Lagers seem to be all the rage right now. Lest we forget, we have one of the best lager producers in the world, Chuckanut Brewery in our fair city. Well known for their pilsner, kolsch and a variety of other top fermenting beers, but we should also remember we have a number of breweries in Bellingham that make some fantastic lagers of their own.

premium-lager-sales-sheet-page-0Recently, our local area was introduced to a few canned lagers from Skagit’s Farmstrong Brewery, in the form of their Cold Beer and La Raza Cerveza.

Kulshan Brewery is one of area’s finest lager brewers. They have brewed up a litany of tasty, crispy and refreshing lagers in their years of service to Bellingham’s beer drinkers. These include a German Style Pilsner, Maibock, Vienna, Helles and Dunkel. Kulshan knows how to brew a lager.

Much to everyone’s happiness, they will be canning that skill! They are releasing their first canned lager, Kulshan Premium Lager, on January 14th.

I’ve always known Dave Vitt, Kulshan Brewery’s owner, to be a fan of lagers. It’s the reason Kulshan and Wander teamed up for their 2016 collaboration, Raspberry Lager. Chad at Wander, knew Kulshan could brew a good lager and Dave at Kulshan knew Chad at Wander was skilled in brewing with fruit. Voila! They teamed up to brew a very well received beer.

I reached out to owner Dave to get a feel for what their plans are for this Premium Lager

Brewing and canning this beer has been a dream of mine for years.

 

I know I speak for many other beer lovers when I admit that I can’t always drink a 7% IPA, or a Barrel Aged Cocoa Nib Coffee Infused Dark Cherry Sour Pumpkin Peach Porter Blended with Gose (that actually doesn’t sound too bad). Sometimes you want a well made, balanced, easy to drink lighter beer. What makes this one special beyond the flavor of the beer is that it’s actually made locally, by real people, with quality malt and water, by a locally owned company. Not one owned by AB-InBev, or by a Russian company.

After a full year of research and development and using Kulshan’s cold filtering process, this beer will hit shelves in local grocery stores and in the beer fridge at Kulshan. Kulshan is hoping to attract not only the avid IPA drinker, but also, really, all of us. We all know we love grabbing a crisp easy drinking beer.

I hope to see this beer sitting on the shelf next to Montucky, Rainier, PBR, Hamm’s and Oly. My hope is that the craft beer consumer that is already drinking Bastard Kat or Batch 15 or Shoe Toss – and who also throws a half rack of PBR in their cart – will swap that macro produced product for this “American Beer Made Right Here.”

Dave told me it’s all about our water.

It’s the water that lets you know you’re tapping the Cascades

Bellingham, you’re about to get your first canned lager since, well, we’re pretty sure a really long time. No doubt a canned lager was released back in our early days of Bellingham beer history. But we’re super excited that Kulshan Brewery will be bringing it to us on January 14th. The cans will be released at their Premium Lager party on January 14th and will be hitting store shelves soon after. Get some!