Bamberg by the Lake
Weebil in the glow of a sunny afternoon at Half Acre.
Last week’s travels concluded in Chicago, where I had a fantastic conversation with Josh Noel at Half Acre Beer. Josh probably needs no introduction—the Chicago Tribune reporter has been on the beer beat over a decade, and wrote the indispensable account of craft brewing’s later years in Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out. Half Acre has been a leader of Chicago’s new guard since it started brewing in the city in 2009, and I included Daisy Cutter among the best American pales in The Beer Bible. We had a big, engaged crowd, and I especially enjoyed my pints of Pony Pilsner (loads of character) and a full-bodied 3.7% hoppy pale ale called, charmingly, Weebil (great balance but satisfyingly juicy).
The next day I made two stops, the second of which was Middle Brow Brewing, which makes delicate continental ales with a focus on mixed-fermentation saisons. They have a restaurant serving fantastic pizza and I met Michael Kiser there for dinner. I’d never heard of it before, but it was a wonderful place for food and excellent beer.
Meanwhile, my first stop was Dovetail, which I’ll discuss at length below.
If you’re staying in the Loop on your visit to Chicago, two bucks fitty will take you on a winding tour of the city via the elevated Brown Line and deposit you two minutes from Dovetail, known among American lagerheads (an avid and growing subculture) for its incredible devotion to tradition. Founded by Hagen Dost and Bill Wesselink in 2016, it is as close as you’re going to get to Franconia without leaving the country.
Dovetail was already on my agenda, but fortune smiled when assistant brewer Jenny Pfafflin came to my book event at Half Acre. I made plans to visit the next day, and she and Hagen gave me a tour. Franconia is where old practices never died, and they lit a fire in the hearts of the two Doemens-trained brewers. The two recreated a brewery that even looks like it might be located near Bamberg (or Prague, where the practices are very similar). The brewhouse is equipped to conduct decoction mashes, and the lagers all receive at least one. They use open fermenters and horizontal lagering tanks—and even a coolship for cooling wort. When I visited, a pan of Vienna lager was chilling and separating the trub. (They use it for something else as well—more below.) Bill and Hagen even found an old vessel in a boneyard that once belonged to Weihenstephan. A grant adorns the pub. (This caused some confusion on Instagram. Because of its proximity to the regular taps, some mistook the gooseneck faucets as an array of old-timey taps. In fact a grant was used to regulate flow during the lautering process. Many Czech breweries still use them—and I presume that’s true in Franconia. Here it’s just decorative.)
Perhaps even more impressively, Dovetail uses a Bamberger malt, but not that one. Weyermann has a huge clientele of international breweries, but Bamberger Mälzerei is the one more locals use. Hagen and Bill forged a relationship with the malthouse and now receive shipments direct from Bamberg. Given how critical base malts are to the flavor of Bavarian-style lagers, this gives Dovetail’s beer a wholly different flavor than the distinctively grainy Weyermann, the variety broadly used by American brewers.
One of these vessels is not like the others.
All the fermenters in this room are open.
The old decorative grant.
Vienna lager chillin’.
The beer is excellent. I started with an all-Vienna malt Wiener lager. Double-decocted, it is smooth and surprisingly light-bodied. Somewhat misleadingly, “Lager” is their homage to the rusticity of Franconian beer, and tracks like a rustic kellerbier. By the name you might mistake it for a mass market clone. No: double-decocted and vivid with Tettnanger hops, it is the most assertive and expressive of the lagers I tried—a beer that would send those Lagerheads into a rapturous ecstasy. It is rustic, with a fair bit of haze and a great malty backbone, yet a dry, lingering finish. While that must be the crowd-pleaser, I was even more impressed with the Helles, which really showed off the malt. Saphir hops add a wonderfully unusual component—though still classically German. They’re soft and fruity, tending toward stone fruit, and seem to evoke a sense of minerality. I instantly wished I had another hour and a maß of that beer.
I got a laugh from Hagen when I asked if they’d ever made an IPA; it carried the meaning of “over my dead body.” Yet the brewery makes a beer almost as remote from crisp lagers as IPA: spontaneously-fermented ales. They have a broad line, including many fruited varieties, and the wort that goes into them also spends time in that coolship. (While wild ales get a full night to absorb the wild yeasts and bacteria, regular beer stays just a couple hours from the time the first splash enters the pan until the last drop drizzles out—not long enough to inoculate the beer with unwanted yeasts.)
I can’t speak as much about these beers—all my questions were focused on lagers—though we did try a three-year-old gueuze-style blend made with the first vintage of their spontaneous beer. It was surprisingly similar to Belgian lambics. Those beers often feature a briny, salty flavor I hadn’t encountered outside the Zenne Valley—until we sampled that beer. It also had a bit of lime-like acidity and a tiny hint of composty funk (a good thing).
It’s an unusual brewery and we’ll worth visiting—and it’s a lot cheaper than a plane ticket to Germany.
The floor above the pub houses a vast barrel room.
Hagen Dost and Jenny Pfafflin