German breweries in the United States

Innovation is specifically prohibited by the Reinheitsgebot.

 

Not true. The Reinheitsgebot allows Black IPAs, too.

 

Colorado has Grimm Brothers and Prost, both brew German styled beers. Post is more traditional I believe.

 

How about Heater Allen out of Oregon? All lagers....
Victory has some serious German roots, brews many German styles with German ingredients... with some American flair and re-interpretation...

 

Live Oak in Austin TX. They focus on German styles and doing them the German way. Their Hefeweizen is their flagship beer and it's great.
They do some non-German styles as seasonals and they don't bottle.

 

Olde Mecklenburg and Red Oak from North Carolina. Stoudts and Victory in Pa. also do very well with German styles.

 

Chuckanut out of Bellingham, WA. Will Kemper got me started into craft brews 20+ years ago. If he wants to brew German brews, I will follow.

http://chuckanutbreweryandkitchen.com/beer/master-beer-list.html

 

I was at San Jose State U when Gordon Biersch first started out and through at least the first three restaurants (Palo Alto, San Jose and San Francisco), they did an excellent job of bringing traditional German beers to the mix of what was otherwise becoming a rather generic theme of early 90's US brew pubs full of mediocre amber ales. I think that it was just too hard for them to maintain that focus on quality as they grew not only as a restaurant chain, but as a production brewery. Similarly, you saw Karl Strauss have more obvious growing pains at that same time (anybody remember the first attempt of KS cans that all ended up at Big Lots around '95 or '96?). And while both brands had dramatic drops in the quality of their portfolios, both have recovered to varying extents.

GB started with a strict focus on German lagers and for their own line, has stuck pretty well to that, but they have never been able to replicate the quality of those earliest locations. KS, on the other hand, was always producing a mix of styles, which opened them up to more experimentation over the years and has done quite a bit better in not only recovering in quality, but far exceeding the quality of their beers from their early days.

 

Jacks Abby makes really solid lagers. If you get a chance i strongly suggest you try one of their beers

 

Bayern out of Montana and Big Bay out of Milwaukee are pretty traditional.

 

This is so silly. You really think that they can't make innovative beer with just malted grains, hops, and yeast?

 

http://www.ramsteinbeer.com/pages/about/about_history.html
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/607
Some very good brews from a small NewJersey brewery.

 

As was already mentioned, Heater Allen is doing all German styles and doing them amazingly well!

And I would be remiss not to once again bring up Upright's Engelberg Pils, phenomenal.

 

Capitol brewery here in Madison/Middleton WI wins plenty of awards for German styles, particularly bock variations

 

you had me until there.

 

How can it be a traditional style if they "put their own twist" on it?

 

Try some of Schell's beers we are talking about, and then see if you still feel that way. They produce a mixture of very traditional German beers (often ones very hard to find otherwise), and then some that push outside of stylistic boundaries.

 

Sly Fox for sure.

 

Beer flavored beer - what a concept!