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Lager Beer Made In USA, Part 3: Live Oak, Trailblazers of Texas Craft Beer

July 14, 2024 ak Leave a comment

This is the third part in my series about some of the excellent lager beer that I had on our trip to the US in June 2024. After almost a week in Chicago, we flew to Austin, TX for a change in scenery and culture. While a big part of our visit to Austin was about experiencing Texas barbecue, we still visited a few of breweries, one of which especially stood out.

Live Oak Brewing Company (Del Valle, TX): Trailblazers of Texas Craft Beer

There are others who have told the story of Live Oak, located just outside Austin, TX, much better than I ever could, like Ruvani de Silva, who called it “Bamberg on the Colorado” in her article for Good Beer Hunting from 2022.

We had actually gotten in touch with Ruvani a few months before our trip and said we’d meet up for a few beers. As things worked out, we agreed to meet her and her husband Justin at Live Oak. Parallel to that, Tom Beckmann of Goldfinger also gave me the contact details of Dusan Kwiatkowski, Live Oak’s head brewer. Arriving at the brewery, we were greeted by Dusan and quickly joined by Chip McElroy, one of Live Oak’s co-founders. This all very quickly turned into a conversation of beer nerds talking about beer nerd things, followed by even more beer nerd talk when Ruvani and Justin arrived.

Beer-nerd alert!!A fab night chatting all things beer history, styles, ingredients & culture with fellow beer writer @akrennmair.bsky.social ,his lovely wife @louise.krennmair.bsky.social & @LiveOakBrewing ‘s dream-team Chip & Dusan, while tucking into their ever-brilliant brews – cheers y’all!🤠🍻👍🏽

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— Amethyst Heels / Ruvani de Silva (@amethystheels.bsky.social) Jun 7, 2024 at 6:06 PM

I had brought a bottle of Knoblach Hell for Ruvani as a small gift from Germany, and she decided to share it with everyone, while I was asked to sign the brewery’s copy of my Vienna Lager book.

Dusan and Chip were so nice to invite us again the next day to actually show us around the brewery and hang out a bit more. Dusan even dropped us off at the Airbnb we were staying and picked us up again, as he happened to live basically around the corner.

Live Oak is a true trailblazer of Texas craft beer. When they started out in 1997, they basically had to make things work with the little funding they had, in a state that at the time did not have much microbrewing going on yet (to this day, Live Oak is Texas’ 7th-oldest operating brewery).

And what they were doing seemed very unusual at the time, namely to have a lager-focused brewery. To this day, Live Oak’s flagship beer is Pilz, a Czech-style pale lager, and they started out with just that beer because it was what the co-founders Chip McElroy and Brian “Swifty” Peters wanted to drink. Since then, the range of beer has grown substantially, but the focus on lager and Central European beer styles is still there (even the two IPAs on the menu when we visited were bottom-fermented Cold IPAs).

The first beer I had at the brewery was Big Bark. They call it an amber lager but it really is a Vienna Lager, and a pretty good one, too. Pilz was equally good, and even better straight from the Zwickel, which is how Chip served it to us.

Chip MyElroy pouring Live Oak Pilz directly from a tank into a Tübinger glass. Please note Chip's t-shirt saying "Spudweiser", a potato adjunct lager that they had brewed. — Chip MyElroy pouring Live Oak Pilz directly from a tank into a Tübinger glass. Please note Chip’s t-shirt saying “Spudweiser”, a potato adjunct lager that they had brewed.

I tried all the classic styles, and they were all as good as they could be. The Hefeweizen caught me out in how poor my tasting skills are, as I misperceived the clove as banana. The Grodziskie at 3.0% ABV was absolutely on point, while the Schwarzbier captured the essence of the style: definitely a lot more flavourful and complex than Köstritzer, probably the baseline for the style, without getting too malty or full-bodied and/or verging into Czech Dark Lager territory (like some Franconian examples such as Neder Schwarze Anna do). Gold is their German Pilsner that I also couldn’t fault. Two friends of mine had told me beforehand that they actually preferred Live Oak Gold to Live Oak Pilz, and I get why. Personally, I found both equally good

Their latest beer on tap was Lyghte, a 3.2% American Light Lager, and it was absolutely gorgeous (for the style). Just the perfect lower-ABV beer for the summer heat in Texas, and unlike the classic big brewery brand examples of the style, full of flavour.

One thing I found particularly interesting was how both Chip and Dusan were drinking their own beer. More than once, Chip ordered a “Pilziskie”, a pour of half Pilz and half Grodziskie. I of course also had to try that, and yes, I get the appeal: just a hint of smoke (the pure Grodziskie doesn’t have much smoke aroma in the first place), and slightly less alcohol than Pilz. Dusan on the other hand drank a “Bark Lyghte” when he welcomed us, a blend of Big Bark and the new Lyghte. I found that one even better, as the malt character of Big Bark was still there, just as an overall lighter beer. Lower-ABV Vienna Lager, aka Abzugbier, was a thing after all (and still is if you brew it yourself). Louise suggested a “Spud Lyghte” blend if they ever brew their “Spudweiser” potato beer again.

As for being a trailblazing brewery, Live Oak was also very early in brewing a Grodziskie, and even brewed a collaboration once with Browar Grodzisk in Poland back in 2018. They even went all to way to specifically use Nowotomyski hops, a Polish hop variety that had been on the brink of extinction. Live Oak have since then formed a closer relationship to Polish hop-growers and hop-breeders, also had some of them over for a visit in Austin, and brew a seasonal Polish-style Pils called “Piwko Pils” using Polish hops. Stan Hieronymus’ 2019 article about Grodziskie tells us even more about Live Oak’s approach to the beer style.

The brewer on shift (I forgot your name, sorry!), looking at the sight glass while drawing off wort from the kettle after the boil.

The sight glass of the kettle, with a lamp behind it. Around it, lots of pipes can be seen. — The brewer on shift (I forgot your name, sorry!), looking at the sight glass while drawing off wort from the kettle after the boil.

Like most lager-focused breweries, Live Oak also love their decoction mashing. Their kit is not optimal for it, as they have a setup of a heatable mash tun, a lauter tun and a kettle. They actually use the mash tun for boiling the decoctions, but it means extra effort, as for every decoction, the portion of the mash not to be boiled needs to be pumped over into the lauter tun, then the decoction needs to be brought to a boil, then pumped over into the lauter tun, and finally the whole mash needs to be pumped back into the mash tun. It makes the process last quite a bit longer, but as Chip and Dusan said, it’s definitely worth it. They hope to eventually extend the brewery with a smaller kettle dedicated to just boiling decoctions which should significantly improve the brewing process and turnaround times.

Having been a trailblazer of Texas craft beer, Live Oak probably felt it the most how COVID and places serving draft beer basically shutting down completely leveled the field within the industry. When Live Oak started out, they had a hard time getting their beer into bars, and it was a lot of work for them to establish themselves on the market. Chip said that most of their draft accounts got wiped out, and instead of being one of only very few craft beer options in the state of Texas when they started out, post-COVID they now have to compete with 60+ other breweries to get their beers back into bars and restaurants. The trend towards drinking at home during COVID only partially covered the loss in draft beer business, and Live Oak still isn’t at pre-COVID production volumes.

Live Oak are still firmly rooted in their local community, though. Texas supermarket chain H-E-B is apparently their biggest customer (when we went shopping there once, I bought a six pack of Big Bark), while both barbecue places we went to, Franklin Barbecue and Micklethwait Craft Meats, had Live Oak beers on offer (for the record, I had Lone Star at Franklin because it’s probably the most iconic Texan beer and so I just had to have it at one of the best barbecue restaurants in the state of Texas, and Stiegl Grapefruit Radler at Micklethwait because it was just so incredibly hot).

Lots of horizontal lagering tanks at Live Oak.

If you’re a subscriber to Craft Beer & Brewing magazine, Live Oak have published recipes to two of their beers in the magazine, in particular for their Grodziskie and for Schwarzer Rauch, their smoked Schwarzbier.

And even totally outside the topic of beer, Live Oak’s taproom is absolutely worth a visit. There’s a food truck there, a large outdoor seating area, and if you’re into Disc Golf (to be honest, I’ve not heard of it before visiting Live Oak), they have a large Disc Golf course, designed by head brewer Dusan.

In any case, Live Oak Brewing just outside of Austin is absolutely worth a visit, and was one of my top 4 breweries that I visited in the US.

Brewing, Recipes

My Summer Beers for 2024

May 26, 2024 ak 2 Comments

I feel like I’ve mostly blogged about beer history in the last year, but the truth is: I still brew beer at home. So this time, I want to talk about what beers I brewed for myself together with friends as the summer beers of 2024.

Czech 8° Pale Lager, Revision 3

Both in 2021 and 2022, I brewed Czech Pale Lagers specifically for the summer: refreshing, with lots of character, but lower in alcohol. In Czechia, beer “styles” are most often described in two dimensions, one is the colour (pale, semi-dark, dark, black), the other one is a band of strength, but not alcohol content, but rather original gravity, i.e. the amount of sugar in the wort before fermentation. “Eight degrees” thus refers to an original gravity of 8° Plato. It’s certainly on the lower end for Czech draught beers (10° is much more common), but it’s certainly allowed, though quite rare these days.

In my first version in 2021, I tried out a grist of mostly Pilsner malt with a small amount of dark caramel malt (CaraBohemian in my case), double decoction mash of course, Czech Saaz hops for bittering, German Brewers Gold hops as a late addition, and fermented with Lallemand Diamond Lager yeast. The idea was to get a citrusy-zesty note from the Brewers Gold like I had tasted it in other beers I had previously brewed, but in practice, the beer was a bit fruitier than expected. Still, it was very drinkable and well-received even by a few professional brewers I gave samples to.

In my second version in 2022, I slightly changed things: still double decoction mash, but just 100% Bohemian Pilsner malt this time, 100% Czech Saaz hops (did somebody say SMaSH?), and Imperial L28 yeast (allegedly the Pilsner Urquell D strain). That one was absolutely amazing.

So for my third version for 2024 (I had only brewing plans for 2023), I collaborated with my friend Christian, co-founder of THE MASH PIT (which unfortunately had to close during the pandemic) to brew a slightly different version: the change this time was to the grist: instead of 100% Bohemian Pilsner malt, we instead went for 80% Pilsner and 20% Munich malt. Christian in his time as brewer had made the experience that such additions of Munich malt can add just a bit more malt complexity, while I had noticed the use of Munich malt in Vinohradský Pivovar’s Káranská 9 beer which is described as being brewed with Munich and Pilsner malt.

We still stuck to 100% Saaz as well as double decoction mashing, but changed the yeast to the more affordable option of W-34/70 (because it doesn’t make that much of a difference, anyway).

The Recipe

Now that the beer is finished and both Christian and I tasted it, I can report back that it’s also a smashing success. Here are the ingredients:

2.7 kg (79.4%) Bohemian Pilsner malt (Weyermann)
0.7 kg (20.6%) Munich II malt (Weyermann)
34g Saazer hops 2021 harvest (4.7% alpha acid) @ 60 min
30g Saazer hops 2021 harvest (4.7% alpha acid) @ 5 min
2 sachets of Fermentis Saflager W-34/70

Basic specs:

OG 8.7 °P
FG 2.5 °P
3.3% ABV
Colour 7.4 EBC (calculated)
Bitterness 22.5 IBU (calculated)

A Tübinger glass with a slightly hazy, dark golden to pale amber beer in it, topped by a thick layer of white foam. It’s darker on the photo than what it really looks like.

And this is how we brewed it:

We mashed in all the malt with 20 liters of water to end up with a mash temperature of 32°C. After a brief wait, we pulled 12 liters of thick decoction, heated it up to 72°C, let it rest for 15 minutes, brought it to a boil for 5 minutes, then mixed it back. The resulting temperature of the mash was 66°C.

After 33 minutes, we pulled 8 liters of thin decoction, brought it to a boil, boiled it for 5 minutes, and mixed it back. The resulting mash temperature was 72°C.

We then rested it for 10 minutes, heated it up to 78°C, and then moved the mash into the lauter tun. After lautering and sparging, we brought the wort to a boil, and boiled it for 60 minutes, with hop additions at 60 minutes and 5 minutes before the end of the boil.

We then transferred the chilled wort to a fermenter and pitched two sachets of rehydrated W-34/70 yeast at 10°C. The beer then fermented until terminal gravity and was then lagered for 3 weeks at 1°C. We bottled it with some of the wort that we had held back so that it could referment in the bottle for natural carbonation.

Looking back at the first version of a Czech-style summer beer, I noticed that I had mentioned Mahrs Sommerpils in my blog post as an inspiration that lower-ABV beers with lots of bitterness and hop aroma can actually work. I actually had a bottle of Mahrs Sommerpils just the other day, and it’s just not the same beer it was back in 2019 when I first had it directly from the source. It lacks that bitterness and hop aroma it initially had. Even if I had Mahrs Sommerpils available in my local supermarket, I would still rather drink my home-brewed summer beer, and it’s definitely something I will brew again next year.

A beer label I designed for the 8° Pale Lager and printed using linocut. It consists of a circle that says “SVĚTLE PIVO” (pale beer) on the top and “OSMIČKA” (eighter, referring to the 8° Plato strength) on the bottom. Inside the circle, there is a Tübinger glass on top, left and right below it two hop cones, and underneath it, a circle with the text “8°” inside, again referring to the beer’s strength.

Best Bitter

This is a beer that I brewed with another friend and former work colleague of mine, Joel. It was actually born out of failure: Joel wanted to learn how to brew beer at home, so I showed it to him, but the first recipe for a Best Bitter I had come up with was not very good: a slight touch of chocolate malt turned the beer to be too roasted and astringent, while the substandard quality of the liquid yeast caused it to perform badly during fermentation. The resulting beer was also too hazy.

So this beer was a revision of that, and I wanted to approach it as simple as possible this time: about 90% pale malt, 10% Dark Crystal malt, Irish moss to help with a clearer beer, and the popular and often-used SafAle S-04 yeast.

The Recipe

3.75 kg (90.4%) Pale malt (Weyermann)
0.4 kg (9.6%) Warminster Crystal Malt 150 EBC
60 g Fuggles (3.1% alpha acid) @ 60 min
30 g Fuggles (3.1% alpha acid) @ 10 min
1 tsp Irish moss @ 10 min
2 sachets SafAle S-04 yeast

Basic specs:

OG 10°P
FG 2.8°P
3.8% ABV
Colour 18.6 EBC (calculated)
Bitterness 26.3 IBU (calculated)

This time, the approach was much simpler: we mashed in all the malt with 15 liters of water to end up at a mash temperature of 67°C. We then rested it for 60 minutes. We then heated up the mash to 72°C and rested it for another 10 minutes. We then lautered and sparged it, followed by boiling the wort for 60 minutes, with hop additions 60 minutes and 10 minutes before the end of the boil. We then chilled down the wort to 20°C, pitched two sachets of S-04 yeast, let it ferment, and then bottled it with wort we had held back so that the beer could referment in the bottle for natural carbonation.

In the end, I was actually quite surprised about the resulting beer: it does taste remarkably close to a proper cask bitter (though it may be slightly undercarbonated), it has the right expression of fruity esters that makes bitters so unique, and it has absolutely the right malt character. I very firmly believe that British bitters, whether it’s ordinary, best or extra special bitter, stand and fall with using the right ingredients, and crystal malt from a British maltings is quite crucial for that, I think a lot more important than what people think it is. And I think it’s where most non-British brewers fail, even if they get the hops, the yeast and the water treatment right.

And while a Best Bitter may not be the most typical summer beer, I think what still makes it very good for this time of the year is the relatively low amount of alcohol of just 3.8% ABV.