Craft Pilsners with Mitch Steele – BeerSmith Podcast #327
48:00 Share

Mitch Steele joins me this week to discuss craft pilsners and brewing a pilsner. This is Beersmith Podcast number 327.

This is the Beersmith Home Brewing Show, where brewing great beer is our passion. If you want to take your brewing to the next level, visit beersmith.com, where you can download a trial version of our Beersmith software, subscribe to the newsletter, and get dozens of free articles on home brewing. And now, your host and the author of Home Brewing with Beersmith, Brad Smith.

This is Beersmith Podcast number 327, and it's late June 2025. Mitch Steele joins me this week to discuss craft pilsners and brewing a pilsner. Thank you to this week's sponsors, Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They invite you to join their upcoming brewery workshop September 14th through 17th in Fort Collins, Colorado.

If you're launching a brewery, you don't want to miss this four-day event featuring top professional brewers who help you explore, plan, and start your own brewery. To learn more, please visit breweryworkshop.com. Again, that's breweryworkshop.com.

And Beersmith Web, the online version of Beersmith Brewing Software. Beersmith for the Web lets you design great beer recipes from your tablet or phone. Edit recipes on the go with access to the same full suite of recipe building tools as our desktop version. Try Beersmith Web today by creating a free account at beersmithrecipes.com. And finally, a reminder to click that like and subscribe button on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you're listening on. Clicking those buttons is a great way to support the show.

And now let's jump into this week's episode. Today on the show, I welcome back Mitch Steele. Mitch wrote the book on IPAs called IPAs, Brewing Techniques and the Evolution of India Pale Ale. Mitch is the Chief Operating Officer and Brewmaster at New Realm Brewing Company. Former Brewmaster at Stone, Mitch holds a degree in Fermentation Science from the University of California at Davis. Mitch, it's great to have you on the show. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Brad. Good to be here again.

Always a pleasure. What is going on at New Realms these days? I heard you opened up a couple new places last year, right? Yeah, we have six now in the southeast. We opened up...

a spot in Greenville, South Carolina in about a year ago. And then in November of last year, we opened up a spot in Suffolk, Virginia, which is near Norfolk. And yeah, so, you know, we've, we've been able to, to grow despite the challenges of the business and, you know, expand where we sell our beer. So that's been, that's been good. It's been, you know, it's tough.

uh beer sales are tough everywhere but uh we've uh we've had a great sales team and and they knew what buttons to push to get our beer into some stores so yeah good you're telling me you're selling out of aldi now or something like that we are yeah yeah we uh we've been making some beer for aldi so that's been uh that's been really uh good for us so yeah

Good. Can you go over real quick, which, which locations are you open at now? So you've got obviously the flagship in Atlanta, which I think is where you're located, right? That's correct. Yeah. I'm in Atlanta. That was our first brewery. And then we opened Virginia beach about a year and a half after that. That was the old green flash brewery that got shut down. And we were able to get it on auction for a very good price. And then, uh,

We opened in Charleston, South Carolina. We took over an existing brew pub on Daniel Island there. We have a seven barrel brewery and a tap room in.

on the campus of Auburn University, which has been great. Our head brewer there went through the Auburn Brewing Science Program and helps with the new students now and is teaching classes and brewing beer there. So that's been a great partnership. I'm really excited about providing beer education. So that's been a great one. And then Greenville and Suffolk

uh in 2024 so we have six total uh it's been crazy but yeah you know we're plugging along and you know making a lot of beer so that's good we're making a lot of other things as well which i know we've talked about before so cool yeah well uh today you want to talk about pilsners and uh even though uh you know craft brewing's been in a little bit of a slump the last year or two uh we're seeing more and more breweries start to really produce uh high quality pilsners

So you wanted to walk through and talk about some of the different Pilsners. Let's start with the traditional Hoppy Pilsner style, the North German Pilsner.

Yeah, I, you know, I kind of fell in love with this style of beer when we were, when I was at Stone and we were building our brewery in Berlin. And I think the classic example is Javer. But, you know, really bracingly bitter lager, you know, more bitter than just about any other lager, at least perceptibly, you know, that's brewed. And just a really clean, dry lager, you

with a very, very significant hop bitterness. And it's just a good drinking beer. And when we first came out with New Realm, we did a beer called Euphonia Pilsner that was kind of at that same level of bitterness. And it's interesting. I don't think the beer drinkers in the United States were ready for that one. We ended up dropping the bitterness and kind of evolving the

the beer into more of a standard German pilsner, but we started off at 40 IBUs.

And I love the beer. I thought it was just fantastic. But, you know, me, I'm an IPA guy and I like hot bitterness. It was tough for me to agree to take that bitterness level down on our Pilsner. But, you know, we took it down and then we felt we lost a little bit. So we started creeping it back up a little bit. So it's at 35 IBUs now, which is probably a good level for us.

Now, that's not the most popular pilsner in Germany. I think Helles is probably, right? Well, yeah. Helles is considered the everyday beer of Germany or Munich, depending on who you're reading. But Helles is more malt-focused than a pilsner, right? And so it's just a nice, easy-drinking beer. But you get that European malt character in there, and it adds a little bit of extra flavor.

uh, extra flavor compared to something that, you know, an American brewer might brew, um, you know, not a craft brewer, but a big brewer, a big American brewer. If they were going to brew a Helles that was all malted still, it'd be, you know, just knowing what I know about the malts that the big brewers use, it would not be as interesting as a German brewed Helles. And, you know, from a flavor standpoint. Yeah. Um,

Well, now can you contrast that with a Czech Pilsner like Pilsner or Cal or Boudoir, for example, I, I was, I was fortunate enough to go visit there last year, had a great time. You know, I was supposed to go there last year and we had to cancel out because of work conflicts. And I was so disappointed because, you know, the Czech Pilsner thing is it's really blowing up with a lot of really, really hardcore craft brewers. And I, I love what's happening there, but you know, a Czech Pilsner is also really bitter. Uh,

But the water is really soft that they use for brewing, and the bitterness may be 40 IBUs analytically, but the beer is maltier and fuller than like a North German Pils. It's a bit sweeter. I don't think it comes across as sweet, but it comes across as fuller bodied, but that tends to temper that bitterness a little bit.

And, you know, a Czech Pilsner is, you know, Czech malt and the Sotz hop is the classic hop and Pilsner Urquell and a lot of Czech beers. But there's some other really neat beers.

hops from that area that can be used in the beer as well. I think the biggest thing with a Czech Pilsner, at least in, and you probably saw this when you were there, is how many of the beers have diacetyl about it and in it. And, and, and the brewers there, a lot of the brewers take a lot of pride in that diacetyl kick in the, in the beer. And, you know, for,

An American brewer who's been trained for 35 years to never allow diacetyl in a beer, that's a tough thing to do. But, you know, that's kind of a haul. Personally, I didn't notice a lot of diacetyl. What struck me was just how fresh the beer was. It was just so fresh and smooth, you know.

Yeah, you know, I think they age their beer longer than just about anybody. So you get I think you get that really fresh character. And, you know, it's I think they're really special. And we have our brewer in Charleston. His name is Jeff. He's brewed a number of Czech pills for the tap room there. And that's been really great because, you know, when I go down there, he's always got one on tap.

And I enjoy drinking them. You know, he uses a pretty high-quality Pilsner malt. Usually it's a German origin, but it's one that's used in a lot of Czech Pilsner beers. So...

Really like what he's done with that. Yeah, I mean, what's great about those beers, too, all the ingredients are locally grown, you know? Yeah, it's a very locally, you know, locally sourced beer. And, you know, that's a really cool thing about, you know, some of those old world breweries is they've got everything, you know, historically for hundreds of years being grown around them. And they can use those ingredients, which, you know, adds to the freshness and everything else special about those beers.

Awesome. Well, let's switch over to an Italian Pilsner, which has an Italian twist on the traditional style. Yeah, you know, the Italian Pilsner is a fairly recent beer style, is my understanding, and it was...

you know, created, you know, the credit is given to a brewer from a brewery called Burifico Italiano. Uh, and, and his name, I believe is Agostino Arioli. Uh, but he was brewing a beer with a, an Italian grown malt. And then he added a little bit of a dry hop. It's, it's essentially a German Pilsner, but the malt is different. Uh, it's, it's an Italian Pilsner malt. And then, uh,

And then a light dry hop with German or noble hops. And really, you know, Matt Brindleson from Firestone Walker, I think, is the one who gets a lot of credit for popularizing the style in the United States because the story goes he was in Italy and tasted this beer and bonded with the brewer at this brewery and came back home and started brewing the beer that became Pivo Pils, which is a

really nice Pilsner from Firestone Walker. And we brewed a lot of those as well. But, you know, and again, that's Jeff down in Charleston who gets to do this kind of stuff mostly. But we talked about it a lot, you know, and just having a nice light dry hop, you know, just adds...

kind of a hint of floral character to the beer that's really nice. And the malt is incredibly bready and honey. And, you know, you get this really full-flavored but very light and drinkable Pilsner if you're brewing an Italian Pilsner. I love this style because, you know, I think European hops and noble hops are

Nobody really talks about dry hopping with those hops very often. And, you know, one of the things I got to do when I was at Stone was do a bunch of dry hop trials. And we did this for years where we just take hops and throw them into a batch of beer. And then, you know, we do 10 at a time and we taste them. And that's how I discovered hops.

I love Herzbrücker hop, for example. We did a dry hop trial with that. And then Sterling hops, you know, the lower alpha Sterling hops, just amazing hop character in those hops that's really underutilized from that aspect. You know, people use them in the brew house on the hot side and

You know, now there's a style, you know, there's a few styles out there that are lager styles and pilsner styles that are dry hopped. And they're fun to use some of these noble hops in those and really get a feel for what the character of that hop is. So, I mean, would you say it's the Italian malt and the use of the dry hop that makes it unique?

Yeah, exactly. I think those two things combined make it a different beer than a German Pilsner because really for most intents, it is a German Pilsner. It's just that the malt source is a little bit different and the dry hopping adds a little more floral hop character to it.

Okay, well, switching over to craft breweries, a lot of them have started introducing their own take on the Pilsner beer, including some interesting ones like Prima Pils from Victory Brewing. Can you talk about some of the craft breweries and the American twist, if you will, on Pilsner?

Yeah, I think, you know, when craft breweries started, you know, I've been in the business a long time, and most people did not have the capacity to do the lagering process for, you know, three to four to five weeks. They just had to keep beer running through those fermenters, and that was a big reason why a lot of the brewers brewed ales to start with. And I remember some of the earlier pilsners that were out there, you know, like Stouts in Pennsylvania did a really nice pilsner, and there were some breweries...

Yeah.

I think we're kind of getting there. It's been a really slow roll, which is probably a good thing because that means it'll probably stick around a lot longer. It's not a fad. It's more of a trend, which I think is great. But I remember...

When I was working at Stone, Stone had Stone Distributing at the time as well, and they brought in beers, really good craft beers from all over the countries and sold them in San Diego. And one of the breweries that they distributed was Victory, and Prima Pils was in the warehouse all the time. And when we opened the gardens and the bistro at Stone and Escondido,

Prima Pils was a constant on tap there, and it became one of my favorite beers. It just has this amazing hop character. I describe it kind of as a cross between like a Munich German Pils, you know, more the 30, 35 IBU Pils.

And the North German Pilsner, which is bitter. It was a bitter Pilsner, but it had this amazing floral hop character. And I remember listening to a presentation from Ron from Victory, Ron Barchette, who

you know, was the person who put that beer together. And he talked about how he trialed all these different German hops and came up with this blend that was a lot of different hops in it. And I wish I remembered the particulars about it, but he used a pretty intense hop blend in that beer, if I remember correctly. And it was, it was marvelously hoppy. It was honestly one of my favorite beers that I've ever had. And I drank a lot of it back in, back in my days in San Diego.

I know Matt Brindleson used a lot of blends as well. Are they primarily using European hops here? Yeah, I think Prima Pils is all European hops, and I'm not sure about Pivo Pils.

I know with our pilsners, we have not really done a deep dive into using American hops. And I know hop breeders and hop growers and suppliers right now are trying to come up with American grown replacements for a lot of the German varieties because the German hop industry has been in trouble because of extreme weather and low yields. And to pay what you have to pay for like a Hollertau or a Herzbrücker hop, the

these days where the alpha acids are down around one and a half percent. It makes it, it's a financial hardship, honestly. And because you have to use so many of the hops to get any bitterness in the beer, you know, so there's, there's a lot of effort being made by hop suppliers in the United States to grow hops that have the character of some of the really, you know, what they call the noble, you

German varieties. And I, you know, I just haven't found anything that really cuts the mustard on that, to be honest. I mean, you know, our Pilsner still uses, uh, Herzbrücker hops in it, uh, just cause I love that hop. And, uh, we also use a kind of a higher alpha level hop called Saphir in ours, which I really liked the flavor of that hop a lot. And, um,

But yeah, I think most of the people that are doing these are leaning into the German hops more than American hops or hops from other regions. And there's a reason for that. I mean, the character is very authentic. And that's important. If you're going to brew a beer and call it a German Pilsner, you have to have some authenticity to it. You can't just throw an American –

see hop in there and, and, and get it to pass the mustard. So I, you know, it's, it's, it's an interesting thing, uh, but it is getting expensive. Um, but I'm really happy to see that so many breweries are really focusing on lagers and pilsners right now. Um,

There's a brewery here in Atlanta called Halfway Crooks, and that's pretty much all they do. I mean, they do have a couple IPAs, but, you know, they're all about the European lager. And they brew Belgian pills and German pills and Czech pills, and they brew a Kolsch. You know, that's really what they're known for. And it's nice to see that, you know, a brewery like that that is kind of veering off in that direction is quite popular. And, you know, the brewing community loves that brewery. So...

So, you know, it's nice to see. And, you know, I've been pretty pleasantly surprised –

in our brewery at how popular our lagers have been and you know we do we do a german pills that we really like uh it's called you well it was called euphonia when we first started euphonia pills and we renamed it this year euphonia turned out to be a really bad name nobody knew how to say it a lot of people called it euphoria uh including people on our own team and and so we we

We set out to change the name this year and the branding on it this year, and we're going to re-release it in cans in January of 26. But the beer's the same. It's a 5% 35 IBU Pilsner with a lot of Herzbrücker and Saphir hops. It's one of my favorite beers that we brew.

Now, has there been a push at all to Americanize the Pilsner style or not? Yeah. Yeah, I think there is. You know, there's an American Pilsner category at the GABF. You know, we, you know, it's kind of, I think it's kind of gray area as far as what the style is.

really is. You know, but for most people, when they talk about something like an American Pilsner, it's, you know, it's all malt and all Pilsner malt and may use a blend, a different type of a blend of hops. We have a beer that we brew called Blackberry Smoke American Lager, and we've entered that in contemporary American lager in the past six Brewers Association conferences.

station comp, uh, competitions and we've won four medals with it, which I mean, that's the best performing beer I've ever been involved with, you know, as far as metal winning. And, um, you know, it's got, um, it's got mostly German hops in it, but we use, we use Steiner lemon drop in it, uh, a little bit, you know, and I got that, that clue from Mike Sutton, who's been working for Steiner for many, many years, hop Steiner, um,

And, uh, he was telling me a few years, but right before we started new realm that a lot of the German brewers were using this American grown lemon drop hop in their pilsners just to get a little extra boost in character. And it's a very mellow hop, but it's got a little bit of citrusy character to it. Um,

But the Blackberry Smoke is Herzbrücker and Saphir and Lemon Drop. And we've entered a contemporary American lager and we've done very well with it. And the Pilsner would just be more of an all malt version of that, maybe a little bit higher BU level. But, you know, that is a style that I think people are starting to really look at, really brew, just to create a lineup of nice Pilsners and lagers in their brewery.

Well, as craft pilsners have grown, we're starting to see some new sub-styles emerge. I thought we'd cover a few of those, starting with imperial pilsners. What's an imperial pilsner? So in my mind, an imperial pils is just a big alcohol pilsner. You know, it's just brewing the pilsner. You know, most pilsners are somewhere around 4.5% to 5.5% alcohol. You know, and brewing one is 7% to 8% alcohol. Yeah.

You could make the argument that it's more like a malt liquor, but it's not. An imperial pilsner is just a strong pilsner, and it's got some hop character to it. I know some people... And this is a style that kind of started everything in my mind as far as hoppy pilsners, because people were using a light dry hop, more like the Italian pilsner technique than some of the other styles that we're going to talk about. But you

But, you know, a light, light floral German dry hop in a big alcohol pilsner is a pretty nice beer. I don't see them brewed very much anymore, but there was a period probably about 10 years ago where people were starting to play with with the style. And I think it's a fun style. I don't know if there's an official category for this one or not, but I do like the style.

Uh, and I think it has a lot of flavor in it. Um, you know, it's not a style I would drink a lot of cause I don't drink a lot of high alcohol beers anymore, but, uh, you know, just tastes great. You know, it's like a concentrated, uh, Pilsner, you know, as far as flavor impact. So, I mean, you're pushing up the alcohol, are you pushing up the bitterness as well? And, uh, how do you, how do you balance it out?

Yeah, you have to. You have to bump the bitterness up, but you don't want to go IPA levels. You don't want it to be bracingly bitter. You just want balance. So probably 35, 40 IBUs is where you want to be with a beer like this, assuming it ferments out and still has a fairly dry finish and is fairly crisp. If it's sweeter, you could go higher with the IBUs.

And then of course, if we move on to the inevitable cross between the dominant IPA, uh, which leads us to an Imperial pale lager, right? Yeah. The IPL, the IPL, right. Um, you know, it's funny, these, these really made more of an impact, I think in the beer world, then, then an Imperial Pilsner. And, and for a while I was a little confused about how, how they were different. Uh,

But in talking to a lot of brewers before we ever brewed an IPL, what I learned was most brewers, the way they approach this style was just to brew an IPA and ferment it.

with pilsner or lager yeast and and go through you know a cooler fermentation dry hop it and then go through a very long aging and maturation process and so you you know it is kind of a blend of the two styles in a lot of ways which you know some of the beers we're going to talk about are are that as well in a different context but you know it's you know you get this clean crisp

but you, um, you know, higher alcohol than a normal Pilsner, you know, you're probably looking at more IPA level on the alcohol because it's brewed like an IPA, but, um,

Um, you know, and some brewers will use, use German hops in, in the dry hop in combination with American hops, or we'll use German hops in the brew house. But most of the people I talk to just brew an IPA and then go through a, uh, like a lager fermentation with it. Oh, that's what I was going to ask. Are you, IPL, are you pushing a, pushing American hops? Are you Americanizing it or are you not?

Yeah, you would because you're, you know, you're brewing, you're essentially brewing an IPA and using a different yeast and fermentation profile on it. And, you know, so it tends to taste more like an IPA than a lager, but it's got some crispness to it. And, you know, if you use Pilsner malt, you get a different malt character. And if you use, you know, German Pilsner malt, you get that breadiness and everything that you look for in a German Pilsner malt, which can play well with American hops, I found. Hmm.

And another variation very close to that, the West Coast Pilsner. Yes. How close is that to a West Coast IPA or an IPL?

Well, it's so West Coast Pilsner is a true blend of two styles. And this this was something that apparently was developed out in Los Angeles by Highland Park Brewing in in like 2015 or 2016, I believe. So I probably was not around in Southern California when this thing came out. But my understanding is that the brewer Bob Coons at Highland Park Brewing.

just had a Pilsner that he put into a cask, and just to see what would happen, he dry-hopped it like an IPA in the cask and loved the beer and then decided to just start making it. And really, you know, this is one of those beer styles that really, in the last five years or so, has taken off in Southern California, and a lot of really, you know, good IPA brewers have brewed it. And really, just to put it...

The baseline of the style is that it's brewed in the brew house like a Pilsner, including the hopping, the bitterness level, the alcohol content, the original gravity. But then as it goes through the fermentation with a lager yeast, it's dry hopped like an IPA. So essentially, it's a Pilsner that has an IPA dry hop in it.

which makes it different than an India pale lager, which is more like an IPA as far as alcohol strength and bitterness. This is more like a Pilsner in alcohol strength and bitterness, but then you've got this massive American dry hop character in it. And a lot of brewers are using, um, Southern hemisphere hops in this style, you know, and, and trying to get some of that wine grape, uh, you know, Sauvignon Blanc character and that kind of thing in this. And, and we've really had a lot of fun with this style. Um,

We brewed several of them. And again, Jeff, our brewer in Charleston, had the first opportunity to brew one. And we've brewed a few since then. And I really like the style because, like I said earlier, I'm not drinking as many high alcohol beers anymore, but I still love IPA and I love that hop punch.

And, and a West coast Pilsner gives you that in a lower alcohol beer. And it's got this very crisp finish that really kind of tones down the bitterness and, and, and the bitterness is low to begin with. And, and so you just get this beer that's massively hop, hoppy and aromatics and flavor, uh, but has a clean, crisp finish. And it's not, it doesn't have a lingering bitterness and it's very easy beer to drink. And you feel like you're getting just a maximum, maximum,

maximize the flavor of the hops in it. I like the style. I think it's a really fun style. You know, one of the things that's interesting, and I learned this just recently, is that, you know, some of the beers that are being entered in the American Pale Ale, you

in the World Beer Cup and the Great American Beer Festival were actually brewed as West Coast Pilsners. And I thought that was pretty interesting because that's not, you know, what I thought an American Pale Ale was, obviously. But, you know, then, you know, the most recent World Beer Cups here, Nevada Pale Ale won in an American Bitter category instead of American Pale Ale. So the...

I think what people are perceiving as American pale ale is going through a shift right now to a lighter, more golden...

beer with a more intense hop character. And, you know, I don't know if that's, I don't have an opinion on whether that's a good thing or not. I, you know, I, I like the classic American pale ale, but you know, the, the idea of brewing, brewing golden beers that are light and alcohol and are crisp and have a huge hop presence. I do like that. Well, the way, so the West coast IPA, again, they're using American hops or the New Zealand, uh,

In the dry hop. Yeah. In the dry hop. And most of the people – So would you use German hops in the actual boil? Yeah. Oh, okay. And so you get that soft bitterness that you get from German hops and you don't get the bitterness – you get a moderate level of bitterness in between 30 and 40.

And you get this really, you know, in my opinion, German hops give you a softer bitterness, you know, and if you're using soft brewing water instead of hard brewing water, that's going to soften the impact of the bitterness even more. And yeah, so it's like a, it's a pilsner all the way through the brew house and then, and even through fermentation until you get to the point where the fermentation is done and you throw in some dry hops, which are typically IPA levels and IPA hop varieties. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. Well, I recently did it. Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, I'm just saying it's a fun style. It's a really easy drinking style. And, you know, it's really popular in our tap rooms. You know, people that know what that style is or have heard of it are very curious to try it. Well, I recently did a podcast with John Palmer on cold IPA, but I thought I might bring that in and talk about cold IPA and how that fits into the styles we've been discussing.

Yeah, so cold IPA kind of fits in between the last two beers, I think. And this was one that came about in Portland, Oregon. Kevin Daly was his name, and he was brewing at a brewery called Wayfinder in Portland. And he came up with this dry-hopped lager solution.

style that he named Cold IPA. And, you know, it's where it differs from a Pilsner or a West Coast Pilsner is it's typically brewed with adjuncts, you know, corn or rice flakes, you know, from a craft brewer or home brewer level, you know, corn or rice flakes.

uh flaked in a flaked version so you get a little extra crispness it's not as high alcohol and the and the other thing that people do when they brew these is they use a lager yeast to ferment it but they'll ferment the yeast at a little warmer temperature and get a little more ester profile out of the yeast and

One of the things that I think is really interesting that a lot of brewers are talking about right now is using the Weinstephaner lager yeast, the 3470 that's so popular in lager brewing, and fermenting that at 60 or 65 degrees. Yeah.

you're not, you know, the big fear always was if you do that with a lager yeast, you're going to get a huge bucket load of sulfur in your beer that's going to make it really unpleasant. And certainly with, I think with a yeast like the Augustiner yeast, which is also very popular, that yeast tends to throw more sulfur anyway. I think it'd be risky to do it with that yeast. But the 3470 seems to work really well at warmer temperatures. And

you get a little quicker fermentation and you still get the crispness on the back end of the beer and that Pilsner character from the East. Um, and you, you know, we haven't done a lot of this work at new realm, but we have one, uh, that we are brewing next week that we're going to try. Uh, we brewed one last week in Charleston. I went down to Charleston and brewed with Jeff, uh,

And we brewed one with a 3470 yeast just to see how the warm temperature would go. It wasn't a cold IPA. It was actually a West Coast spills. But regardless, you know, cold IPAs where that whole thing started, you know, fermenting using the lager yeast at a slightly warmer temperature. And I think it's an interesting development and concept.

You know, I love the fact that brewers are willing to break tradition and try things. And if they work, then you've got something that's pretty innovative and gives you a new flavor profile. And then, of course, the use of adjuncts is kind of funny because it leads almost back to the American adjunct lager, which is arguably the most popular beer in the world, right? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, for so long in craft beer, adjuncts were just something that was shunned. And, you know, even as recently as like 2010, 2011, you know, there were there were things coming out in the craft beer world about how horrible using corn or rice was in beer.

And now most everybody's doing it at some point, you know, and, you know, I don't think many craft brewers are going through the cereal cooking process that the big American brewers are using. Sure. Where you have to gelatinize the starch and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, when you use flaked bread.

rice or corn, it's already pre-gelatinized through that price. Yeah, so you don't have to do the cooker process and it's quite simple to use. You know, the interesting thing I think about that is, and I deal with this a lot, is, you know, for years the argument was that the big brewers used rice and corn because it was cheaper than malt. And if you look at the cost of those ingredients right now,

If you use flaked rice or flaked corn, you're paying three times what you're paying for malt. It's just nuts. So, you know, you want to brew this beer and you want to make it inexpensively and you try to use adjuncts in it and the adjuncts are going to cost more. Even if you take into account that the adjuncts are much higher, have much higher fermentability, you're still, you know, it's still more expensive than if you were to brew an all malt, you know, like an all pale malt beer.

I mean, it's pretty clear to me the adjuncts in an adjunct lager, you know, any of the big breweries, they're doing it for a reason. It wouldn't taste the same if they took them out, obviously. Yeah, it's definitely for crispness and lightness of body, you know. Lightens it up, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, but that's interesting. You know, the cold IPA is one. I don't know if it's going to stick around for that long of a time. I do like the style.

You know, it's typically not as high alcohol as a regular American IPA, but it's higher alcohol than a Pilsner. So, you know, you're kind of in that 6% to 7% range with a cold IPA, maybe 5.5% to 6.5%, whereas, you know, a Pilsner is 5% typically. So, you know, it kind of falls in between that India Pale Lager and that West Coast Pils idea.

So it's nice. You know, it's kind of fun that all these new styles are being developed by American craft brewers. And people can argue that they're all kind of the same thing. And there's a lot similar about it. But if you look at IPAs and all the subsets of IPAs, American brewers did that too. And, you know, now, you know, if you have a Session IPA or an Imperial IPA or an IPA,

you know, you've got a Belgian IPA or whatever. New England IPA. Yeah, New England IPA versus West Coast versus American. Now West Coast and American IPA have become two different styles. So, you know, that's just the nature of things in craft beer where you get these sub-styles and people trying to do something to differentiate themselves from everybody else. And these are the kind of things that come up. And, you know, when they take off, it's a lot of fun for the rest of us, you know, that, you know, it's like, oh,

I, you know, we were, I think, you know, brewed IPA is a good one. We, we were one of the first ones. I remember I had you on talking about brewed IPA a couple episodes back. You know, that came and came and went and, you know, but I, you know, they were. One of my favorites is Zima. Yeah. The clear beer. The clear beer. Yeah. People, you know, craft brewers haven't latched onto that one yet, except for seltzer, you know. No, no. Yeah.

But, yeah, no, I think I embrace all of this, you know, when there's new styles that come out and if beer drinkers are gravitating towards them and they're not too gimmicky, they're actually a different process or a different brewing technique that's used. I love that stuff. Yeah.

Um, well, we got just a couple minutes left, but I thought maybe we'd talk a little bit about brewing a lager at home. And you mentioned, uh, you know, if you pick the right yeast, uh, you can get away with a little bit warmer fermentation. So what advice do you have for folks that are trying to, trying to brew these styles at home? Yeah. You know, I, I really struggled when I was doing a lot of home brewing with lagers. I tried to brew lagers in, in, in mild temperatures and it just didn't work. Um,

And, and really where I honed in my lager brewing skills was when I lived in New England and I brewed them in the wintertime and I fermented in the basement where it was like 55 degrees, 60 degrees down there in the corner of the basement. And, and, and then you could lager them outside, you know?

And that was the quick and dirty way to do it, you know, and maintain some sort of control over the temperature. You know, obviously the best way is to have, you know, I know a lot of homebrewers will get a chest freezer and put a temperature probe in there and a thermostat that they can set the temperature on. And that's a great way to do it.

great way to do a home-brewed lager. But, you know, with these, there's a couple of yeast options. You know, we talked about the 3470 yeast and fermenting that at a warmer temperature. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, if you have a cool place in your house that doesn't get, you know, above 70 degrees, you might have some success with that.

You know, one of the other things that I've seen a lot of brewers do is use the Kvike Lutra yeast. And I don't know if that's available to home brewers. I think it is. I'm not that familiar with it, but I find it interesting. So it's actually a lager yeast, but it's a Kvike style, right? Right.

Yeah, it's actually an ale yeast, but out of all the Kvike strains, those Norwegian farmhouse strains, it ferments incredibly clean. And we brew a beer with that strain that is very lager-like, and we don't let it get up to 90 degrees like a lot of people using Kvike yeast do. We cap it off at about 75 degrees.

But it ferments out in less than a week, and then we age it like a lager. You get a little more ester character. You might get a little pineapple character off of it, but it does a reasonably good job at...

creating a lager profile in the beer. And I've been really pleased with the yeast. It's been a lot of fun. Now, you know, purists are going to snub their noses at this because it's not technically a lager yeast, but it performs and produces a very similar result. And for, you know, if I was home brewing lagers these days, I'd definitely be leaning into the Kveik Lutra yeast. Now, what about using something like a Kolsch yeast, which gives you almost a lager finish?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great way to do it. And Kolshist is, you know, you get a little bit of Esther character off her. And, you know, we played around with a lot of Kolshist at New Realm. Mm-hmm.

and there are a couple of them that really throw some very nice, like white wine esters. They're not big fruit bombs or anything. Do you recall which ones are, well, the, the one that, that comes immediately to mind is, is the Lalamont, uh, coal sheath, which I'm not even sure they're making anymore, but, uh, you know, it was a dry yeast. Um, and boy, it was, you know, you'd ferment that at, at, you know, 65 to 70 degrees and you get this beautiful, uh,

light wine character to it that just blended really well with the hop character and it made for a beautiful beer. So, you know, I think that's a great idea. Do you have any other quick lager brewing tips?

Um, not really. I, you know, I, I love brewing lagers, but we're pretty traditional in the way we approach it. I, you know, we do a step cool down. We do not lager as long as some brewers. I will say that. That's a good question. How long do you lager? Obviously time is money.

Yeah, exactly. You know, and we're tight on, on fermentation capacity, but you know, our traditional loggers, we go 28 days from, from fermenter full to, to the end of the process. And typically that allows for a 21 day lagering process and we do a step cooling process. So we'll start, you know, a diacetyl rest, which for our loggers is probably about 58 degrees Fahrenheit. Um,

And then we just step cool it down a couple of degrees every day until it gets down to about 31, 32. And that allows the yeast to stay active and really working on maturing the flavors and taking up those yeast characters that were produced during the fermentation and cleaning them up. And, you

You know, we just kind of stuck with that because it works. You don't go straight to a cold crash? I know some people do. Yeah, we don't. We do it very slow. And that's, you know, the idea is just to make sure that we take up all the acid aldehyde and diacetyl that maybe have been produced by the yeast during the fermentation and just really smooth out the flavor. You know, because if you cold crash it, all the yeast is going to settle out pretty quickly and you're not going to get that activity in.

Um, you know, that's something that, that we developed pretty early on at new realm that, you know, we've learned from some other brewers and, you know, certainly AB, uh, you know, they lagered their beers fairly warm, uh, by today's standards. You know, I think they were lagering at 48 or 50 degrees, which is very warm and they never went to full on chill until they process the beer to a bright tank. Um,

And I, you know, and that was, that was pretty interesting, but it was because that yeast, you know, would flock out if it got too cold and it would settle out. And then the yeast was not continually in contact with all the beer and cleaning it up. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, Mitch, we talked about your locations, but can you mention your website and where folks can find your beer?

Oh, of course. Yeah. So our website's pretty simple. It's www.newrealmbrewing.com. Our beers are sold in the entire state of Georgia, Virginia. We just launched in Tennessee. We're starting to sell our beer in Alabama and we're in South Carolina. So we're in all the Southeast states right now, except Florida and North Carolina. And we're working on

on plans for those. You know, when we started New Realm, we wanted to make sure that anywhere, any state we sold our beer, we had a brewery in it. And then really the first time we deviated from that was when we launched in Tennessee. And that's because we had so many people asking us to sell our beer there.

And, you know, we are, you know, potentially searching for a place to build a brew pub in Tennessee and or North Carolina. But, you know, we don't have anything in the works yet for that. We're just keeping our eyes open. But you can find our beer in Chattanooga, which is, you know, only an hour and a half from Atlanta and Nashville and Knoxville areas.

you know, and that's just started. So it may not be everywhere yet, but, uh, yeah, you know, and yeah, but we're selling a lot of beer in Virginia and, and, um,

In Georgia. And, you know, we get, get pretty close to Washington DC area, Northern Virginia. We sell a lot of beer around Arlington and that area. So that's, that's pretty close to where I live. So yeah, you should see our beer around. You know, it's a, we sell a lot of hazy, like a five. I have seen it around. So yeah. Yeah. That's our number one selling beer. So that's what our sales team leads with when they go into an account.

People usually try it, and then once their customers start drinking it, it stays on in a lot of places. Our Pilsner's also done really well on draft, too, which makes me very happy. Well, Mitch, your closing thoughts on the Pilsner and sort of the craft lager trend we're seeing here?

You know, it's one of those things that, you know, I'm on the board of the Brewers Association. And, you know, I get a lot of information through those activities. And then also our company, our CEO is pretty well connected with a lot of people in the beer industry that study the industry. And really, it's been a trend for several years now that people are gravitating towards lighter beers and easier drinking beers.

And we're seeing that. And finally, we're seeing that in craft beer. In a craft brewery, they can pull off a great pilsner who's doing something special. And, you know, it's funny. I always tell our salespeople that if brewers spot a trend or start creating a trend or start drinking, you know, a different beer, we need to pay attention to that because brewers are the ones that are at the forefront of these new trends. And for years...

brewers have evolved from looking for IPAs when they go into another craft brewery to looking for pilsners. And they're like, first beer I get anytime I go into a craft brewery is a pilsner. I think that's true. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and if you go out to Denver, you know, like for Great American Beer Festival or any sort of brewing event, the crowds at Bierstadt Lagerhaus are huge. I have been there myself.

So I think that's a sign. I think that's a sign that this is coming and it's going to stick around. And I still think IPAs are the number one thing in beer, and rightfully so. But I do think...

I do think the lagers are coming on quickly behind now. And that's been a slow developing trend, but I think it's really taken off. I think it's a good trend. I'm actually kind of happy about it. Me too. I love a good Pilsner. I, you know, and you know, a nice light, easy drinking beer with a ton of flavor that really works for me right now. Yeah. Well, Mitch, thank you again for coming on the show. Really appreciate you being here. Of course, Brad. It's always fun to talk.

Always a pleasure to have my guest, Mitch Steele, author of the book IPAs and also brewmaster at New Realm Brewing Company. Thank you again, Mitch. Thank you. A big thank you to Mitch Steele for joining me this week. Thanks also to Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They invite you to join their upcoming brewery workshop September 14th to 17th at Fort Collins, Colorado.

If you're launching a brewery, you don't want to miss this four-day event featuring top professional brewers who help you explore, plan, and start your own brewery. To learn more, please visit breweryworkshop.com. Again, that's breweryworkshop.com. And Beersmith Web, the online version of Beersmith Brewing Software. Beersmith for the Web lets you design great beer recipes from any browser, including your tablet or phone. Edit recipes on the go with access to the same full suite of recipe building tools as our desktop version.

Try Beersmith Web today by creating a free account at beersmithrecipes.com. And finally, a reminder to click that like and subscribe button on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you're on. Clicking those buttons is a great way to support the show. I'd like to thank you for listening, and I hope you have a great brewing week.