Alma Mader Premiant Czech-style Pilsner

“Premiant is our take on a traditional Czech pilsner,” says Alma Mader brewer and cofounder Nick Mader. “We rely on two varieties of Bohemian pilsner malt that help to lay a bready malt foundation, which balances the spicy and snappy Saaz bitterness. Floral and dried-lemon aromas, effortlessly crisp, and a perfect pairing with absolutely anything.”

ALL-GRAIN

Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)

Brewhouse efficiency: 72%

OG: 1.046

FG: 1.008

IBUS: 35

ABV: 5%

MALT/GRAIN BILL

5.55 lb (2.5 kg) Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner

2.65 lb (1.2 kg) Weyermann Floor-malted Bohemian

Pilsner

5.6 oz (159 g) Weyermann Acidulated (see below) 4.2 oz (119 g) Weyermann Carafoam

HOPS SCHEDULE

0.3 oz (9 g) Hallertauer Magnum at 75 minutes [15 IBUS] 0.7 oz (20 g) Saaz at 15 minutes [5 IBUS]

2.7 oz (77 g) Saaz at whirlpool [15 IBUS]

YEAST

White Labs WLP800 Pilsner Lager or other Czech lager strain

DIRECTIONS

Mill the grains and mash at 149°F (65°C) for 30 minutes. Aim for a mash ph of 5.2–5.25, adjusting acidulated malt as necessary. Use an iodine test to ensure starch conversion (see “On the Road to Conversion,” beerandbrewing .com). Vorlauf until your runnings are clear, then run off into the kettle. Sparge at 166°F (74°C) and top up as necessary to get 6 gallons (23 l) of wort—or more, depending on your evaporation rate. Boil for 75 minutes, adding hops according to the schedule. After the boil, do a whirlpool step: Stir for 5 minutes to create a vortex, add hops, and allow 20 minutes to settle. Chill to about 47°F (8°C), aerate thoroughly, and add plenty of healthy yeast. Ferment at 50°F (10°C), allowing the temperature to rise on Day 5 or 6 for a diacetyl rest. Once fermentation is complete and the beer is clear of diacetyl, crash to 32°F (0°C). Drop the yeast or rack into secondary and lager for at least 3 weeks. Filter and/or fine as desired before packaging. allowing CO2 from the final days of fermentation to go back into the beer. They use finings for a clearer product. Then, after primary fermentation and some initial cold time in the cylindroconicals, they finish each lager in a 10-barrel horizontal tank for about four weeks. “We max that thing out,” Nick says. “We really need a bigger one.”

One reason for using the horizontal is that Nick likes to see how the beer evolves once it’s off the yeast. Another is that it avoids tying up the cylindroconicals, so they can keep moving both ales and lagers through the brewery. “We’re able to make more lagers that way, honestly,” he says. “Instead of tying up the tank for six weeks, seven weeks, we’re only tying it up for three to four, which helps make lager viable for a really small brewery like us. We’re trying to release a new lager every three to four weeks, which is not an easy task.”

In the tasting room, they’re usually pouring that rotating lager with a side-pull faucet they imported from Lukr in the Czech Republic. “If that faucet alone just makes people ask, ‘What is that? I want whatever’s on that,’ then that’s great. It justifies whatever that faucet cost.”

Maybe the faucet mojo is working: Whenever the tasting room is open, whichever lager they’re pouring is usually the top-selling draft beer. “In terms of packaged to-go, IPA is what goes quicker,” says Tania, who manages the tasting room. “But our lagers do really well, too.”

For the Maders, that faucet is just another detail in serving the best lagers they can. “And because we don’t get to brew them as often, I think we put even more emphasis on that,” Nick says. If it takes seven weeks to brew and a couple more weeks to enjoy, that’s “a sixth of our year. Let’s make this the best that we can, and let’s make sure we’re dialed in.”

Three Lanes of IPA

“We have almost these two worlds of beers and of customers: people who come in here just for lager, and people who come here just for IPA,” Nick says. “We’ve got a great homebrew scene in Kansas City, and these longtime homebrewers come in, and they want to drink lagers. And then also this fun IPA scene, where people are just like every week—ipa, IPA, IPA.”

Alma Mader IPAS come in what Nick describes as three distinct “lanes.”

The first but least trafficked is West Coast style—bright and bitterish, “but with a little softer profile,” he says. “All pils malt, big hot-side [hop] additions, big dry hopping—but still taking notes from hazy IPA in terms of water profile and in terms of bitterness level. … I would say that’s not the busiest lane. It’s the lane we want to make busier, but we’re not going to sit there and pretend it’s what people are coming here for.”

What people are coming to Alma Mader for—besides the lagers—are hazy IPAS. There are two lanes of those.

“You’ve got the middle lane, the second lane, which is our own house-style IPA,” he says. “Soft—everything revolves around soft water profiles and not overwhelming bitterness. This middle lane is kind of in between New England and West Coast—still focused on finishing it dry, so it makes it really drinkable, and using a lot of these really expressive American hops. It still has haze in it, but it’s not sweet.” One example is Trichrome, a juicy and aromatic IPA that checks in at 50 IBUS.

“And then we have the New England style,” he says, in the third lane. “A little less attenuation. A little bit different usage of hops—really steering away from too many hot-side additions, and just these massive dry hops. And a little bit more of chloride-driven water profile.” That includes Breezecatcher.

Incidentally, there might be a fourth lane emerging, somewhere between West Coast and Lagerland. Alma Mader has been experimenting with “cold IPA,” i.e., crisp West Coast–style IPA fermented like lager—or lager hopped like IPA, depending on how you look at it. “The first one we did went really well,” Nick says. “But that was also our anniversary week, so everything did well that week. But I don’t know if it’s this new way of entry into West Coast IPA or not.”

All of those IPAS are driven by a stubbornness—informed by his time in Washington state—to get the finest hops possible. “I spend a lot of time badgering our hop suppliers,” Nick says. “For a small brewery, I’m probably really squeaky. I just want to get the best that we can get, and I think that’s worked out.”

He deals a lot with Hollingbery & Son, a supplier in Yakima. They’ve gotten to participate in hop selection with Hollingbery—distantly, because of the pandemic, but in the Maders’ view, that’s also been a positive thing for small breweries.

They receive brewer’s cuts of freshly kilned hops at harvest time and share the selection process with the team—brewers Michael Reynolds and Riley Wetzel. (Wetzel also has extensive experience with lab testing and sensory evaluation, while also helping to run the tasting room—another “all hands on deck” experience.) That way the whole team learns from hop selection and participates, rather than it just being a one- or two-person trip to harvest.

Such trips are rare for Tania and Nick anyway. For now, long hours are the norm. Out behind the brewery is a gravel pile where the team likes to sit and relax with beers after work, when they get the chance. “It’s been our personal paradise the past three years,” Nick says. “A stinky gravel beach.”

Incidentally, the new lager they released in August is a Czech-style desítka light lager called Gravel Beach. It’s a tribute to their own version of backyard culture—and to moments enjoyed because they’ve earned them.