Kirkland Helles lager

Best beer value

 Kirkland Signature — a name that conjures bulk toilet paper and thirty-pound bags of trail mix — also makes beer. Or rather, they commission beer. And not just any beer. These cans of budgeted bliss are contract brewed by Deschutes Brewery, which, as far as breweries go, is like finding out the gas station hot dog you just ate was actually made by Thomas Keller.

Their Helles — that’s “light” in German, though in beer it just means “not IPA” — is clear, golden, and practically screams, “Drink me while wearing cargo shorts.” At 4.5% ABV, it’s light enough to keep you from falling face-first into your lawn after three, yet satisfying enough to make you think, “Huh. Maybe Costco does know what they’re doing.”

It’s crisp, bready, ever-so-slightly bitter, and—perhaps most importantly—cheap. $14.60 for a twelve-pack (that’s 276 pesos if you’re playing the home game in Mexico). It even won a gold medal at the 2023 GABF, which makes it, technically, an award-winning beer you can pair with discount socks and an eight-pack of canned tuna.

Meanwhile, back in my kitchen, things were less award-winning and more—how shall I put it—frontier survival. I’d just finished mashing in a batch of my Black Butte Porter clone when the power cut out. Mid-sparge. That’s like getting halfway through brushing your teeth and realizing the water’s been shut off. With no pump to move water from the hot liquor I had to resort to the tried and true technique of scoop, pour and repeat. Like a one-man bucket brigade at a slow moving fire.

Wort collected, I faced another problem: boiling. Not the act, which is simple enough, but the timing. I couldn’t risk starting the boil without knowing I’d be able to chill it down and transfer to the fermenter. Because nothing says “tragedy” like a kettle of lovingly hopped wort gone tepid and sour in the dark.

So I waited. Sanitizing obsessively and checking the lights every ten minutes like a raccoon hoping for leftover pizza. Four hours later, the power blinked back on, and I fired up the burner like I was reviving Frankenstein.

In the end, the beer made it safely to the fermenter and seems, at this point, to be fermenting peacefully—unaware of the domestic drama that brought it into the world. This little mishap did get me wondering whether I should rebuild my old gravity-fed brew setup from California. A solid Plan B, sure, though still powerless against the whole "needing to chill the wort" issue unless I also invest in a hand-cranked glycol chiller powered by anxiety.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted on how the porter turns out. If nothing else, it’ll pair beautifully with a bulk package of relief and a Kirkland hot dog.

Cheers.

Brewing an IPL

  India Pale Lager (also called a Cold IPA in some corners of the beer world) is, at its core, an IPA fermented with lager yeast at cooler, lager-friendly temperatures. It’s not rocket science—just a way to get all the bold, hoppy character of an IPA with the clean, crisp edge that comes from cold fermentation.

I like them because they are the complete opposite of the beers I truly abhor: those murky, overly fruity New England IPAs. India Pale Lagers are a West Coast style, which naturally means they’re superior to anything being brewed in the Midwest or East Coast. (Sorry, but it had to be said.)

And let me just say—it’s been refreshing to see the haze finally clearing from tap lists. If I'm lucky, the hazy craze is on its way out, and clear beers are reclaiming their rightful place in the lineup at my favorite breweries. If I'm really lucky, those “hazies” will occupy a single tap which I believe is a fair share of the taproom landscape.

It’s been a long, sticky run for the sweet, cloying, muddy, and wholly undrinkable haze bomb. Why anyone wanted that style in the first place is beyond me. But brewers delivered—oh, they delivered. Gazillions of gallons of gooey, juicy sludge. My personal conspiracy theory? Some enterprising brewing collective took a failed batch, realized it looked like a yeast smoothie, and spun it into gold. They reproduced the mistake, marketed it as the next big thing, and convinced a shit-ton of other brewers to jump on board. Honestly? Genius.

But I digress. The real reason for this post is to share a recipe that hits the holy trinity of what makes a great India Pale Lager: clean, clear, and unapologetically hoppy. Let’s get into it.

One of my favorites

My IPL recipe:

I brewed an 11 gal. post boil batch anticipating 2 full 5 gallon kegs after fermentation. I referenced Bru'n water pale ale water profile and used 75% reverse osmosis water.

Efficiency 88%,  Attenuation 87%,  ABV 7.35%, SRM 5.5, IBU 66, OG 1.064, FG 1.008

20 lbs. Pilsner malt (Weyermann)

  1 lbs. Crystal #20 

  1 lbs. Dextrin malt

  2 kilos refined sugar at start of boil

Mash in at 152f. in 6 gal. h2o for 60 minutes.

Sparge for 45 minutes with 170f. h2o 

Boil 60 minutes with:

FWH : 60 gram Mosaic 13.6 a/a % for 21 ibu's

60 min. add: 100 gram Chinook from previous dry hopped batch est. 31 ibu's

20 min. add: 30 gram Chinook 11.4 a/a% for 11 ibu's

 5 min. add: 30 gram Columbus 14.7 a/a% for 3 ibu's 

20 min. Cool Pool addition at 160f. with 120 gram Columbus and 120 gram Idaho 7

Chilled down to 50f., transfer to fermenter and pitched salvaged 34/70 lager yeast. After 3 days raised temperature to 53f., after 3 more days raised temp. to 57f., after 3 more days raised temp. to 62f. for 1 day.

Then, lowered temp. to 55f. and dry hopped for 12 hours with 60 grams each of Columbus and Idaho 7, then another addition of dry hops for 12 more hours with 60 grams each of Columbus and Idaho 7.

Transfer to kegs and lagered 1 month in refer at 40f.

On tap now at my house if you want to come by for a pint. Cheers!

Where's the head?

 Why IPA Foam Ain’t What It Used to Be

After spending two years nestled in the warm tortilla-fold of Michoacan, Mexico, I returned to California expecting certain things: traffic, overpriced avocados, and IPAs with foam — you know, the normal stuff. But no. The craft beer I once knew had changed — like an old friend who used to be the life of the party but now sighs a lot and wears Hokas.

What struck me most — and yes, it felt personal — was the absence of head. Not mine, though arguably that’s long gone, but the kind that used to crown a pint glass with snowy, cloud-like dignity. These days, every IPA I’m handed at the bar or I pour from a can has the low carbonation of a forgotten bottle of sparkling water that’s been sitting in the back of the fridge since last Christmas, and the lack of foam that makes me question everything I thought I knew about what a good IPA should be. There it sits in front of me, hoppy as hell, yes — but also just liquid disappointment and the faint echo of better times.

Flat: My Sudsy Disappointment

Modern West coast IPA's have a way of showing up at your table looking like they’ve already been sipped. One big culprit is dry hopping. Great for aroma — really, it’s why your beer smells like a bag of grapefruit peels and why you love it, but when brewers load it in late, they also add oils and compounds that kill foam. It still smells amazing, but the head takes the hit.

A lot of these West coast beers also use low-protein malts, or even adjuncts like rice or corn to keep things light and crisp. That works for keeping the malt flavor low to highlight the hops, sure, but it means there’s less structure to hold any foam in place. And then you’ve got all the filtering and fining — the stuff that makes the beer clear and pretty, but strips out the proteins that help with head retention. Crystal clear often means no drama in the glass. That said, there are many that are unfiltered or purposely hazy that still present headless and low in carbonation.

Some yeast strains don’t help either. They’re chosen for a clean finish, or bio-transformation but don’t bring much to the table when it comes to foam. So the beer drinks smooth and fruity, but looks like someone forgot to finish pouring it.

I want to take the lessons I've learned from my sad experience with many of the current Ipa's I've drunk here and utilize them in my home brewery in Mexico when I return. I still want some of those hop bombs but may make some ajustments to my grain bill to mitigate this negative hop oil effect. I think most effective would be an increase in dextrin malt. My thought is that the added body may help. But I'm also willing to try tossing in some wheat or chit malt to help build that foam. I may ease up on the dry hops, I still want that aroma, but maybe I won’t go overboard. A lighter touch can mean better head retention and still get the point across that it's a hoppy beer. Finally, I'll try to dial in my carbonation levels to 2.5 volumes. I suspect that some of the canned beers I've had are low in carbonation out of fear of over-carbonation from a refermentation in the can due to hop creep. That's just me guessing.

In the mean time there are some West Coast breweries I would recommend that still build an Ipa with proper foam:

• Beachwood Brewing (Long Beach): West Coast bangers with killer head retention.
• Russian River Brewing (Santa Rosa): “Pliny the Elder” still crushes it with stable foam and big hops.
• Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. (Chico): Classic brewery, textbook foam quality.

Cheers!