Food & Drinks
Craft Beer’s Hottest Trend Is a Style That’s as Mass as Can Be
Easy-drinking American-style lagers are having a moment.
American-style lagers have become the focus of craft brewers in the US.
Illustration by Nico Ito
In 2017, Florian Kuplent and his colleagues at Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. decided to do something outlandish: They brewed a better Budweiser.
The upstart St. Louis brewery had already spent six years persuading an audience of craft beer fanatics to put down their hoppy IPAs and try Urban Chestnut’s easy-drinking German-style lagers. They’d already sold locals on low-alcohol, unfiltered zwickels and floral and crispy Pilsners. (For the uninitiated, Pilsners are actually a style of lager that originated in the Czech city of Plzen.)