Topic Archives: Lagers
Monday Night Atlanta 404 Lager hits the Peach State soon
Monday Night Atlanta 404 Lager, a new lower alcohol by volume lager will debut soon from the Atlanta-based brewery.
Monday Night Brewing is prepping a new lager- namely Atlanta 404 Lager, for release in the near future. For context – “404” is Atlanta’s area code. (Think NYC’ s famous 212 area code.)
The lager mot only carries the “404” area code, but is purportedly is also brewed with primarily Georgia grown ingredients.
PIC ARCHIVE: MONDAY NIGHT BREWING
It is the intention of Monday Night to make Atlanta 404 Lager more than a beer. It is important to note that finally plans/details haven’t been finalized- the brewery wants to see a portion of the sales of the 404 set aside to create a “404 Fund” intended to be a financial vessel to give back to the city.
Monday Night Atlanta 404 Lager will be available year round in cans and draft. A release date has not been set.
Style: Lager
Availability: 12oz Cans, Draft. Year-Round
Debut: TBA
4.04% ABV
Three Taverns Beeps Beer
Sierra Nevada adds Crisp & Tropical Little Thing
Sierra Nevada’s “Little Things” Series expands with the addition of Crisp Little Thing a summer approaches.
The series started with Hazy Little Thing, which is the first nationally distributed hazy IPA in the U.S. For summer 2023, the brewery is releasing a lager- Crisp Little Thing, as well as Tropical Little Thing, the second in their limited rotating IPA series.
Crisp Little Thing is described as “crushable” as most lagers tend to be, 4.7% alcohol by volume and a smooth 18 IBUs. Only found the the “Little Things Party Pack” – 12 pack variety pack.
Tropical Hazy Little Thing is available in 12oz/6 packs, now through August 2023. The IPA features Cascade, Sabro, Sultana, El Dorado, and Amarillo hops, built on the back of oats, Two-Row malt and wheat.
Crisp Little Thing (4.7% ABV)
Style: Lager
Availability: 12oz Cans, Mixed Pack Exclusive
Tropical Little Thing (7% ABV)
Style: IPA
Hops: Sabro, Sultana, El Dorado, Cascade, Amarillo
Availability: 12oz Cans, Draft. May-August.
Debut: Summer 2023
Fall Kickoff: Georgia Tech Athletics now have their own beer
Thanks to Atlanta’s New Realm Brewing, Georgia Tech Athletics has its first official beer. The beer launches today ahead of Tech’s first football game against Clemson.
New Realm Helluvienna Lager debuts today, an amber lager suitable for mass consumption at tailgates, at home or bars during any and all of Georgia Tech’s sports programs. The launch of this beer on the first day of Tech’s football season was intentional, according to New Realm’s co-founder and CEO Carey Falcone. “We have enjoyed the support of the Georgia Tech community since we opened in 2018. “We are looking forward to being on-campus and a part of Tech history,” Falcone says. “From our first meeting with Angel Cabrera (GT President), Todd Stansbury (GT Athletic Director), and the leadership team at GT, it was clear that this was much more than a sponsorship, it was a partnership,” Falcone adds.
“The style of beer that comes to mind when we think sports is a lager,” Jeff Chassner, the brewery’s Chief Sales Officer tells Beer Street Journal. “We’ve brewed a lot of German-style beers over the last two years, so an amber lager similar to our Bavarian Prince festbier was pretty much where we wanted to be,” he adds. ” New Realm sent a few beers over to their friends at Tech to try, and the Vienna lager won hands down.
READ MORE: NEW REALM & BLACKBERRY SMOKE TEAM UP
Helluvienna Lager features pilsner, Vienna, German Munich, and Carared Malts, along with German Hersbrucker hops making it about much of a European -style beer as possible, minus the location. As for the name? Helluvienna Lager is a play on the (I’m a) Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech” fight song. Interestingly, that fight song started as a Scottish drinking song in the late 1800s. Naturally.
Here in the 21st Century, this New Realm/Georgia Tech collaboration hits shelves this week in 16-ounce cans and draft. It’s already on tap at Atlanta-area Taco Macs, and on shelves at Total Wine, Tower, and Mac’s Beer and Wine. Over the next few weeks – metro Atlanta QT, Kroger, and Publix locations.
Tonight the #4 ranked Clemson Tigers travel to Atlanta to play Georgia Tech for a rare Monday night at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Clemson is favored by 22.5 points. This beer might go from “fun” to “medicinal” quickly. Let’s hope New Realm brewed enough of it.
Style: Vienna Lager
Hops: Hersbrucker
Malts: Pilsner, Vienna, German Munich, Carared Malts
Availability: 16oz Cans, Draft. Year-Round
Debut: 9/5/22
5.2% ABV
Blackberry Smoke band has their own beer thanks to New Realm
Music collaborations are nothing new in craft beer but that doesn’t make each one unique. This is an either way it’s cool statement – New Realm Brewing is releasing a beer with the band Blackberry Smoke. If you know the band, you’re already excited. If you’re not there yet, their music is in the tv show Yellowstone. In yet?
This collaboration comes from a mutual friendship between the band and New Realm Brewing that started back in high school. Here are New Realm, fresh cans of New Realm Blackberry Smoke Lager are being signed by Brit Turner, drummer. He greets me with a smile and a beard that literally says musican or craft brewer.
Blackberry Smoke, a rock/blues/country band formed in Atlanta, Georgia 21 years ago. “The best way to celebrate your 21st is with a beer!” Turner jokes. “But really though, it’s the best way I can see. it.” He always hoped there would be a full scale band inspired beer, but getting one is harder than you think. Brewery capacity and distribution is a complicated thing. Turner says there was a small scale “Smoke” beer made in North Carolina a few years ago, that was available at one of their sold out shows. The band hoped the rest would be available in distribution later. Their rabid music and beer-loving fans managed to drink it all that night and there was none left over.
“We knew a few of the New Realm Brewing folks as far back as high school,’ Turner says. We have basically have our own record label situation and making a beer with a craft brewer really made sense to us,” he adds. Blackberry Smoke started a year before the first iPod, a few years before YouTube and more than a decade before Spotify. “Our only choice was to tour,” say Turner. Craft beer has that “out of the garage” feel to it like a lot of rock bands.
In preparation for Blackberry Smoke Lager, Turner sat down for a tasting session with brewmaster and co-founder Mitch Steele. “A lager just makes sense,” Steele tells me. “We made it with a touch of pilsner malt on top of 2-Row, so there’s a little bit of Europe in this lager.” It’s crazy how many bands we’ve interviewed lean towards the lighter side of beer like a pilsner or lager. Almost every time their reasoning is that they want to drink a few on stage and still be able to play.
Over the course of a few hours with the band, Turner’s excitement was solely focused on what this beer means to their fans. Steele and Turner designed it with them in mind. “They got us where we are, and we wanted to do something for them,” Turner says. “I’m more excited to see them drink it then I am to have it.”
Mitch Steele himself is a guitarist and music fan, making it easy to put a little extra musical passion into it. Both brewing and music require emotion and passion if you want it to be good. New Realm Blackberry Smoke is about both.
Two decades ago Blackberry Smoke got together and started playing in bars. Not long after, they were performing with Guns N’ Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Church, ZZ Top, and Zach Brown Band.
Honestly, to Turner and the rest of the band, this might be more exciting.
New Realm Blackberry Smoke Lager is available in 16-ounce cans and draft where ever New Realm is sold.
Style: Lager
Availability: 16oz Cans, Draft.
Debut: Late May, 2022
4.5% ABV
Monday Night Saint Monday blesses the market this week
Monday Night Saint Monday, a new seasonal Helles lager debuts for the first time this week.
This lighter alcohol by volume beer (4.4%) is designed to be a “recovery beer” of sorts, after a full weekend of boozing. The beer’s name “Saint Monday” refers to the tradition of being “absent” on Monday. We are assuming to recover from drinking or to continue drinking. As a cultural reference, Saint Monday is documented back to the 18th Century in England. Even Benjamin Franklin referenced Saint Monday in his autobiography.
Monday Night has made a lot of fun and experimental beers lately, but brewmaster Peter Kylie wanted to take a run at German traditional style like the Helles Lager. Saint Monday is brewed with German Pilsner and Munich malts, as well as German Hallertau and Czech Saaz hops. The brewers put a strong focus on matching the water chemistry of southern Germany.
Spicy and floral notes culminate in a clean, bready, and dare we say benevolent finish.
Monday Night Saint Monday is available in 12-ounce cans and draft the week of November 8th.
Style: Helles Lager
Hops: Hallertau Mittlefruh, Saaz
Malts: Pilsner, Munich
Availability: 12oz Cans, Draft. Seasonal Release.
Distribution: GA, TN, AL. All taprooms.
4.4% ABV
Tucker Brewing takes home Georgia’s 1st lager gold in 30 years
Georgia’s Tucker Brewing Company just took home Great American Beer Festival Gold in the Light Lager category. In an American landscape of nearly 10,000 breweries, that’s not an easy feat.
American craft beer is in a bit of a “lager renaissance” of sorts it’s finally normal [again] to see a lager on tap at a brewery. Hell, just a few years ago in Georgia folks were all but drowning in a sea of IPAs and stouts, but now – the Peach State is home to at least three lager-focused breweries. We’d like to extend a personal thank you that no one has tried to make a milk lager. (Yet.)
Tucker Brewing’s Lager, aka Tucker Lager, is barely four years old. The brewery’s appropriately named head brewmaster Tucker Eagleson (purely coincidental) was brewing at Heavy Seas in Baltimore, Maryland when he stumbled across the head brewer job at Tucker Brewing on ProBrewer. His name naturally got his foot in the door.
One of the conditions of getting the job was that Eagleson had to have at least two lager recipes ready for the brewery’s upcoming Tucktoberfest that year. Within weeks of landing in Georgia, he had a märzen and Honeysuckle Helles Lager, that would eventually be Tucker Lager ready to go.
The märzen is seasonal, but Lager immediately became year-round. “The recipes for either beer never really changed after the fest,” Eagleson says. It was just a series of [a thousand] different tweaks and sensory panels to improve the beer,” he adds.
Light Lager may sound like a common beer, but it’s unforgiving if you don’t know what you’re doing. A stout or porter might hide imperfections or off-flavors, but a lager is like changing clothes in the front yard. You see everything.
Here in 2021, Eagleson figured it might be time to enter it in GABF, which still held the competition despite canceling the public festival for the second year in a row. Last Saturday morning, Eagleson woke up to a text from brewery co-founder Ashley Hubbard that out of 137 category entries, Tucker Lager won gold. “It took a second for it to set in,” he says.
It’s actually the first gold medal for a lager in Georgia in more than 30 years. A medal that’s well deserved. The all-German hop and malt lager is about as clean and crisp of a beer as you’ll find anywhere.
Taking home gold for a light lager on your first try is no easy feat I say to him. Eagleson smiles and simply replies. “I’ll drink to that.”