Bierstadt Lagerhaus Slow Pour Pils is what those in the brewing industry call a “brewers beer,” meaning it’s favored by brewers and other industry folks over beers often made for the general public, which are perhaps thought to be more commercially viable or more hype-y. As the saying goes, “brew for the king, live like a pauper. Brew for the paupers, live like a king.”
Slow Pour Pils is a beer-flavored beer, a delicate, nuanced pale lager, with a mild to medium sized bitterness (depending on how many of them you’ve had). You can tell the Pils is well flavored with Old World hops and there is a subdued sweetness afforded by the malt alongside a step mashing and decoction regimen. A clean, strong, and healthy fermentation rounds out this beer, which is arguably too easy to drink.
Bierstadt brewer and owner Ashleigh Carter has been making this beer for some time; it’s become a bit of a right of passage for brewers traveling to Denver. As Snallygaster opens the gates to kraken ticket holders on Pennsylvania Avenue at 2:00pm Eastern, the Great American Beer Festival will kick off at the same time, noon Mountain.
A Slow Pour Pils down the gullet is often associated with the Great American Beer Festival–countless brewers have told me Bierstadt Lagerhaus is their first stop in Denver– but we have the magnetic pull of Snallygaster 2024 to thank for the incoming Bierstadt Lagerhaus beers. I got my Bierstadt cans at Arlington’s The Brew Shop, where owner Julie Drews worked hard to secure the goods from Denver. Not only was Pils on offer, but so was Dunkel, Helles, and Carter’s Oktoberfest lager. Both Oktoberfest and Pils will be pouring during Snallygaster. And while we are told Carter won’t be at Snallygaster, we have her to thank as the technical editor of Modern Lager Beer: Techniques, Processes, and Recipes. It is my analysis that the book is a guide that will launch thousands of lagers.
Bierstadt’s Oktoberfest is a bit more mellow than the Slow Pour Pils, but that snappy bitterness keeps me coming back for more Pils. It is a bit ironic that Oktoberfest tastes more subdued– certainly it tastes of more malt, still not sweet–while Pils boasts a combination of hop-driven bitterness and a tiny sulfur hit as my palate pulses my brain, a proclivity pushing bitterness. What was just a bit too bitter two sips ago is now in its sweet spot. Pils becomes a goldilocks beer–not too bitter, not too sulfuric–the more of it you consume. Carter has brewed up a capstone class in what brewer’s beer can be.
As we try the delightful beers of Bierstand Lagerhaus on Pennsylvania Avenue at Snallygaster 2024, I would be remiss not to say that there is tremendous effort being put into the brewing of high quality lager, 52 weeks of the year. Carter, outside of manufacturing some of the best lager America has to offer, is a regular in the beer judges circuit. And while her skills in sensory are flexed as a judge, she is also doing some soft diplomacy as she travels to countries like Chile and shows the local folks the best qualities American brewers have to offer.
Similarly, I have never stepped foot in The Brew Shop at a time where Drews isn’t making her business work. Sometimes she’s working moving cases and kegs, sometimes dealing with distributors who have botched orders, or sent her product that is out of date, and similarly shady shenanigans that anyone selling beer will likely be familiar with. But I’ll be damned if she hasn’t made our beer scene a better place after all her hard work.
As we live in a world where women’s rights are increasingly under attack, both at home and internationally, the importance of smart, powerful women has never seemed more critical, and the beer industry is no exception. Prost!
