular in the first place? Perhaps it was because the method allowed brewers finer temperature control over their mash—during the early 1800s, they did not have access to thermometers and heated their vessels directly over open fires. Or maybe it was because the technique allowed them to make the best use of the malts that were available at the time, smoothing out the natural variation in grain from one year to the next. Or perhaps it was simply decoction’s impact on the finished beer: It can darken a beer’s color, impart richer malt flavors, give a smoother mouthfeel, and even result in more stable foam.
NEED OR WANT?
To understand decoction, you need to have a handle on malt—and in particular a process called modification. Brewers need grain for its starch and protein. In their natural state these are locked away inside the grain, so the grain is malted first. Malting—germinating the grain before drying and kilning it—breaks down its cell structure to reveal the starch held within. It also breaks down the grain’s proteins, some of which become amino or fatty acids; these important yeast nutrients help fuel fermentation. Most importantly, malting produces enzymes that will later be essential for turning the starch into fermentable sugars (a process called conversion).
Modification refers to these changes taken together. You can think of it as a shorthand for how well, or to what extent, a grain has been rendered suitable for use in brewing. Before the advent of modern farming, malts were often poorly modified. Decoction essentially finished this modification off in the brewer’s kettle.
If you read about decoction for long enough, you’ll come across the claim that it’s no longer necessary now that we have modern malts and brewing tools at our disposal. “It’s true that if you use the modern malts, high[ly] modified malts, then it’s nonsense to use decoction mashing,” says Brož. “Our way is different. We always use the lower modified malt combined with decoction to reach the same quality beer for 126 years.”
Maybe it’s no wonder that, apart from a coterie of traditionalists, brewers use decoction infrequently these days. A triple-decoction mash can take many hours to complete. It costs more to keep the brew kit running, and it requires more effort from the brewer. Meanwhile modern malts are well modified and give a very high extract (lots of sugar for turning into alcohol). And today’s maltsters can kiln malt without overheating or scorching it. This leaves it with more enzymes intact, which leads to better conversion in the mash.
Even barley itself has changed since decoction mashing first became popular. If you were to place a stem of barley from the 1820s next to a stem from the 2020s you would see some clear differences. The grain from the 1820s would be landrace barley—farmed and adapted over time to its surroundings, but not cultivated to develop particular characteristics. It would have a long stem topped with an ear of small grains, some of which would be dead (which would be of no use for brewing). The modern grain would have a shorter stem, fatter grains, and a higher proportion of viable grains.
Modern barley is cultivated. It has been selectively bred to meet the needs of farmers who look to grow more barley in the same field and have more of it reach harvest alive. It is a more homogenous crop, as this is what brings farmers the most money. Generally speaking, any impact on the flavor of the beer made from the barley comes lower down their list of considerations.
But if you’re looking at these factors and asking if decoction is necessary, then you’re asking the wrong question. It was never necessary in the first place. Decoction is not some historical leftover of how things once had to be. It’s not like smoked malt, which every brewer once used—because there was no alternative—then dumped as soon as better kilns came along, leaving just a few diehards to continue the old ways. Decoction was always just one choice among many. Even as triple decoction became popular in Munich in the early 1800s, brewers down the road in Augsburg relied on a different method that involved boiling the entire mash, while in Bamberg infusion mashing was the typical technique. Instead, the right question to ask is: Why decoct?
“I must say that as a brewer, you are always free to decide which way you can choose,” says Brož. “If you go in the way to get the most from the [malt], the highest extract from it to have the highest efficiency […] it’s only a part of the story. If you use this ingredient then it is not necessary to use decoction, but be sure that the [beer] will be something different, because if you change the ingredient, you are trying to change the technology.”
Brož isn’t just being obstinate. He knows what he’s talking about from first-hand experience. He studied at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, during which time he says he built a “very proper knowledge about Lagers.” He spent many hours in laboratories and pilot breweries testing and comparing different mashing processes. And he built on that experience on his path to becoming brewmaster at Budvar a little over a decade ago.
TRADITION AND THE PAST
Decoction is entrenched in Czech brewing tradition now, but in Germany, where it was first popularized, it has declined. Swapping from decoction to a step mash (where the temperature of the whole mash is raised in stages) was just one sacrifice among many that traditional German brewers made on the altar of efficiency. Under pressure from the growth of multinational breweries during the last century, they struggled to justify the extra energy cost and time for decoction. And after all, it’s just one small change—just like switching from open fermentation to cylindroconical vessels, or from whole hops to extracts.
“To be fair, it’s not necessary with the malts we have today,” says Eric Toft, brewmaster at Private Landbrauerei Schönram. Yet Toft still routinely decocts his beers.
If you have [malt] that converts the minute you add water, that’s not the point of brewing. I want to be able to create the wort myself, rather than having it done in the maltings. I try to get malt that’s not as highly modified as it could be. I always ask the maltsters to leave the mashing to me. I’d rather spend an extra half hour, hour in the mash. With decoction I achieve this higher degree of apparent attenuation that I can’t with infusion, at least not in the same time.
— Eric Toft, Private Landbrauerei Schönram
This may sound like a case of blindly following tradition when there are better options available, but to suggest that would be to sell Toft short. He is one of the best brewers in the world, according to Yvan de Baets of Brasserie de la Senne, who has been quoted as saying that Toft has “an incredible knowledge of malt and hops,” and “the precision of a Swiss clockmaker when he brews.” So if Toft chooses to persist in decocting his beers, you can be sure he has solid reasons for doing so.
“If you have [malt] that converts the minute you add water, that’s not the point of brewing,” Toft says. “I want to be able to create the wort myself, rather than having it done in the maltings. I try to get malt that’s not as highly modified as it could be. I always ask the maltsters to leave the mashing to me. I’d rather spend an extra half hour, hour in the mash. With decoction I achieve this higher degree of apparent attenuation that I can’t with infusion, at least not in the same time.”
Toft runs trial brews once or twice a year to compare the results of infusion and decoction mashing on the same batch of malt. In his 90-hectoliter (77-barrel) brewhouse, a decoction brew will use an extra 10 liters of fuel oil. “By using 10 liters of oil more per brew I get a final attenuation of 87%. If I do a step infusion I save the 10 liters, but I only achieve 84%,” he says.
So are three degrees of attenuation really worth all that extra effort and expense? “There are plenty of beers on the market at 80% to 83% and they’re fine, but they’re lacking that extra something … that extra level of drinkability, in my opinion,” Toft says.
Schönram beers have that extra something, in spades. There’s a harmonious quality, expressive malt and hop flavors that complement one another, a crisp and richly satisfying finish that connects to something deep inside. I say it’s like the whole beer sings. Toft is a bit more restrained.
Of his Helles, he says: “It’s the everyday beer in our neck of the woods. It’s very easy-drinking beer produced to have a drier palate. But the whole thing about it is it becomes a bit crisper and cleaner [with decoction], which allows the hops to shine through a little better. And the interesting thing is through this higher attenuation, you get a higher alcohol content relative to your original gravity. So there is a perceived sweetness, but which actually comes from the alcohol.”
The Schönram brewery will produce about 115,000 hectoliters (98,000 BBLs) this year, which equates to about 24 million pints. Toft says 90% of this will be drunk within 40 miles of the brewery, which is tucked away in Germany’s southeastern corner, just across the border from Salzburg in Austria.
People get through a lot of beer in Toft’s part of the world. “The German average is just a little [under] a hundred liters per capita,” says Toft. “And the Bavarian average is about twice that. Where I live it’s about a liter a day. So, uh, people like to drink a lot. Measuring our success locally, and to see how beloved it is locally, I think is a good indicator that we’re doing it properly.”
Toft is American, born in Wyoming, but has been living in Germany for so long that it’s apparently unusual to see him in anything other than lederhosen. (To my chagrin he wasn’t wearing them when we talked over Zoom.) “I came over here to study with the intent of going back and starting my own place, but I just never made it back,” he tells me.
I ask whether, by brewing in Germany, he feels connected to an ongoing tradition in a way he might not in the U.S. “That’s certainly a part of the charm for me,” he says. “They did a lot of things right in the old days. I really enjoy being part of that and helping actually cement that into the present.”
A WIDER CONNECTION
When I daydream about Lager-based adventures, my imagination heads east to continental Europe. I have fantasies of cycle-touring to Bamberg via Bruges and Cologne, or recreating a trip I once took on an overnight sleeper train to Prague.
Recently I’ve been looking westwards too, across the Atlantic, where breweries like Notch Brewing in Salem, Massachusetts and Dovetail Brewery in Chicago have fired up my imagination (and thirst). And then there’s Bierstadt Lagerhaus in Denver, Colorado. After drooling over their website for … a while, I can confidently say that if I ever get in there, I fear you’ll never get me out.
“We get a lot of flack for not being craft enough because the beer is bright and carbonated and, you know, it doesn’t show all its little flaws. Like it must be made by a bunch of people in a big factory,” says Ashleigh Carter, Bierstadt co-owner and brewer. “There’s just two of us to make 1,800 barrels of beer as perfect as we can every year. Just two people touching every part of the process. It’s not some big operation or anything.”
While researching this article, I was told by several sources that Carter makes some of the best Lagers in the U.S. right now. It’s a claim I’d love to put to the test. But one thing I can vouch for is her passion. That much is clear, even from thousands of miles away.
We get a lot of flack for not being craft enough because the beer is bright and carbonated and, you know, it doesn’t show all its little flaws. Like it must be made by a bunch of people in a big factory. There’s just two of us to make 1,800 barrels of beer as perfect as we can every year. Just two people touching every part of the process. It’s not some big operation or anything.
— Ashleigh Carter, Bierstadt Lagerhaus
For instance, she and her husband went over to Germany to find their 1930s brewhouse, and took it back to Denver piece by piece. “You can buy top-of-the-range brewhouses, but honestly they just don’t do what these [old] brewhouses do,” she says.
Carter tells me that most brewers in the U.S. make their beer in the same way, with the same malts and the same hops. They even use the same amounts of water and malt in their mash—something known among brewers as the “liquor-to-grist ratio.” This is what American-made brewhouses are built to deal with, and as a result they are not well suited to decoction.
“American manufacturers, they don’t get it right,” she says. “This brewhouse was designed to handle a high liquor-to-grist ratio. It’s designed for decoction. It’s hard to divorce yourself from how cool it is, you know? The history behind it and how much fun it is to make beer on.”
Decoction brewing can present a steep learning curve for the uninitiated, but Carter has been working this way ever since she started brewing at Dry Dock Brewing Company in Aurora, Colorado. “It’s kinda the only way I ever learned how to make beer,” she says. She was at Dry Dock for a little more than a year and a half before moving on to Prost Brewing Company in Denver, where she first specialized in German Lagers and brewed on an imported German kit. She founded Bierstadt a year and a half after that. 2021 will be her 10th year as a professional brewer.
For Carter, it is the technical aspect of brewing that appeals. “I love trying to make something consistent and perfect and repeatable. I like that people can’t tell the difference between batches. I want it to taste the same every single time you have it.”
Decoction, for Carter, is ultimately about control—like choosing a stick shift over automatic transmission. “If you want to show people how good you are as a brewer, you should make something, you know, no more than three malts, no more than two hops, and ideally under 5%. Those are the building blocks of classic styles,” she says. “A lot of people out there ask, ‘Why decoction? It’s not necessary anymore. Our malt’s too modified,’ or, you know, yada, yada yada. I believe decoction allows for a malt character without sweetness. When you do a double decoction, you’re able to actually dry the beer out a bit more.”
Here Carter agrees with Toft: Drying the beer out makes it more quenching. She says we can’t divorce ourselves from the drinkability of German-style Lager. “It’s a beer that you can have three or four of and not lose your wits. You can drink it all day with your friends, wasting time in a beer garden. And I love that about it. [It’s] less about the beer and more about the experience you’re having with the people around you.”
Carter says decoction is important for darker Lagers as well, because it allows her to brew them without relying on specialty malts. “There’s something that happens in the brewhouse when that mash starts to boil. The aroma changes,” she says. “You’re developing all those melanoidins—everything you love about toast, everything you love about chicken skin and the cheese that sticks to the bottom of the pan. It allows those flavors to develop without adding a bunch of specialty malts, which don’t do a very good job of emulating those flavors. Melanoidin malt in high quantities tastes very metallic. It doesn’t taste correct. And they’re not fermentable. So we have all these crystal malts and caramalt and things like that—they’re not actually fermentable at all. So you’re actually negating one of the most amazing things about Lager beer, which is how dry it is.”
What Carter does at Bierstadt may not be ‘craft enough’ for some, but I reckon that’s a good thing. The craft beer world can sometimes get lost in a narrow, navel-gazing focus. Carter looks outwards and connects to a wider brewing world, and to longstanding tradition.
BEYOND INNOVATION
Khris Johnson of Green Bench Brewing Company in St. Petersburg, Florida also places a high value on tradition in brewing. “I didn’t get into beer just for the sake of—I’m using air quotes here—‘innovation,’ right? This notion that craft beer is supposed to be this Other … that is not what craft beer is. A style does not make craft beer or break craft beer. You can make a Rice Lager and it still be a craft beer.”
Instead of looking to innovation for its own sake, Johnson says he prefers to look back at “all these brewers who have come before us; hundreds and hundreds of years’ worth of brewing history and knowledge that a lot of us in the craft industry disregard. The truth is 90% of the people making craft beer right now have no idea what the hell they’re doing in comparison.”
I think authentic experiences are dope as fuck. That’s why a triple-decocted beer can be dope. It’s an attempt to gain authenticity. When I drink a Czech Pilsner, even here in St. Petersburg, Florida, you know, as wonderful as our weather is, I want to experience a beer as close to if I were sitting in a beer hall in Prague or in Pilsen. It doesn’t mean that a single-infusion Czech Pilsner isn’t going to taste good, but it’s definitely not going to do that style justice.
— Khris Johnson, Green Bench Brewing Company
Johnson says he made brewing his profession in order to spend the rest of his life learning about it, and doesn’t understand the satisfaction others feel with where the industry is. Even so, he recognizes that decoction for its own sake won’t necessarily make a good beer. “You can make a very good Czech-style Pilsner with a single-infusion mash [and] even with a step mash,” he says. For Johnson, the only reason for taking the extra time and effort to make a beer as traditionally as you can is passion and desire.
“I think authentic experiences are dope as fuck. That’s why a triple-decocted beer can be dope. It’s an attempt to gain authenticity. When I drink a Czech Pilsner, even here in St. Petersburg, Florida, you know, as wonderful as our weather is, I want to experience a beer as close to if I were sitting in a beer hall in Prague or in Pilsen. It doesn’t mean that a single-infusion Czech Pilsner isn’t going to taste good, but it’s definitely not going to do that style justice.”
One of the best sellers at Green Bench is its Postcard Pils. For the first three years of the beer’s life, Johnson brewed it using a single-infusion mash. Then he decided to make a decocted version. “Honestly there was a time [when] the single-infusion batches of Postcard were better than the decoction batches, because we were figuring it out,” he recalls. “But once we got the process down—it took two to three months—I was like, okay, now we’re back to being at least as good as a single infusion. And over the course of the next four to six months, Postcard became exponentially better than it had ever been.”
Johnson says Postcard was always “pretty hop-forward” and remains so now, but that the overall balance of the beer has improved thanks to the decoction, which adds an increased depth and complexity in the malt aroma and flavor. “Pilsners should just be Pilsner malt. If you single-infuse highly modified Pilsner malt, then yeah, sure, it tastes like Pilsner, but it doesn’t taste like grain. It doesn’t taste like actual cracked cereal, you know? It doesn’t have that depth of maltose. It just doesn’t have it.”
Where before Postcard was hop-driven, it now shows an interplay between malt and hops that Johnson describes as fascinating. He still drinks Postcard every single day, as he has done for the last seven years, and he believes the improvement brought by decoction is drastic.
“If you want to push your Lager to the next level, that’s when decoction comes in,” he says. “Decoction took our beers from fantastic to memorable, you know what I mean?”
WHAT IS AND WHAT MIGHT BE
Decoction doesn’t just change the beer. Johnson says learning to decoct has also made him a better brewer. “I think we all become better brewers the more time and effort we spend understanding a process that we may think is obsolete—and maybe it is on some levels—but if I can dial in or master decoction, you know, how much better of a brewer are you, if you know how to do all of these different processes?”
What Johnson has learned from making Lager has heightened his understanding of brewing Ales and even mixed-culture beers. “By rounding ourselves out, we become better tasters, drinkers, and brewers,” he says.
That some U.S. brewers are deciding decoction is worth the extra time, effort and expense demonstrates a shift in focus—a movement from what I see as “craft beer” to “crafted beer.” Instead of breaking down and revolting against what came before, these brewers are seeking to build it up again—to make a beer that’s great without being showy. There’s a connection to the long-established brewing traditions of Europe, of course. But in these beers, there’s also the shimmering vision of a brewing culture that might have been, had the U.S. not lived through Prohibition. The brewers sailing into U.S. ports to start new lives during the mid-to-late 1800s were from Lager’s heartlands of Germany and Central Europe. What could U.S. beer have become, had the thread from such brewers to the present day remained intact? Would double-decocted Pilsners feel as commonplace as adjunct Light Lagers do now?
For my own part, as a drinker rather than a brewer, I think decoction mashing yields something special: a harmonious, drinkable beer that fully expresses all of its ingredients. There’s a German word, kernig, that’s sometimes applied to beers over there. It refers to beer that has a fuller and more robust taste—not simply in terms of flavor intensity, as with a potent Imperial Stout, but in how much you can taste the center of the drink. The noun form, kern, translates to core, and shares a linguistic root with kernel. I like to think of it as a quality that lies at the heart of the beer. Its soul, perhaps. You’ll know it when you taste it.
Words by Anthony GladmanIllustrations by Colette Holston Language
Why breweries are offering ever-changing recipes, and how it’s a win-win for everyone.
The bottle shop is pretty packed these days. To the left- a crisp pilsner from right up the road; to the right, an uber-hoppy milkshake IPA. Like clockwork, many of those beers will disappear within the week, supplanted by something new and shiny. And let’s be honest, we drinkers love this. We’re always on the hunt what’s fresh and new, and more breweries are following a trend that makes that easier, the rotating series. It’s not a complicated concept from our end: same beer name, endless recipe changes. But breweries are also using these ever-changing beers to experiment.
Take Massachusetts’ Night Shift Brewing Company, which has cranked out over 60 iterations of its Morph IPA series since debuting in 2014. The can’s always the same, but the Night Shift team swaps out ingredients with every release, offering variations in hop flavor and alcohol content every time you pick it up. You can view every recipe dating back to its inception here.
A series like this keeps things fresh for us and makes snagging the beer that much more exciting. It also gives the brewery a platform to let creativity thrive. The brewery landed on its now-flagship IPA, Santilli, back in early 2015 through the Morph series. The team also tweaked The 87, its flagship double IPA, with new techniques they learned from past releases. While we get to enjoy the endless amount of flavor possibilities, the brewery gets to breathe new life into its lineup — win-win.
Most rotating series like Morph focus on IPAs, single-hopped beers, etc. due to the sheer amount of different hops on hand, but many non-hop-forward series are out there. Both Revolution and DESTIHL have a sour beer series in their lineup, while Harpoon’s 100 Barrel series goes nuts with an eclectic mix of everything from wheatwines to Belgian blondes.
For a lot of brewers, creativity is a primary motivator. The widely available Luponic Distortion series from Firestone Walker aims to explore new and exciting hops hitting the market. The base beer remains the same each time, but the hops always change. For the team at Firestone, Luponic offers a way to play with all the new varieties making waves around the world, while also letting them test some wacky ideas and new ingredients. As head brewer Matt Brynildson put it online, he’s finally“free to jam.”
Every 90 days, the brewing team mixes up the recipe to showcase experimental hops from across the world, including Germany and South Africa. The most recent batch of Luponic, No. 11, spotlights flavors of lemon drop, pineapple, and guava. I gave it a go and can attest to the fact that the beer was ripe with lush fruit and sweet citrus.
“We can completely evolve, change and redirect this thing as new hops come to us and as we get to know the hops better,” Brynildson writes on the brewery’s website, “Luponic is this beer that can keep morphing and stay interesting and remain out in front of this crazy hop wave.”
For some, a rotating series is also a means to an end. Idle Hands Craft Ales of Malden, Mass., launched its Change Up IPA series with the goal of crafting the perfect flagship IPA. Using each batch as an incubator for fresh ideas, the team built Four Seam, a New England IPA now steadily available in the Boston area.
Dive deeper by checking these out: Finback’s Oscillation rotating IPA, Proclamation’s Derivative single-hop series, Stone’s Hop Revolver IPA, Revolution’s Freedom series, among many others. Ask your local Craft Beer Cellar for suggestions!
Home of Burnt City Brewing, Around the Bend Beer Co., Bold Dog Beer Co. and and Casa Humilde Cervecería Artesanal, this former warehouse brings a multitude of craft beer options to West Town.
(Baltimore, MD) – DuClaw Brewing Company is giving classic summertime drinks a twist with their latest releases including ‘Getaway Message’ piña colada hazy…
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NoDaRoaring Riot cans return to kick off (pun intended) August. Brewed for the faithful beer drinking fans and hardcore tailgaters of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers.
The brewery is based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and as you can probably imagine are big Panthers fans. NoDa Roaring Riot is dedicated to the passionate fan base. The beer once was a pale ale brewed with rye malt, and now has shifted to something more crushable – a lager.
NoDa Roaring Riot will be available in 16-ounce cans again Friday, July 28th.
Doing things the easy way has never been part of the Diablo Order of Zymiracle Enthusiasts’ (DOZE) 25-year history, as exemplified by the homebrew club’s mouthful of a name. Fortunately, those wonderfully heady words usually get shortened to their acronym for the benefit of those of us who are not Scrabble champions.
In a year marked by difficulties, the Bay Area club rose to the many challenges of running a community-centric organization worthy of being crowned the American Homebrewers Association’s (AHA) 2021 Radegast Club of the Year.
Because in the brewing world names usually come with stories, it is worth noting that Radegast is the Slavic god of hospitality and creator of beer. Despite the namesake, the Slavic divine being did not sponsor the award; that honor went to Yakima Chief Hops.
The award was first established eight years ago to recognize exceptional clubs that embrace diversity, engage in philanthropy, promote homebrewing as a hobby, teach brewing to the public, and epitomize overall awesomeness. To keep a level playing field for entrants, the clubs’ achievements are judged relative to each club’s size and age by an impartial panel of judges from the AHA Governing Committee.
This year’s winner did not just go the extra mile. In one particular case of brewing heroism, DOZE’s vice president, Max Brown, and member, Jim Bergmann, went well over 1,000 miles across four state borders.
Jordan Reed, DOZE’s president tells the story of the incident they dubbed The Great Colorado Run: “To ensure that all of our club’s 167 (2021 National Homebrewing Competition – NHC) entries made it to judging safely, two of our members drove all 42 cases of beer bottles from the Bay Area to the AHA sorting site in Colorado. They encountered a whiteout blizzard in Wyoming that almost stranded them. The sheer weight of all those full bottles of beer (over 1,000 lbs.) well exceeded the maximum cargo load of the small SUV they were driving. Many folks at the AHA, including John Moorhead, welcomed the guys as they delivered our entries and were blown away by DOZE’s determination and chutzpah. The devil may be in our name (from our Mt. Diablo Valley home) and maybe ‘in the details,’ but DOZE won’t let that sinister character, or anything else, stop us, not even a global pandemic!”
In that same spirit of “self-reliance,” DOZE launched its No Entry Left Behind Initiative, which allowed the region to be the first NHC region to complete judging of all of their nearly 700 first-round entries in 2020. This was made possible due to the creativity and initiative of DOZE members, who came up with a system to safely evaluate entries in their own homes while comparing notes over video conference.
“We had so many folks in our club that took pride in saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to go ahead and judge these and make it work, we’ll figure out the technology to honor what these people spent all this time and hard work making and sending to us,’” recalls Reed. “That was something that was a real highlight of last year; being able to celebrate and have some sense of a normal cycle of competition and that big NHC buzz. I know people who sent their beers in from around the region and country really appreciated it, too. We couldn’t help but look at the NHC online ceremony and think, ‘Huh, that looks kind of like what we did regionally,’ and it made us proud.”
Meeting the award requirement to commit to diversity was relatively easy for DOZE since embracing diversity is codified in its bylaws.
“There are all kinds of ways in which people get shut out of things because of their beliefs, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, and DOZE doesn’t want to be part of doing that for any reason,” says Reed. “We just accept anyone who digs what we’re doing.”
Moving forward, the club will continue to use some of the new tools they picked up during the pandemic. Reed says that although in-person meetings are optimal, he sees a hybrid system of virtual and in-person meetings working well to expand the club’s reach. Earlier this year, for example, they hosted a guest speaker live from Peru, and club members got to taste his creations simultaneously by brewing a recipe that had been circulated prior to the teleconference.
As part of the award, the club will receive $500 in cash and an additional $500 to donate to a charity of its choice. Reed says that although the club has not yet decided which of the many organizations they support will receive the funding, they are thinking of donating in memory of longtime club member Mike “Tasty” McDole and several other friends and club members who have passed away recently.
About the Author
Efraín Villa is a photographer, actor, writer and global wanderer whose endless quest for randomness has taken him to more than 50 countries in five continents. His writing has appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition, the Good Men Project, TravelWorld International Magazine, Zymurgy, as well as Spanish language publications. While not running his consulting firm in Albuquerque, he is busy devouring exotic foods in faraway countries and avoiding adulthood while wearing the least amount of clothes possible. His travel stories dealing with the messiness, humor, and beauty of cultural collisions can be found on AimlessVagabond.com.
Seven Latino men gathered on a Hacienda Heights driveway on a warm Southern California night.
Shiny homebrewing equipment filled the garage so the fledgling craft brewers stood in the car port—pint glasses in hand—sharing names, hometowns and brewing experiences.
The SoCal Cerveceros homebrew club was born.
“We didn’t really know what it was going to be,” said Ray Ricky Rivera, one of the club’s seven founding members at that inaugural meeting on April 10, 2015.
Six years later, America’s largest Latino-based homebrew club has blossomed into a mosaic of nearly 250 diverse beer aficionados, mirroring the ethnic melting pot of its Los Angeles County stomping grounds.
Many of the Cerveceros have become prominent players in the So Cal craft beer scene, opening and operating brick and mortar breweries and spearheading commercial collaborations with popular craft breweries. This network of knowledgeable and influential brewers has established a pipeline to careers in an industry that has lacked Latinx representation.
“The Latino culture impacts the whole city,” said Sarah Flora, an award-winning homebrewer and internationally-known YouTuber. “It’s super fun to see that come out in our beer. Beer’s not an old, white man’s game anymore.”
Setting the Stage
Agustin Ruelas, now co-founder of Brewjería Company in Pico Rivera, played host at that inaugural gathering six years ago. He poured pints of early home-brewed creations he concocted in his garage with his brother, Adrian Ruelas, for his new club mates, Adrian Gonzalez, Jaime “Jimmy” Cardenas, Alfred Mayen, Richard Estrada and Rivera.
It was a breath of fresh air for Rivera, who admits he often wondered why he had never seen other Latinos at his go-to homebrew shop of Stein Fillers in Long Beach.
“Every time I went in there I was the only brown dude there,” Rivera said, noting Los Angeles County is home to more than 5 million Latinos.
With the Cerveceros, Rivera felt like he was among peers.
The group agreed to meet the third Friday of every month, sharing brewing tips, favorite beers and must-visit local breweries.
The club grew to 20 members before Zaneta Santana became the first woman to join the Cerveceros. A member of the South Central Brewing Co., Santana also works as the general manager at Angel City Brewery in Downtown LA.
Rivera, now the club’s president, said the club struggled adding female members outside of wives and girlfriends, but he was determined to create the diversity he knew was lacking.
“It wouldn’t be genuine of us to criticize the beer industry or the homebrew community if we weren’t actively working on our own diversity,” Rivera said. “Having a bigger presence of women helps us to be cognizant about creating a welcoming, supportive, safe space for all members.”
Rivera recruited on social media and created the ColdXela Homebrew Fest. The fest only allowed club members to pour beers at the event, which sparked a rise in membership numbers.
A kaleidoscope of like-minded homebrewers flocked to join. Members of the Warcloud Brewing Company, a group of mostly African American homebrewers, were the first non-Latinos to join the ranks. Laurie Ann Gutierrez, a Caucasian homebrewer and cider specialist, was one of the first non-Latinas to sign up.
More than 30 percent of the club’s members are now women. There’s enough passionate female brewers that they’ve created the SoCal Cerveceras, a sub-group that organizes additional brew days and online meetings of their own.
“We didn’t realize how big this could be,” Rivera said. “We’ve become this massive network…Now we’re directly impacting the LA beer industry.”
Brewing Up Something Special
Edgar Preciado—better known as BeerThugLife to his 15,000 followers on Instagram—teamed up with fellow Cervecero Julio Trejo to release a string of highly-anticipated brews with their business partner, Daniel Phoenix.
Preciado was already known for his lightning quick beer chugging abilities before he joined the club, but he wanted to take his beer persona to the next level.
Shortly after attending ColdXela Homebrew Fest in 2018, Preciado joined the club to learn how to homebrew. He fondly recalls nights where he’d stay up until 1 a.m. perfecting his recipes.
“I just wanted to learn,” Preciado said. “I knew if I kept trying, that it’d come out good.”
Once he found his groove, he collaborated with Indie Brewing Company to release “Para Mi Gente,” a popular Mexican-style lager. He’s since partnered with various breweries to release 17 more beers, with another pair of brews set to drop in April.
Through homebrewing, Preciado’s gained a new appreciation for beer.
“It brings everyone together, no matter where you’re from,” he said.
A common interest in beer brought Preciado and Flora to the same Cerveceros meetings. Where else could a former gang member with a criminal past share homebrewing tips with a woman who serves as a director of operations at a Hollywood art gallery?
“She’s a rockstar,” Preciado said of Flora.
Flora’s homebrewing skills have grown exponentially since brewing up a pale ale with the Craft A Brew Catalyst Fermentation System kit she had bought for her husband.
Despite her concerns about not being Latina in a Latino group, the Cerveceros took her in as one of their own. She received invaluable feedback on her creations at bottle shares and she was inspired by some of the beers she tasted, including an avocado honey blonde, which she raves about to this day.
She’s developed into an award-winning homebrewer, claiming a pair of gold medals in 2020 for her Rosewater Lemon Gose called “Anything Gose” at the Doug King Memorial Homebrew Competition (put on by the Maltose Falcons) and Romancing the Beer competition.
Her evident obsession with the hobby has turned her into a homebrew aficionado. She’s wildly popular on social media, garnering 36,500 followers on Instagram and 17,000 subscribers on YouTube. She also recently launched the “Brewing After Hours with Sarah Flora” podcast on the BLEAV Podcast Network.
While she’s enjoyed unparalleled success online, she’s more proud to witness the growing number of women brewers, which she credits to Cerveceras and national organizations like the Pink Boots Society, which supports beer lovers and professionals who identify as female.
Flora said she’s also impressed by the growth she’s seen in fellow Cervecera Tyler Sadler.
Sadler, who started brewing early in 2018, has excelled as a homebrewer since joining the club.
“I do believe joining SCC was a game changer,” Sadler said.
The more types of beers she sipped at club meetings, the more she found herself intertwined with the craft.
Since joining, Sadler has won two homebrew gold medals, one at the SheBrew HomeBrew Competition for a beer she calls “Mangose Before Hoes” and another for her Reseda Porter at the Romancing The Beer competition.
Now a board member for the club, Sadler started working full-time at Simi Valley Home Brew in January, and she launched a successful homebrewing podcast, the Brew’d Up! Podcast, with Gutierrez.
Most recently, Sadler spoke on the “Crafting Conversations: Black in Beer” panel hosted by Angel City in February.
Sadler’s meteoric rise in a relatively short period makes Rivera believe she’s destined to be a head brewer someday.
“Not only is she going to be a really talented brewer, she’s somebody that other women brewers can look up to,” Rivera said.
A club that started with seven amateur Latino homebrewers in a car port has developed into a full-fledged army of diverse, talented brewing specialists looking to influence the craft beer scene for years to come.
“We’ve definitely begun to make some kind of impact,” Rivera said. “That’s only going to grow.”
Notable SoCal Cerveceros Members and Alumni
Steven and Aracely Cardenas, Pacific Plate Brewing/Monrovia Homebrew Shop
David and Carmen Favela, Border X Brewing
Marlene Garcia, Brew-N-Crew Ale House
Lewis Martinez, George Lopez Brewing Company
Abraham Mercado, La Bodega Brewing Company
Edgar Preciado, BeerThugLife
Aurelio and Tania Ramirez, Feathered Serpent Brewing
Ray Ricky Rivera, Norwalk Brew House
Alfredo Rocha, Los Barbones Cerveceria
Agustin and Adrian Ruelas, Brewjería Company
Julio Trejo, Cerveceria Mundial
The Brewers Association and Craftbeer.com are proud to support content that fosters a more diverse and inclusive craft beer community. This post was selected by the North American Guild of Beer Guild Writers as part of its Diversity in Beer Writing Grant series. It receives additional support through a Diversity and Inclusion Grant by the Brewers Association Diversity Committee and Allagash Brewing Company.
Shortly after attending ColdXela Homebrew Fest in 2018, Preciado joined the club to learn how to homebrew. He fondly recalls nights where he’d stay up until 1 a.m. perfecting his recipes.
Sadler, who started brewing early in 2018, has excelled as a homebrewer since joining the club.