Meet the Malts, Hops, and Yeasts Leading Craft Beer to a Flavorful New Frontier
WHEN GROCERY SHOPPING, YOU’VE LIKELY EYEBALLED the ingredients on the labels of packaged goods and scratched your skull. What’s maltodextrin, and what’s it doing in Doritos? Beer is simpler. Hops, grain, yeast, and water are the four essential ingredients, with occasional aid from supporting adjuncts. And like strings on a guitar, those flavor notes can spin off in countless tangents. Sour, bitter, sweet, chocolaty, spicy—dream it, do it, drink it. But why do these ingredients cause beers to taste so different? Let’s dig beneath the hood and discover brewers’ new tools for crafting delicious beer.
Hop to It
If you watched sporting events in the early 1990s, you caught commercials for Keystone Light. In the ads, guys swilled “bitter beer” that caused their faces to scrunch up, lower lips covering noses. “Eww, bitter-beer face!” pretty gals would shout, aghast. To save the day, a dude would deliver a cooler of cold Keystone Light. “Don’t grab a bitter beer … grab a better beer!” the announcer said, as drinkers’ faces sprung back to normal.
What a difference a couple of decades makes. For today’s craft-beer drinkers, making the bitter-beer face is a point of pride. Bars are packed with lip-pursing India pale ales, double IPAs, and other styles proudly boasting elevated IBUs—international bittering units, a measurement of a beer’s hop bitterness. However, all hops breeds are not created equal. Some strains are better suited for providing astringent bitterness, while others are used for their aromas of citrus or even pine.
You’ve probably savored a piney, citric beer. That’s because “brewers often follow fashions in hops,” says Garrett Oliver, Brooklyn Brewery’s head brewer. “For a while, it seemed like every American craft beer tasted like Cascade”—a flowery, fragrant hop—“then Amarillo,” which is citrusy, verging on orange.
No longer. Each year, in the lush hop fields of the Pacific Northwest, dozens of experimental breeds are planted, most identified only by a string of numbers like a shadowy government project. These fledgling varieties are often the result of crossing existing strains in hopes of, say, increasing mildew resistance, amping yields, or devising unique flavors. Annually, large craft breweries such as Sierra Nevada examine dozens of numbered hop breeds not yet in the marketplace. The researchers are hoping to answer a single question: Will this help create a great new beer?
“Many hops taste really bad,” says Sierra’s communications coordinator, Bill Manley. “Some taste like cabbage or cat piss.” But every once in a while, a hop shows serious promise. Perhaps it imparts an alluring flavor that evokes lychee or green tea. The hop is named, and it graduates from lab to brew kettle.
The years-in-development Citra hop gives Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo Extra IPA a tropical twist. Elsewhere, the buttery, lemony Sorachi Ace drives Brooklyn Brewery’s summery saison (which takes its name from the hop variety), while New Zealand’s Nelson Sauvin contributes a white-wine profile for BrewDog’s Punk IPA. Elsewhere, brewers are building DIY equipment to wring out hops’ flavors, while others are taking hops to the dark side by creating black IPAs that, despite their roasty profile, remain refreshingly bitter. Here’s a toast to the new frontier of hops and beer.
Harvested hops from Silverton, Oregon’s Goschie Farms.
Get Hip to Hops
Know your Cascade from your Chinook? This list of the most commonly used hops will tell you why your beer smells like a pine tree, tastes like an orange, and is as bitter as an old man. Note: Noble hops are European hop varieties that are aromatic and less bitter.
Ahtanum
Fairly grapefruity and floral, alongside notes of pine and earth. Its bitterness is relatively low.
Usage: Aroma and flavor
Amarillo
Semisweet and super-citrusy, verging on oranges. Consider it Cascade on steroids.
Usage: Flavor and aroma
Apollo
This potent variety contributes notes of resin, spice, and citrus—mainly orange
Usage: Bittering
Brewer’s Gold
A complex, pungent variety with a spicy aroma and flavor, as well as a fruity current of black currant.
Usage: Bittering
Cascade
Popular in American pale ales and IPAs, this floral hop smells strongly of citrus, sometimes grapefruit.
Usage: Flavor, aroma, bittering
Centennial
Offers over-the-top citrus flavor and aroma, with a relatively restrained floral nose.
Usage: Flavor, aroma, bittering
Challenger
The robust aroma offers a polished, spicy profile that can verge on fruity; the bitterness is clean and present.
Usage: Flavor, aroma, bittering
Chinook
An herbal, earthy, smoky, piney character, with some citrus thrown in for fun.
Usage: Aroma, bittering
Citra
A heavy tropical aroma of lychee, mango, papaya, and pineapple. A full-on fruit attack.
Usage: Aroma
Columbus (also known by the trade name Tomahawk)
Earthy and mildly spicy, with subtle flavors of citrus; very similar to the Zeus hop.
Usage: Aroma, bittering
Crystal
Floral and spicy, somewhat reminiscent of cinnamon and black pepper.
Usage: Flavor, aroma
Delta
The bouquet is a blend of fruit, earth, and grass—flavor-wise, subdued citrus with an herbal edge.
Usage: Flavor, aroma
Fuggles
Traditionally used in Englishstyle ales, this hop is earthy, fruity, and vegetal.
Usage: Flavor, aroma, bittering
Galena
Provides clean, pungent bitterness that plays well with other hop varieties.
Usage: Bittering
Glacier
A mellow hop with an agreeable fragrance that flits between gentle citrus and earth.
Usage: Aroma
Goldings
The traditional English hop’s flavor is smooth and somewhat sweet; it’s called “East Kent” if grown in that region.
Usage: Flavor, aroma, bittering
Hallertauer
Presents a mild, agreeable perfume that’s floral and earthy, with a spicy, fruity component. One of Germany’s famed noble hops. Hallertauer encompasses several varieties; “Hallertau” often signifies hops grown in America.
Usage: Flavor, aroma
Hersbrucker
Its pleasant, refreshing scent offers hints of grass and hay. A noble hop.
Usage: Aroma
Horizon
Offers a tidy, uncluttered profile that’s equal parts citric and floral; its bitterness is smooth, not abrasive.
Usage: Flavor, bittering
Liberty
Presents a mild, dignified aroma of herbs and earth.
Usage: Flavor, aroma
Magnum
The acutely spicy aroma recalls black pepper and perhaps nutmeg; there’s a touch of citrus too.
Usage: Bittering
Mt. Hood
Earthy and fresh, this hop offers a restrained spicy nose reminiscent of noble hops.
Usage: Aroma
Mt. Rainier
The hop’s nose pulls a neat trick: black licorice cut with a kiss of citrus.
Usage: Aroma, bittering
Nelson Sauvin
Partly named after the sauvignon blanc grape, New Zealand’s Nelson is bright, juicy, and packed with the flavor of passion fruit.
Usage: Flavor, bittering, aroma
Northern Brewer
This multipurpose hop’s fragrant aroma leans toward earthy, woody, and rustic—maybe some mint, too.
Usage: Aroma, bittering
Nugget
This way-bitter hop has a heavy herbal bouquet.
Usage: Bittering
Pacific Gem
A woody hop that provides a brisk, clean bitterness and subtle notes of blackberry.
Usage: Bittering
Perle
This all-purpose variety has a clean, green bitterness, verging on mint; it’s somewhat spicy and floral as well.
Usage: Flavor, aroma, bittering
Pride of Ringwood
Used in many Australian beers, it presents a forthright earthy, herbal, woody scent.
Usage: Bittering
Saaz
This noble hop has a distinctly clean, cinnamon-spicy bouquet and is typically used in pilsners.
Usage: Flavor, aroma
Simcoe
Pine, wood, and citrus drive this bittering hop’s profile.
Usage: Aroma, bittering
Sorachi Ace
The Japan-bred hop has a strong lemony aroma; it can also taste buttery.
Usage: Aroma
Spalt
A spicy and delicate scent defines this German noble hop.
Usage: Aroma
Sterling
An alternative to European hops, it has a spicy, sophisticated scent and assertive flavor.
Usage: Aroma, bittering
Styrian Goldings
This Slovenian Fuggles variant has a sweet, resinous, pleasingly spicy aroma with a little floral edge.
Usage: Flavor, aroma, bittering
Summit
Presents an up-front perfume of orange and tangerine.
Usage: Bittering
Target
Has an intense grassy, herbal, mineral-like character and a floral scent more indebted to Britain than to the West Coast.
Usage: Bittering
Teamaker
Originally developed for its antimicrobial properties, this hop variety provides green tea–like aromas and no bitterness.
Usage: Aroma
Tettnanger
This noble hop has a full, rich flavor mixed with a spicy, flowery nose that verges on herbal.
Usage: Flavor, aroma
Warrior
Offers a clean, smooth bitterness that works in hop-forward ales.
Usage: Aroma, bittering
Willamette
The aroma is decidedly herbal, earthy, and woody, with a little floral fruitiness to boot.
Usage: Flavor, aroma
Engineering Better Bitterness
Blind Tiger Ale House is among New York City’s best beer bars, dispensing more than 30 meticulously sourced drafts and cask ales daily, from peppercorn-spiked pumpkin ales to stouts flavored with oysters. But one August evening, the throngs ringing the bar ignored these esoteric offerings, awestruck by a visit from a rare beast. “It’s all thanks to Randall the Enamel Animal,” said Blind Tiger co-owner Alan Jestice.
Randall is no feral creature. Rather, it’s a traveling educational tool devised by Delaware’s Dogfish Head. The brewery took a sealed cylindrical water filter and retrofitted it to attach to a keg’s draft line. The filter is then filled with loosely packed flavoring agents, such as whole-leaf hops or fresh mint. When poured, beer passes through Randall, snatching aromatics and flavors. It works well with a potent ale like Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA, which boasts 9 percent alcohol by volume (ABV). The alcohol strips flavorful oils from the leaves, essentially instant-infusing the beer. The Enamel Animal moniker references the fact that drinking highly hopped, resinous beer can taste gritty providing the sensation that it’s dissolving tooth enamel—in a good way! (In September 2010, Dogfish Head released the souped-up Randall 3.0. The reengineered Randall is now double-barreled, helping reduce foam.)
Dogfish head’s Randall the Enamel Animal, which infuses beers with the flavor of fresh hops.
Randall aside, Dogfish Head isn’t the only brewer turning to technology to extract hops’ full flavors. For instance, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s Troëgs Brewing Company creates its HopBack Amber Ale and Imperial Amber Nugget Nectar by circulating the beers through a hops-stuffed vessel called, appropriately, the hopback. This process infuses the beer with garden-fresh flavors and aromas, which are complemented by the brew’s sweet, malty caramel base. (This technique is popular at breweries nationwide, from Tempe, Arizona’s Four Peaks to Hood River, Oregon’s Full Sail and North Carolina’s Mother Earth.)
Not to be one-upped, Sierra Nevada invented a stainless steel cylinder dubbed the hop torpedo, which harvests hops’ oily resins and leaves the bitterness behind. How? Envision an espresso machine: A basket is filled with plump, whole-cone hops, then loaded into the torpedo and pressure sealed. The device is placed a fermentation cellar, and beer is sent rushing through the torpedo to extract maximum aroma and flavor.
But Dogfish Head’s Randall creates the most dramatic results. During this night’s experiments, pine and spruce tips imbued the 90 Minute IPA with a Christmas-tree nose and an evergreen-fresh flavor that accompanies the piney profile. Bourbon ball candy and fresh mint created an overly sweet, faux mint julep; in that case, the Randall washed too much sugar into the beer. Randall works best when stuffed with sticky, stinky hops, which impart heady, intense aromatics—beer as fresh as the day it was brewed.
“That’s what’s great about a Randall,” Jestice says. “It’s not meant to transform a beer. It amplifies beer’s natural flavors.”
Four to Try
Nugget Nectar
Troëgs Brewing Company ABV: 7.5%
Nugget Nectar is this Pennsylvania brewery’s crown jewel. The imperial amber is based on its aromatic HopBack Amber Ale (so-called because the ale flows through a hops-stuffed container called the hopback), but cranked to 11. The result is an ale with IPA-like character (93 IBUs, plenty of pine and citrus) balanced out by a sweet, caramel backbone. It’s lip-smacking, not lip-puckering.
Silverback Pale Ale
Wynkoop Brewing Company ABV: 5.5%
To fashion the snappy pale ale, Denver’s oldest brewpub uses the West African spice grains of paradise (a member of the ginger family) to add a novel lemon-pepper note, as well as brewmaster Andy Brown’s homemade “hopinator” hopback. Stuffed with Centennial hops, it gives Silverback a citrusy sniff.
Hop Knot IPA
Four Peaks Brewing Company ABV: 6%
So-called because seven hops are woven in at seven different times (including a hopbackcrammed with whole-leaf hops) during the brewing process, the Arizona brewery’s IPA presents plenty of pine and citrus aroma. The taste is initially intensely bitter, then backs off into a light, enjoyable ride.
Hop Juice Double IPA
Left Coast Brewing Company ABV: 9.4%
This souped-up IPA employs every form of hops (extract, pellets, flowers) at every stage of brewing (mash, hopback, fermenter, bright tanks) to make this beast. Caramel-touched malt sweetness keeps the resin-sticky ale from diving into the orange-bitter deep end.
Delta Force
One day in 2009, international agricultural company Hopsteiner rang the crew at Boston’s Harpoon Brewery and made an offer as mysterious as it was alluring. The hop merchant had created an experimental hop variety dubbed Delta. Would Harpoon be interested in buying some of the crop? Always eager to do some R&D, the brewery accepted, then set out to decode the Delta hop’s riddle. “There’s absolutely nothing online about this hop,” says Harpoon brewer Charlie Cummings. “Hopsteiner doesn’t even list Delta on its website.”
After digging, Cummings and his crew discovered that Delta is a cross of two well-known varieties: the earthy English Fuggles and floral Cascade—the quintessential flavor of West Coast beers—which is itself a blend of Fuggles and the Russian hop Serebrianker.
When the hops arrived at Harpoon, Cummings brewed a test batch of a British-style extra special bitter (ESB), liberally dosing it with the Delta for both aroma and bitterness. His first taste was a revelation. “Fuggles is usually a pretty subtle hop, but this had a stronger, more assertive character—an American punch,” he says. The flavor of the beer was similarly complex, with citrusy, melonlike notes and an herbal, grassy quality. “We made a very quick decision to brew that ESB as one of our 100 Barrel Series beers,” Cummings says of Harpoon’s special line of experimental beers.
The result was the Single Hop ESB, America’s first production beer to feature the Delta hop. It balances the beer’s nimble, malt-forward body with a fruity kick. It’s a familiar yet foreign flavor, one that’s as agreeable as it is unusual. It’s already caught the eye of Shipyard Brewing Company in Portland, Maine, which uses Delta in its summery Wheat Ale, and other brewers are waiting for the next crop to start their experiments. “People are always looking for the next new hop,” Cummings says, “and this is a pretty great one.”
One to Try
Wheat Ale
Shipyard Brewing Company ABV: 4.5%
At first blush, this filtered wheat beer may evoke a status quo golden summer brew. But take a whiff, and you’ll notice Delta’s beguiling aroma: earthy and grassy, like England by way of the West Coast. The intoxicating scent is paired with a lean profile and a low ABV, meaning that Wheat is fit for a long-haul drinking session.
The Full Nelson
While some hops’ applications are discovered in the lab, others are found by serendipity. A couple of years back, Pat McIlhenney, brewmaster and owner of Southern California’s Alpine Beer Company, traveled to New Zealand, where he was smitten by the redwood forests, verdant ferns, and colorful flora and fauna. Upon returning to California, the retired firefighter began researching New Zealand hops and discovered that, because there are scant natural pests and no known hop diseases, New Zealand hops require few, if any, pesticides. Add the facts that the growing season is the opposite of America’s and that, thanks to a favorable exchange rate, New Zealand hops are often cheaper than their American counterparts (even factoring in shipping), and McIlhenney was sold.
He settled on a breed curiously named Nelson Sauvin. (“Nelson” refers to a region in central New Zealand, while “Sauvin” is shorthand for the grape variety sauvignon blanc.) “It’s got an intense, grape-like quality,” McIlhenney says of the strain, which recalls the fruity, tropical sauvignon blanc. “It shaped up to be the perfect hop.” He found a home for Nelson Sauvin in his rye-based IPA named, naturally, Nelson, which quickly became one of Alpine’s top sellers, giving McIlhenney a particularly envious problem: “We sell it faster than we can make it,” the brewer says.
Should you be unable to source Nelson, never fear: Other brewers are quickly cottoning to the quirky New Zealand hop. It’s part of the hop mix in beers such as the Big Barrel Double IPA from San Diego’s Karl Strauss Brewing Co., the IPA from Kelso of Brooklyn, and the Punk IPA from Scotland’s BrewDog. “It’s one of our favorite hops to use,” says BrewDog head brewer James Watt, who rhapsodizes about Nelson Sauvin’s flavors of lychee and mango.
And though McIlhenney is loath to sing his beer’s accolades too loudly (“That’s like naming your favorite child,” he says), he can’t help himself: “Nelson is my wife’s and my favorite beer,” he says. “When a beer is that good and stands out that much, it’s hard not to be excited.”
Three to Try
Punk IPA
BrewDog ABV: 6%
When Scotland’s BrewDog set out to fashion its flagship IPA, brewmaster James Watt craved a modern interpretation. No need for England’s classic caramel flavor, thanks. Instead, he opted for a double-barreled blast of Nelson Sauvin and Ahtanum hops, which gives the golden ale an earthy, tropical perfume. |The light body packs the flavors of orange peel and pine resin, somewhat leavened by biscuit malt. Some spritzy effervescence seals the deal.
Big Barrel Double IPA
Karl Strauss Brewing Company ABV: 9%
Over the last several decades, San Diego’s first brewery since Prohibition has become a mainstay due to its mightily hopped Tower 10 IPA and Red Trolley Ale, which smacks of dark fruit. However, my favorite is Karl’s Big Barrel. The malty, medium-bodied double IPA (90 IBUs) is doctored with Nelson Sauvin hops, evoking tropical fruit and a white wine– like character.
Nelson
Alpine Beer Company ABV: 7%
Hops fanatics worship California’s Alpine, which is home to deliriously bitter elixirs such as aromatic Pure Hoppiness and its big brother, Exponential Hoppiness (it’s finished with a “body bag” filled with hops and oak chips). Finer still is Nelson, a golden IPA made with rye and loads of Nelson Sauvin hops. The Kiwi hops provide aromas of peaches and pine, well suited to Nelson’s fruity flavors, wine-like astringency, and distinct rye spice. Despite the 7 percent punch, it’s aces on a hot afternoon.
Coming Up Ace
Jeremy Goldberg was having a problem with his IPA. Namely, it wasn’t selling well. So when the head brewer at Massachusetts’s Cape Ann Brewing discovered that his supplier was discontinuing Brewer’s Gold—a piney pungent British bittering hop that flavored his IPA—he took it as a sign to rejigger the recipe.
Some of his employees who were avid homebrewers told Goldberg about the unusual Sorachi Ace hop. Japan’s Sapporo Breweries originally developed the variety, but the brewery was unable to find a commercial use for the uniquely lemony hop. Goldberg would. To temper Sorachi’s citric character, he paired it with the herbal Chinook hop, creating their earthy, creamy Fisherman’s IPA. “People ask, ‘Do you put butter in it?’” Goldberg laughs.
Whereas Cape Ann uses Sorachi Ace as a flavoring component, New York’s Brooklyn Brewery created a summery beer expressly as a platform for the singular hop. “When I smelled Sorachi Ace, the first thing that came to mind was, That’d make a great saison,’” says head brewer Garrett Oliver. For summer 2009’s Brewmaster’s Reserve series, he created the dry, austere, single-hopped Belgian saison called, fittingly, Sorachi Ace.
Though Oliver was confident that the beer would do well, the results outstripped his expectations. Sorachi Ace became the fastest-selling release in the series. “Even though we made twenty-five percent more than usual, we sold out early,” he says. While the inventive Brewmaster’s Reserve beers (like the Cookie Jar Porter) are mainly one-offs and rarely bottled, the overwhelming demand for Sorachi Ace led Oliver to revive it and make it a year-round release. The beer rolled off the factory line in large-format bottles, but the production run might have been a tad smaller than expected. “People working at the brewery said, ‘It’s a shame that some of these will accidentally fall off the bottling line,’” Oliver jokes.
Three to Try
Sorachi Ace
Brooklyn Brewery ABV: 6.5%
I drink so much beer I sometimes suffer from palate fatigue. But occasionally, a novel beer shocks me from my hoppy stupor—like Sorachi Ace. The namesake Japanese hop gives this cloudy, tarnished-gold saison the bright aroma of lemons and the flavor of … butter? Yes, butter makes it better, as does vigorous carbonation. Plenty of floral, peppery flavors keep Sorachi grounded, helping it close out crisp.
Sum’r Organic Summer Ale
Uinta Brewing Company ABV: 4%
Salt Lake City’s Uinta crafts great pilsners and pale ales, but I like its Four+ series of beers best. So-called because they’re made with four primary ingredients (water, hops, yeast, and barley plus a brewer’s skill), Four+ brews are as creative as they are delicious, and none more so than Sum’r. This seasonal drinks light and clean, with a lovely lemony profile, thanks to Japan’s Sorachi Ace hop.
Fisherman’s IPA
Cape Ann Brewing Company ABV: 6%
Made in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the copper IPA is smoother and maltier than its West Coast compatriots. Instead of a bitter punch, there’s a toffee-like, nearly buttery flavor and an herbal bouquet. Fisherman is fortifying on a cold afternoon.
Tea Time
Some brewers are compelled to create increasingly bitter beers. Others are eager to explore the opposite end of the mouth-puckering spectrum. Several times, Widmer Brothers Brewing Company in Portland, Oregon, has brewed its TEAser XPA. If you were lucky enough to get a pint, you would’ve found a heady aroma of grassy, floral hops. But sipping the pale-golden TEAser revealed that the piney aromatics and gentle, iced tea-like flavors didn’t correlate with the beer’s bitterness—there was almost none. “You get a wonderful bouquet without the beer being a tongue-scraper,” says Widmer co-owner Rob Widmer. He’s one of America’s first brewers to experiment with TEAser’s signature ingredient: the Teamaker hop.
Teamaker was released in 2006 by the Agricultural Research Service Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit at Corvallis, Oregon. The scientists—goal in developing the variety was to harness the natural antimicrobial properties of hops while subtracting the trademark bitterness caused by the flower’s alpha acids. Teamaker was engineered with low alpha acids and high beta acids, which impart aroma but no bitterness—perfect for tea.
One of Teamaker’s proposed applications is livestock production. In lieu of antibiotics, the hop could be incorporated into animal feed to lessen microbial and fungal illnesses. That’s great news for farmers. Brewers were nonplussed. “It was a homeless hop,” Widmer says. He first heard of Teamaker from longtime Oregon hop grower Goschie Farms and was intrigued: “You can have too much bitterness, but you can’t have too much hop aroma.”
For the first batch, in 2008, he bought enough Teamaker hops to craft about fifteen barrels of TEAser, though the brewers were unable to resist including a tiny amount of traditional hops. Allagash Brewing also experimented with Teamaker, using it in conjunction with Simcoe and Sorachi Ace hops in the Hugh Malone Belgian-style IPA. “Brewers—nature is to add bittering hops,” Widmer says. “Next time, I’d be tempted to skip the bittering agents completely.”
Secret Citra
With brewers more or less having access to identical hops, creating a proprietary variety with uncommon aromatic and bittering qualities can pay delicious dividends. A few years ago, the brewers at Sierra Nevada were aflutter over hop variety 394. In conjunction with Deschutes and Widmer Brothers, Sierra Nevada had funded the research and development of this strain with a strange flavor profile—a hard-to-pin-down mix of citrus, mango, and papaya. “There’s even something strangely Southeast Asian about the hop,” says Sierra Nevada’s Bill Manley. “This was one of the most promising hops we’d seen in some time.”
Sierra’s brewers played around with 394, polishing and tweaking recipes to serve as the novel hop’s coming-out party. By late 2008, Sierra Nevada had its eureka moment. The tropical 394, christened Citra, would drive the flavor of the Torpedo Extra IPA. When it was released in early 2009, it was Sierra’s first addition to its year-round lineup since 1980.
If that sounds like lots of time and research to develop beer for a single hop strain, it is. But unlike small brewpubs or microbreweries, Sierra Nevada and other larger brewers are uniquely positioned to do the time-consuming legwork. “We have labs and a researcher with a background in hop compounds,” says Manley. “Smaller craft brewers would just have to buy a lot of hops and hope for the best.”
Since Sierra Nevada cracked the seal on Citra, other brewers have quickly adopted the hop. In Madison, Wisconsin, Ale Asylum puts Citra in its Bedlam! Trappist IPA, while Flying Fish’s Exit 16 Wild Rice Double IPA uses it in combination with Chinook hops, and Clown Shoes Beer in Ipswich, Massachusetts, uses Citra, Simcoe, and Centennial hops in its Eagle Claw Fist Imperial Amber Ale. With the word out, amateur brewers are clamoring to experiment with the trademarked hop. “We get requests ten times a week from homebrewers asking where to find Citra,” Manley says. “It just takes somebody to break the ice.”
Three to Try
Torpedo Extra IPA
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. ABV: 7.2%
When Torpedo was released in 2009, it was Sierra Nevada’s first new year-round beer since 1980. The bold, brash Torpedo has all the citrus and pine components you’d expect from an amped-up IPA, but then there’s that smell: mango, papaya, and other exotic tropical fruit, courtesy of the Citra hop. A morsel of malt sweetness keeps the bitterness in check.
Exit 16 Wild Rice Double IPA
Flying Fish Brewing Co. ABV: 8.2%
Wild rice, brown rice, and white rice give this double IPA a dry, crisp character, which lets the Chinook and Citra hops sing bright and fresh. On the nose: tangerine, citrus, mango, papaya, and pine, oh my!
Citra Blonde Summer Ale
Widmer Brothers Brewing Company ABV: 4.3%
Befitting its beach-season release, the blonde Sunburn is a light and lovely summer sipper, with a dab of barely there bitterness. What’s the draw? The distinct aroma of citrus and tropical fruit, due to dry-hopped Citra.
Back in Black
In 2006, a few months before Mitch Steele became head brewer at San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company, he had a revelation at Boston’s Extreme Beer Fest. Among the many beer samples, one stood out above all others: a black IPA from Shaun Hill of the Shed Restaurant and Brewery in Vermont. (He now runs Vermont’s Hill Farmstead Brewery.) Despite the beer’s ebony tint, it was super-bitter and thirst quenching, not at all overwhelmed by roasted flavors or a heavy body. “I thought it was an amazing style, and I knew I wanted to brew it at Stone,” says Steele.
He and his fellow brewers spent about a year dialing in the recipe, trying to solve the riddle of achieving a rich, obsidian hue without an overbearing roasty essence or heavy body. “We wanted it to drink like an IPA but look like a stout,” says Steele. The solution was dehusked black malt, the kind used in the German black lagers dubbed schwarzbiers. “That allowed the hops to come through” in Stone’s 11th Anniversary Ale, released in 2007. It was such a hit that, by 2009, it became a full-time brew, since named Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale.
Consider the black IPA a seasonal chameleon: crisp and bracing enough to slake thirst on all but the hottest days, while malty enough for a breezy eve by a lake. This sleight-of-hand style has rapidly expanded with 21st Amendment Brewery’s Back in Black, Dogzilla Black IPA from Idaho’s Laughing Dog, and Deschutes’s Hop in the Dark.
Since black IPA is an oxymoron (“How can a pale ale be dark?” says Deschutes’s digital marketing manager, Jason Randles), the name Cascadian dark ale—referencing the Pacific Northwest’s Cascades range, where many hop farmers and brewers are located—has been proposed. But this smacks of regionalism, especially considering the Northwest isn’t the only region where this beer is brewed, and highly hopped dark beers were crafted in the United Kingdom more than a century ago. Besides, Steele says, “CDA doesn’t imply that it’s a really hoppy beer. If you order a CDA, what does that even mean? You need to have India in there. It’s an IPA.”
Three to Try
Hop in the Dark C.D.A.
Deschutes Brewery ABV: 6.5%
Practice makes perfect for the brewing pride of Bend, Oregon. More than a year of experimentation—and 22 test batches—created this ravencolored ale that, due to a quartet of hops (Cascade, Amarillo, Centennial, and Citra) packs a heady IPA bouquet. The malt profile is smooth, with a touch of coffee to balance out the citric bitterness. P.S.: C.D.A. stands for Cascadian dark ale. It’s a nod to the Northwest’s Cascade Mountain region, where many hops are grown.
Alpine Black IPA
Otter Creek Brewing ABV: 6%
A liberal dose of Citra, Centennial, and Apollo hops gives this caramel-kissed, midnight-color IPA a citric scent, with a detour to tropical fruit. The bitterness is present and bold.
O’Dark:30
Oakshire Brewing ABV: 6.3%
Brewmaster Matt Van Wyk feels this onyx brew is distinct from a black IPA, even though the label of O’Dark:30 identifies it as “Cascadian Dark Ale aka Black IPA.” “A CDA is essentially a hoppy, dark beer,” he says, “but it doesn’t just taste like an IPA.” Semantics aside, O’Dark:30 pours the color of a moonless night. It offers the scent of the Pacific Northwest—citrus, pine—mixed with the flavors of roasted coffee and chocolate.
International Spotlight: New Zealand’s Epic Brewing Company
Do you like to travel? Do you favor sweet, fizzy, barely bittered beers that are about as potent as pond water? Then book a flight to lovely New Zealand, where flavor-deprived lagers rule with a heavy, watery fist.
This is partly due to a New Zealand phenomenon known as the “six o’clock swill.” Starting in 1917, the government mandated that pubs close at 6 p.m. So when workers clocked out at 5 p.m., they had one mad hour to slake their thirsts. The preferred tipples were light and easy lagers—all the better to pound by the pint. Though the 6 p.m. closures were lifted in 1967, Kiwis’ preference for innocuous lagers lingered like a bad hangover.
“Most people thought that beer was beer. They shopped on brand and price,” says New Zealand brewer Luke Nicholas. “I wanted to get people out of the mind-set that beers were yellow, cold, and fizzy.” To shake drinkers from their doldrums, Nicholas took a drastic step. In 2006, he unleashed Epic Beer, a portfolio of pale ales, IPAs, and other hop-forward brews more at home on America’s West Coast. “People were like, ‘What the hell are you doing? That’s too much flavor.’ I totally freaked out New Zealand,” Nicholas says.
Epic Brewing’s brewmaster and owner Luke Nicholas.
The Bitter Beginning
That freak-out was a long time in the making. While studying in California in the 1990s, Nicholas developed a taste for hoppy ales and a talent for brewing. When he returned home in 1996, Nicholas angled for a job at British-style brewpub Cock & Bull, near Auckland. They weren’t hiring. Nicholas didn’t care. “I went down and asked for a job every weekend for a year until they hired me,” Nicholas recalls. He brewed for them for two and a half years, before leaving to toil for the website Real Beer. Then came 2001’s dot-com crash. Bye-bye, Internet. Welcome back, brewing.
He caught on with Auckland’s Steam Brewing, which produced beers for Cock & Bull. Still, Nicholas yearned to re-create those California hop monsters. The bosses gave Nicholas the go-ahead to build a separate brand, one focusing on hop-forward brews: Epic, so named because he craved flavors and aromas as big and burly as a weightlifter. He spent 2005 tinkering with recipes before releasing the aromatic Epic Pale Ale in 2006. The response? At the New Zealand International Beer Awards the pale ale was anointed “Supreme Champion Beer.”
“That was a good sign,” Nicholas says, laughing. Despite the accolades, his employers saw no future for Epic. “They own a chain of pubs, and their core business was expanding pubs,” he explains. “I wasn’t going to let my vision and dream of craft beer die.” In October 2007, he bought the Epic brand and entered an arrangement that allowed him to continue brewing at Steam. That was fortuitous, because “I didn’t have to raise $2 million to open,” Nicholas says.
Tasteful Marketing
Money. It’s always an issue for new breweries. “I didn’t have pocketfuls of cash to pay for advertising, so I had to shock people to get them to remember my beer,” he says. He waged a hop assault on all levels, from his elegantly dry-hopped lager to bitter beast Armageddon IPA, which rates a devilish 6.66 percent ABV. “People went, ‘Yup, that is what I’m looking for.’”
Nicholas also took his promotions online. He used blogs to answer customers’ questions (Q: Is Epic Pale Ale vegan? A: Yes.), and was the first brewery to sign up for Twitter. Though the messaging service is now a ubiquitous marketing tool, Nicholas was ahead of his time in using Twitter to keep fans informed about releases, events, and news. “You can talk to your drinker, which is so powerful,” says Nicholas.
Now that he has New Zealand’s eyes and stomachs, Nicholas has continued to innovate. He released Mayhem, an American-style strong pale ale given an aromatic punch by local hops, as well as the smooth, rich Thornbridge Stout. Given how much Nicholas looks to America for inspiration, it’s a no-brainer that Epic beers are now sold in the United States. Still, Nicholas takes his greatest pride in how he’s affected the Kiwi consumer.
“People now drink Epic Pale Ale as their everyday drink,” Nicholas says, marveling at his success. “I’ve changed the entire market.”
With the Grain
Like grapes to wine, grains are crucial to creating the hot soup that becomes beer. But each grain is not created equally. Some malts impart sweetness, others spiciness or espresso bitterness. An African grass called sorghum enables the creation of gluten-free beer suited for people with celiac disease. And rice and oats? Read on.
A stalk of sorghum.
A Quick Guide to the Fermentables That Fuel Your Beer
Barley
Barely serves as the building block of beer. The grain is transformed into brew-ready malt by taking a hot-water bath, which begins germination and causes the grain to create enzymes necessary to transform proteins and starches into fermentable sugars. While there’s no global system for classifying the hundreds of varieties of malt, the grain can be condensed into two broad categories:
1. Base malts: These constitute the lion’s share of the grain bill. These malts are typically lighter colored and provide most of the proteins, fermentable sugars, and minerals required to create beer.
2. Specialty malts: These can help head retention, increase body, and add color, aroma, and flavor, such as coffee, chocolate, biscuit, and caramel. All specialty grains can be used in conjunction to foster unique flavor profiles. Popular varieties include:
• Crystal (or caramel) malts, which are specially stewed, creating crystalline sugar structures within the grain’s hull that add sweetness to beer.
• Dark malts, which are highly roasted, resulting in robust flavors fit for stouts, schwarzbiers, bocks, and black IPAs.
• Roasted malts, which are kilned or roasted at high temperatures to impart certain flavor characteristics.
Unmalted barley imparts a rich, grainy character to beer, which is important in styles such as dry stout. Unmalted barley helps head retention, but it will make a beer hazy.
Rye
Mixed with barley, rye can impart complexity, crispness, a sharpened flavor profile, and subtle spiciness, as well as dry out a beer. It can also be kilned to create a chocolate or caramel flavor. The downside is that since rye contains no hulls, the grain tends to clump up and turn to concrete during brewing.
Wheat
This grain’s proteins help give beer a fuller body and mouthfeel and make a foamy head as thick, lustrous, and lasting as shaving cream. A large wheat bill often creates a light, smooth, hazy brew, such as a hefeweizen or a witbier.
Corn
When used in beer, America’s favorite cob-based vegetable provides a smooth, somewhat neutral sweetness. More crucially, corn lightens a beer’s body, curtails its haziness, and can stabilize flavor.
Oats
Used in conjunction with barley, oats create a silky, creamy brew with a full-bodied flavor. They’re well suited to stouts.
Rice
As an ingredient in beer, rice has little or no discernible taste. Instead, it helps create snappy, crisp flavors and a dry profile, as well as lighten the beer’s body.
Sorghum
Made from the African grass, sorghum is a gluten-free alternative to barley and other grains. It is used to create gluten-free beer. Most breweries use prepared sorghum syrup, which is highly concentrated wort. Some sorghum-based brews can have a sour edge.
Rye Rising
In the late 1990s, Georgia was a barren land for hoppy beer. Brown ales, stouts, and lightly bittered pales dominated tap lines. Seeing a niche that needed to be filled, Brian “Spike” Buckowski and John Cochran started planning Terrapin Beer, an Athens brewery specializing in bold brews with a bitter edge.
They decided their first release would be a hopped-up, West Coast-style pale ale, something in the Sierra Nevada vein. The problem was, southern beer drinkers balked at the plan. “They said they didn’t like the bitterness sitting on their tongue,” recalls Buckowski, Terrapin’s brewmaster. “Remember, this was 1997 in the South. Back then, anything hoppier than a Budweiser was too bitter.”
While flipping through recipes, Buckowski fondly recalled college days spent sipping rye whiskey. “I liked that spicy character that dried out your palate,” he says. Perhaps rye malt could curtail lingering bitterness in beer? Buckowski crafted a brew that incorporated about 10 percent rye (the remainder was a blend of barley malts) and citric, earthy hops. The result was fresh and clean, with a crisp, thirst-quenching character and a bitterness as fleeting as a sun shower. “Thirty seconds later, you’re ready to take another sip,” Buckowski says of what became Terrapin’s Rye Pale Ale.
Though it was “created out of necessity of pleasing palates in the Southeast,” Buckowski soon discovered that rye beer held national appeal. Six months after Rye Pale Ale’s spring 2002 release (hey, opening a brewery takes time), it won gold at Denver’s Great American Beer Festival. “As far as [American] rye beers go, we were definitely one of the pioneers,” he says.
Nowadays, Terrapin isn’t alone in its rye pursuits. Brewers nationwide have begun embracing the grain, which can add complexity, sharpness, subtle spiciness, and dryness to beer styles ranging from piney IPAs to chocolaty porters and even more eclectic, experimental beers. New York’s Ithaca Beer Co. makes the brawny Old Habit strong ale (as part of their Excelsior! series) with a quartet of rye malts and ages it in Rittenhouse Rye whiskey barrels. Missouri’s O’Fallon Brewery offers the buttery Hemp Hop Rye, and Bear Republic and Real Ale are both resuscitating Germany’s hefeweizen-like roggenbier.
RYE RULES
With brewing, it’s helpful to think of rye as a supporting actor. Top billing on the grain bill is usually reserved for barley malts. This may also be a matter of taste, but it’s mainly due to an evolutionary advantage: Barley contains husks, which keep the mash (the grains steeped in boiling water) loose and permit drainage of the wort—the broth that becomes beer. By contrast, rye is huskless and, like a sponge, sops up water. Compounding matters, rye can create a sticky, viscous mash, something “like concrete,” says Matt Van Wyk, brewmaster at Oakshire Brewing in Eugene, Oregon. To prevent coagulation, which is common when using 20 percent or more rye, brewers can add enzymes or, as Van Wyk does, rice hulls. They make the mash fluffy without altering flavor, allowing rye to work its magic without driving brewers bonkers.
For Van Wyk, rye was crucial in creating Line Dry Rye Pale Ale, Oakshire’s summer seasonal. “We wanted to make a drinkable, sessionable beer, but we didn’t want to make something that was boring,” he explains. “We wanted some complexity.” To achieve that, he dialed up Oregon blackberry and buckwheat honey, citric Centennial hops, and rye. “The rye adds crispness, a spicy character, and helps dry out the beer, which is great in a summer seasonal,” says Van Wyk, who has seen Line Dry become a top seller.
Rye is ideal not only in summery beers, but also in robust ales and cool-weather brews. Real Ale Brewing Company in Blanco, Texas, employs rye to smooth out its Sisyphus barleywine and cut its richness, while Nashville-based Yazoo Brewing Company’s chocolaty Sly Rye Porter gets a dry finish from the grain. A potent double IPA? It’s the perfect platform for rye, which balances the sweet, caramel character of Shmaltz Brewing’s He’Brew Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A.
For Brian Owens, head brewer at O’Fallon, rye was the secret ingredient required to unlock a curious ingredient’s potential. One day, brewery owner Tony Caradonna mentioned that he’d like O’Fallon to brew a hemp-based beer. “I was skeptical, because the first thing that came to my mind was marijuana,” says Owens. Duty bound, he bought toasted hemp seeds and brewed several pilot batches, discovering that the seeds’ favor had nothing in common with the skunky, pungent herb; instead, they possess a delicate nuttiness—too delicate, in fact. To enhance the subtle taste without overpowering the seeds (they’re imported from Canada and tested to ensure there’s no THC content), Owens turned to rye. “It added a layer of flavoring and a spicy sharpness that makes it nice and drinkable,” Owens says of his silky, ruby-hued Hemp Hop Rye.
Pleased with the results, Owens began exploring other brews that deserved a rye dose. One he settled upon is an amped-up IPA called Ryely Hoppy, a special Brewer’s Stash release. It’s a tribute to both the grain and his young son. “My son’s name is Ryely,” Owens says, laughing. “I love rye beers, so my wife and I thought, ‘Perfect, let’s name him Ryely.’”
A HEFEWEIZEN BY ANOTHER NAME
Creating a new breed of rye beers can be thrilling, but other brewers are instead finding success in reviving long-forgotten styles. For Real Ale, the opportunity to dig into history books arose after it bid good riddance to its old brewhouse in 2006. It was an indoor-outdoor setup (basically, a carport attached to a basement) that “was a glorified homebrewing system,” recalls head brewer Erik Ogershok. Brewing on jerry-rigged equipment was a pain, especially when crafting the balanced, well-hopped Full Moon Pale Rye Ale. However, in the new building, brewing with rye was a relative snap.
Like teens given keys to a sports car, Ogershok and Real Ale decided to take their shiny new equipment for a spin. While Full Moon possessed 17 percent rye, what would happen if they brewed a beer containing 35 percent rye or higher? To do “something different and prove a point, we decided to make a roggenbier,” Ogershok says.
You may blank on the German beer that fell out of favor a century ago, but you’re likely familiar with its summery sibling, hefeweizen. Whereas hazy hefeweizens are wheat driven, roggenbiers (Roggen is German for rye) contain up to 50 percent rye. When fermented with hefeweizen yeast, roggenbiers “end up with a smooth, velvety body. That clovey spiciness of the yeast goes well with the spicy rye. It almost tastes like pumpkin pie,” Ogershok says of his beer, which has attracted a rabid local following, along with the darker, maltier Dunkelroggen.
Though it’s too early to call this a revival, roggenbier is slowly catching on with brewers bewitched by rye. Toronto’s Mill Street Brew Pub serves Schleimhammer Roggenbier, while Avery Brewing in Boulder, Colorado, turns out the creamy, chewy, limited-release Jerry’s Roggenbier. Terrapin’s Buckowski crossed a roggenbier with a smoky rauchbier to create the RoggenRauchBier. It was big, smoky, and challenging—just like roggenbier’s uphill struggle in the marketplace, especially when compared with hefeweizen.
The issue, says Peter Kruger, master brewer at Bear Republic Brewing Company in Healdsburg, California, might be less about flavor than about semantics. “Hefeweizen has all these soft consonants,” says Kruger, whose brewery makes a roggenbier. “With roggenbier there are lots of hard consonants. Just the name sounds hardcore.” Adds Ogershok, “If we called it ‘German rye ale,’ it’d probably be easier to sell.” However, he has faith in this once-forgotten style. After all, he says, “in America, it took time for people to become familiar with hefeweizen. With roggenbier people are like, ‘What the hell is that?’ As brewers, it’s incumbent upon us to be rye educators.”
ALL RYE, ALL THE TIME
Given that relatively small quantities of rye can create a gummy mash, it might seem like inviting disaster to craft an all-rye beer. But where others saw a fool’s errand, Bear Republic saw a worthy challenge. One day in winter 2007, the brewers were unwinding with a couple of beers, discussing rye malt. Rye had long been popular at Bear Republic, driving the flavor of its burly, aggressively bittered Hop Rod Rye IPA. “One brewer said, ‘What would a 100 percent rye beer taste like?’” Kruger recalls. “We thought, ‘What do we have to lose? Let’s go for it.’”
To transform the “brewing from impossible to very, very difficult,” Kruger says, the team used enzymes and rice hulls to break up the grain bed. They carefully monitored the mash’s temperature, since wild fluctuations could turn the wet grains to stone. This made the brewing somewhat easier—but it took much, much longer. An average Bear Republic brew day lasts about eight hours. This session lasted seventeen nerve-wracking, grueling hours. “That,” Kruger recalls, “was not a fun day.”
The hard work was forgotten when the brewers sampled the surprising result, cheekily called Easy Ryeder. Despite its grain bill, the hazy, coppery beer’s spiciness was restrained, resulting in a smooth refreshment. Easy Ryeder was, well, easy drinking. “If you didn’t tell people it had rye in it, they might not have known,” Kruger says.
Though Kruger has sworn off brewing Easy Ryeder again, the experience has not dissuaded the brewery from continuing its rye research. At 2010’s Great American Beer Festival, Bear Republic won gold with its Belgian-inspired Ryevalry. “Even though it was so weird, it was a beer that all of us loved,” Kruger says of the double IPA that was brewed with 30 percent rye, then fermented with a Belgian ale yeast to create a bitter, spicy pleasure.
Terrapin’s Buckowski, too, continues to be bitten by the rye bug. His Rye Squared is a supercharged riff on his flagship brew. He collaborated with Colorado’s Left Hand Brewing in 2008, as part of their Midnight Brewing Project, to create the limited-release Terra-Rye’zd black rye lager (50 percent rye), and even snuck 10 percent rye malt into the tart, hoppy, oak-aged Monstre Rouge imperial Flanders red ale he made with Belgium’s De Proef Brouwerij. As for the future, Buckowski dreams of perhaps blending chocolate rye and dark rye malts to create a rye stout. “There’s always a side project where we can use more rye,” Buckowski says. “Any way we can exploit rye, we certainly will.”
Five to Try
Black Hemp Black Ale
O’Fallon Brewery ABV: 5.8%
The Missouri brewery’s winter seasonal is a weirdo mash-up of toasted hemp seeds, oats, rye, wheat, and Amarillo and Citra hops—tied together with Belgian yeast. Surprisingly, the beer remains balanced, with a nice citrusy, tropical current coursing through the black depths.
Sly Rye Porter
Yazoo Brewing Company ABV: 5.7%
With Sly, the Tennesseans take rye to the dark side, formulating a medium-bodied English porter that smells of chocolate and caramel and features flavors of dark fruit and sweet roasted malts. The rye shines at the spicy, drying end.
Hop Rod Rye
Bear Republic Brewing Co. ABV: 8%
Aggressive and uncompromising, Hop Rod roars from the bottle a deep amber with a bulky tan head and lacing like a spider web. The unabashedly floral bouquet—citrus, pine—contains traces of caramel and spice. Tastewise, bitterness is balanced by a sweet-spicy profile and a peppery finish rooted in earth.
Rye Pale Ale
Terrapin Beer Co. ABV: 5.5%
The Georgia brewery’s flagship brew from day one, RPA decants a warm honey-orange and offers a citrusy hello smooshed against toasted malts. On first sip, the medium-bodied ale reveals a floral, herbal bitterness, which is tempered by sweet malt and rye as prickly as a porcupine.
He’Brew R.I.P.A. on Rye
Shmaltz Brewing Company ABV: 10%
R.I.P.A. on Rye is a coppery creature capped by a beige head. The scent of this limitedrelease double IPA calls to mind caramel, vanilla, pine, and rye—both the grain and the whiskey, thanks to a stay in Sazerac barrels. When sipped: honey, biscuit, bitterness.
Education by the Pint
Despite garnering international acclaim for Denmark’s Mikkeller, head brewer and owner Mikkel Borg Bjergsø remains a part-time schoolteacher, climbing into a classroom once a week. However, those other six days a week he’s also a teacher, instructing students sitting not at a desk but at the bar.
“It’s interesting to teach people about ingredients,” Bjergsø says of his line of educational brews, which are as instructional as they are delicious. To help drinkers understand different yeast strains and hops, he brews a uniform batch of beer and then tweaks one component. In Mikkeller’s Single Hop Series, Bjergsø’s variable is the hop, with each beer exclusively dosed with a single variety. Line up a few selections, and you’ll be able to discern the different aromatic and bittering properties among varieties such as Chinook, Centennial, and Nelson Sauvin.
After exhausting Mikkeller’s hops lesson, enroll in the Yeast Series. “Yeast is one of beer’s most important ingredients,” Bjergsø says. The mix of hops and malt can make or break a beer, but it’s yeast that devours the sugars and transforms grain soup into alcohol. To demonstrate, Bjergsø inoculates each yeast release with a different strain, ranging from hefeweizen to lager to untamed Brettanomyces. “Ninety percent of all styles are defined by the yeast,” he explains.
Breweries across America are also turning happy hour into study hall. In Houston, Saint Arnold Brewing Co.’s draft-only Movable Yeast series features batches of wort (the unfermented broth created by boiling grains with water), split in half, with a different yeast strain pitched in each. (For example, the Amber Ale was dosed with Belgian Trappist yeast to create the Altared Amber.) In Enterprise, Oregon, Terminal Gravity Brewing and Public House has its Single-Hop Imperial IPA series, while Bellingham, Washington’s Boundary Bay Brewery & Bistro runs the ongoing Tradition Single Hop Pale Ale series. Not to be outdone, Pennsylvania’s Sly Fox spent more than five years brewing nearly three dozen uniquely hopped IPAs before revisiting the Hop Project, as it’s known, with subtler, more nuanced pale ales.
With educational beers, learning’s so much fun, you might just make a play for extra credit.
No Barley, No Problem: Gluten-Free Beer
One day, a Houston doctor rang Russ Klisch, the president of Milwaukee’s Lakefront Brewery. The call concerned a serious medical condition: the doctor’s. The doc bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t drink beer because it contained gluten. “What’s the deal with gluten?” Klisch asked.
Gluten, the doctor explained, is several different proteins found in certain cereal grains such as rye, barley, and spelt. Most people easily digest gluten. But for an estimated two and a half to three million Americans suffering from celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder, ingesting gluten causes crippling stomach pain and serious issues with digestion. This means no bread. No pasta. No beer. A single bottle could make a celiac sufferer sicker than the nastiest hangover.
The doctor wondered if Lakefront would brew a beer he could drink. Klisch was intrigued, especially because the doctor had rung him from Houston. “I asked why he called me,” Klisch recalls. “He said he’d recently visited Wisconsin and noticed that Lakefront made an organic beer. He said, ‘If you can make an organic beer, you can make a beer for me.’”
Up for the challenge, Klisch and his colleagues experimented with recipes, settling upon a blend of rice (which is gluten free) and sorghum extract, an ingredient used in wheat-free baking. Ta-da! Lakefront devised New Grist, a crisp, golden potion that looks, smells, and drinks much like its gluten-y counterpart. “Everyone who wants to should be able to drink a beer,” Klisch says.
A decade ago, pickings for gluten-free beer were as slim as a gnat’s eyelash. But as celiac sufferers have grown more visible and vocal, breweries have begun finding ways to kick barley and wheat to the curb. Connecticut’s Bard’s Tale Beer Company relies on the grass sorghum to craft its smooth Bard’s beer, while Britain’s Green’s mixes millet, sorghum, buckwheat (which is wheat and gluten free, despite the name), and brown rice to make its English- and Belgian-style ales. Wisconsin’s Sprecher Brewing offers the light, cider-like Shakparo Ale, brewed with sorghum and millet. Even Anheuser-Busch InBev sells the wheat-free, sorghum-based Redbridge, a beer I like better than Bud. For celiac sufferers, ditching wheat no longer means ditching great beer.
PROCESS SERVED
Brewing gluten-free beer isn’t as simple as just leaving out the barley or wheat. These grains are beer’s essential components. They provide the sugars and proteins that yeast feasts on, spurring fermentation. As a substitute, brewers turn to gluten-free alternatives such as buckwheat, millet, flax, or, most commonly, sorghum grass, which has a high sugar content. Since making sorghum malt is a labor-intensive process, many brewers use formulated extracts, such as Briess Malt & Ingredients Co.’s white sorghum syrup. It’s calibrated to mimic standard malt extracts, allowing brewers to easily manufacture gluten-free beer. Kind of.
“Brewing with sorghum creates a hazy beer,” Klisch explains. New Grist, as well as other sorghum-heavy gluten-free beers, requires heavy-duty filtration to achieve that Caribbean-clear look. In addition, brewers must take painstaking precautions to prevent any cross-contamination.
“While brewing, you have to ensure that the beer isn’t contaminated by wheat products,” says Brian Kovalchuk, the CEO of Bard’s Tale Beer Company. The firm was conceived when die-hard beer fans Kevin Seplowitz and Craig Belser were diagnosed with celiac disease. Instead of giving up their favorite beverage, they were inspired to create sorghum-driven Bard’s (originally sold as Dragon’s Gold). Since the first bottle rolled off the production line, Bard’s has expanded to more than 40 states. That may seem like insane success, but when discussing gluten-free brews, market saturation doesn’t translate to overwhelming demand.
“Our product is different than a craft beer,” Kovalchuk explains. “While there are microbrews specific to cities and regions, there’s not a gluten-free beer that’s specific to a location.” Instead of capturing consumers with novel flavors or regional pride, as is the standard craft-beer playbook, gluten-free beers must appeal to the middle ground. That explains why brands, such as Redbridge and Bard’s Gold, are somewhat interchangeable: easy-drinking, lager-esque beers.
Moreover, with a total American market of two to three million celiac sufferers—and not all of them beer drinkers, or old enough to consume alcohol—gluten-free beers are a national product out of necessity. They’re sold primarily at supermarkets, beer stores, and restaurants specializing in gluten-free cuisine (like New York’s excellent Risotteria). You won’t find Bard’s Gold poured by the pint at your local tavern, because “there’s a question of running the beer through draft lines that may be contaminated [with the residue of beers containing gluten],” Kovalchuk says. “I don’t want people to drink my beer and say, ‘I got sick.’”
SICK IN THE STOMACH
By now, you may be yawning. Where’s that craft-beer daring? Will there ever be a gluten-free double IPA dosed with wild raspberries? Perhaps. For instance, in England, Green’s fashions fine Belgian-inspired tripels and dubbels, and a crisp pilsner. Innovation is easy. The issue is, “Will the retailers carry that much variety of gluten-free beer?” Kovalchuk asks.
Doubtful. If drinkers had their druthers, I doubt they’d choose gluten-free beer. Though this style has mainstream appeal (“I have a friend who drinks New Grist all the time, simply because he likes the flavor,” Lakefront’s Klisch says), lager-like, gluten-free beers are pale wallflowers compared to barrel-aged stouts and IPAs. The thing is, for celiac sufferers, there’s no choice. That can be heartbreaking, especially if the person you love can no longer enjoy the beers you love brewing.
That was the quandary for John Kimmich. Since 2003, the brewmaster at Waterbury, Vermont’s Alchemist Pub and Brewery has devised wonderful weirdoes such as Uncle Daddy pumpkin hefeweizen and Wellness, a “probiotic” fruit beer concocted with Vitamin C-packed raspberries and antioxidant-stuffed pomegranates and ginseng. Despite Kimmich’s mad-fermentationist streak, he had never tinkered with gluten-free beer. That changed when he feared his wife, Jennifer, had stomach cancer. For months, Jennifer suffered from stomach pain so intense that most mornings she was doubled over in agony.
But Jennifer tested negative for cancer. After a run through the medical ringer, the couple discovered that Jennifer suffered from celiac disease. “When we first found out, I thought, Oh my gosh, that’s devastating,” Kimmich says. “You’re never going to drink another one of my IPAs.” After a year on a gluten-free diet, “there was a 180-degree change,” Kimmich says. “She never felt better.” Jennifer began sampling gluten-free beers. To her dismay, she was unable to find one that tickled her taste buds. She was accustomed to her husband’s innovative brews. How could she sip such normal beer?
“That really got me motivated to try something new,” says Kimmich. He played around with white sorghum syrup, gauging its quirks—it creates a tangy finishing note. Kimmich realized sorghum would mate well with tart, dry saisons and ales inoculated with wild yeasts such as Brettanomyces, which provide funky, pungent flavors.
“It’s very complementary to those kinds of beers,” says Kimmich, who devised a range of super-tasty gluten-free brews. The Celia Saison is flavored with coriander and orange peel, while Celia IPA has a grapefruit punch.
More important, Jennifer can now drink her husband’s brews, like Celia Framboise, spiked with Brettanomyces. “It produces this beautiful, horsey character,” Kimmich says. “It just shines.” And wins prizes. It took home the gold at 2009’s Great American Beer Festival, which began recognizing gluten-free beer as a category in 2007. (Celia IPA took the bronze.)
Now Kimmich keeps a couple of Celia beers on tap, and he’s constantly concocting new gluten-free brews, such as a Belgian-style pale ale. His beers have been largely well received, but then he’ll read a review that’ll bristle his feathers. Of the Celia IPA, one Rate Beer reviewer wrote that it had “some ‘hollowness’ in the body with lack of grain. [It’s] great for a gluten-free [beer], so-so for an IPA, and I rated to the latter.”
“Of course my Celia IPA won’t taste like my Holy Cow IPA—it’s a different category,” Kimmich says. “Those reviews can be kind of misleading. Many reviewers aren’t judging gluten-free beers against gluten-free beers. If it has zero barley, it’s pushing the definition of beer.”
And that’s the rallying cry for craft brewing.
Ten to Try
Bard’s
Bard’s Tale Beer Company ABV: 4.6%
Created by two serious beer geeks who, in their thirties, were diagnosed with celiac disease, Bard’s is a gluten-free, sorghumbased brew that recalls the classic American lager. The beer pours a transparent gold, with a subtle aroma of pears and a light, wispy head. It drinks ciderlike, finishing dry and sharp.
Endeavor
Green’s Gluten Free Beers ABV: 7%
Based in Britain, Green’s quenches the thirst of those who cannot have gluten with terrific wheatless and barleyless beers such as bottle-fermented Quest Tripel Blonde Ale, amberstyle Mission, and, my favorite, Endeavor. This Belgian dubbel decants as dark as rubies, giving off a complex scent of licorice and dark chocolate. The flavor follows the aroma, with the added bonus of being creamy and as rich as Daddy Warbucks.
New Grist
Lakefront Brewery ABV: 5.7%
Milwaukee’s Lakefront produced America’s first glutenfree beverage that the U.S. government permitted to carry the name beer. This strawpale libation—concocted from sorghum and rice—has an aroma of hay and cloves, while the taste is a little lemony and sweet. It’d be perfect for cracking open on a thermometerspiking summer afternoon, but it’s suitable year-round.
Celia Framboise
The Alchemist Pub and Brewery ABV: 7.1%
When his wife was diagnosed with celiac disease, Vermont’s John Kimmich devised his Celia line of gluten-free brews so she could once more drink his beer. The Celia Saison is seriously tart and refreshing, and the Framboise is first-rate. It’s redolent of pomegranate and raspberry and possesses the Brettanomyces yeast’s trademark barnyard profile. Negatives? Sadly, the beers are poured only at the pub.
Shakparo Ale
Sprecher Brewing Co. ABV: 5.7%
Sprecher first created this West African–style ale for Milwaukee’s African World Festival. However, the sorghumand-millet concoction (they’re the favored fermentables in sub-Saharan Africa, since wheat and barley are rare) was such a hit that the brewery has made Shakparo a year-round staple. Good call. Shakparo is gentle and thirst slaking, packing an apple cider–like profile. It’s summertime by the bottle.
Redbridge
Anheuser-Busch In Bev ABV: 4%
Anheuser-Busch brews Redbridge, but that’s not necessarily bad. Made with sorghum, Redbridge is no slouch. The glutenfree offering pours a pretty amber and exhibits a tea-like aroma. Tastewise, expect a mild earthiness cut with some sweet molasses, berries, and a smidgen of citric bitterness.
G-Free
St. Peter’s Brewery ABV: 4.2%
G-Free is a fine addition to the gluten-free field. The low-alcohol beer takes its cues from Czech pilsners, resulting in a brisk, effervescent ale that offers up a citric bouquet—thank you, Amarillo hops.
Daura
Estrella Damm ABV: 5.4%
Whereas most gluten-free beers eliminate all wheat, relying instead on sorghum or millet, Spain’s Daura is made with malt. That’s possible due to a proprietary technique that removes the gluten from barley malt, making it palatable for those with celiac disease. Hence, Daura tastes pretty darn close to standard beer. It’s bubbly and pale yellow, with a full body and a bit of a bitter kick. At the World Beer Awards, Daura has won best gluten-free beer for two years running.
3R Raspberry Ale
New Planet Gluten Free Beer ABV: 5%
Thanks to raspberry puree and orange peel, 3R decants as pink as a kitten’s nose, with faint notes of berries and biscuits. It glides down light, crisp, and semisweet, and raspberries linger on the finish.
Messagère Rousse
Microbrasserie Nouvelle France ABV: 5%
This Quebec-based microbrewery’s well-carbonated Rousse—fancy talk for a red ale—is devised with rice syrup and buckwheat, glucose extract, buckwheat, and millet. It pours a rich mahogany and tastes of sugar-dipped dried fruits and oak.
