2018 Simple Means — Smoked Farmhouse Altbier

Today we’re releasing this year’s batch of Simple Means — Smoked Farmhouse Altbier. Altbier simply means “old beer” in German, and is traditional to the city and surrounding area of Düsseldorf, Germany. Altbier is a style that excites us because of its simplicity and drinkability. It’s easy to lose count of how many glasses of Altbier you’ve had in a session.

For our take on an Altbier, we felt the toasty notes from the malt played well with a fairly restrained dose of smoked malt. We added 23% beechwood smoked malt from Weyermann to a base of pale barley malt from Blacklands Malt. We then brewed with a fairly large dose of Perle hops at the start of the boil to keep the acidity in the beer from mixed culture fermentation at bay. Overall, Simple Means is an exercise in simplicity and restraint and is just good beer for drinking in our opinion.

This year’s batch (number four) was brewed in late October of last year and bottled in early January of this year. It’s 5.1% alcohol by volume, 26 IBU, 4.0 pH, and finished at 1.005 (1.25 Plato), which is a slightly sweet finish for our beer. It will be released Friday, February 9th at 4pm at our tasting room. It will be available by the glass and in bottles to go. We have about 6,000 bottles available (750ml/$12/no bottle limit). Simple Means will be distributed beyond out tasting room by our friends at Flood Independent Distribution.

We hope you enjoy!