When craft beer’s postmodern landscape of barrel-aged beasts and sour everything starts to result in palate-fatigue, there’s always the beautifully simple respite found in well-crafted pilsner—a ubiquitous type of pale lager of moderate strength named after the Bohemian city Pilsen where it was first brewed in 1842. Crisp, clean, and slightly bitter, it's the ultimate in quaffability. It's no surprise then, that a majority of the beer brewed on Earth these days is pilsner, and yet, most bear the name rather dubiously. Here are eight superlative examples of the genre to reach for when you're wishing brewers would just make beer taste like beer again …
Birrificio Italiano Tipopils
Tipopils is the quintessential modern pilsner, which has created a growing cult-following with kegs getting drained quickly wherever tapped. Four different hop varietals are used in its lagering, giving a perfume-y bouquet and floral, grassy bittersweet flavor. When fresh it’s nearly impossible to consume in modest portions.
Firestone Walker Pivo Pils
Count Firestone Walker brewmaster Matt Brynildson among those with a cultish devotion to Tipopils, who modeled its dry-hopped Pivo Pils after it. A so-called “brewer’s beer,” there was little room for flaw in the recipe-building. The result is clean and dry, with a subtly New World fruity hop nose.
Half Acre Pony Pilsner
