Day 118: Today's Pick — Buchanan's Black Lager

There is a small old style of beer called schwarzbier — German for "black beer." It originated, depending on which beer historian you trust, in either Bohemia or Thuringia, sometime in the 1300s, and it has been quietly produced ever since by a small number of Central European breweries who like their lagers very dark and their reputation extremely low.

Schwarzbier is the most underrated beer in the world. It looks like a stout. It pours opaque, near-black, with a tan head. You bring it to your face expecting a heavy roasted-coffee weight on the tongue and instead it is — surprise — a pilsner. Or close to one. Schwarzbier is bottom-fermented, lagered cold, and drinks with the crisp dry finish of a German pils, but it carries, behind that crispness, a small dark note of cocoa and toasted bread. The first sip is genuinely confusing. The second sip is delightful. By the fourth sip you are texting your friend who likes beer.

Buchanan's Black Lager, made by Buchanan Brewing in Hartford, Wisconsin, is the best example of the style I have had in the United States. I want to tell you about it.

Buchanan's is a tiny operation — a husband-and-wife brewery, a single brewhouse, a small taproom, distribution that mostly extends about as far as a Wisconsinite is willing to drive on a Saturday. The Black Lager is one of their flagships and, in my opinion, one of the most underrated regional beers in the Midwest. It pours a deep ruby-black with a generous tan-cream head that hangs around for the duration of the glass. The aroma is restrained — toasted grain, a hint of dark chocolate, no sweet caramel notes. The first sip is dry, faintly bitter, and unexpectedly light; this is a 4.8% beer, not a heavy 7% stout, and it drinks like that.

What I love is the way it pairs. Schwarzbier is one of the most food-flexible beers on Earth. The roastiness handles meat — it is the right beer with a roasted chicken, a sausage, a smoky pizza, a charred steak. The crispness handles vegetable — it works with a salad with bitter greens, with a bowl of charred squash, with anything roasted. It is a perfect autumn beer for the same reason that a Riesling is a perfect autumn wine: the structure carries the full weight of the season's heavier foods without flattening them. I have served Buchanan's Black Lager with everything from a Friday night pizza to a Thanksgiving turkey, and it has held up against all of them.

A few practical notes. Buchanan's distributes mostly in Wisconsin, with creeping availability in northern Illinois and Minnesota. If you live elsewhere in the country, this is, frankly, a "ask your Wisconsin friend to bring you a sixer when they fly out for Thanksgiving" situation. The beer is canned in 16 oz pounders, which is generous but means that you are, by the end of one can, slightly more in the bag than you might prefer for a Tuesday. Plan accordingly.

If you cannot find Buchanan's specifically, here are three other schwarzbiers that are easier to source and excellent: Köstritzer Schwarzbier (the German classic; widely available); Mönchshof Schwarzbier (the lighter, slightly more drinkable cousin); Sprecher Black Bavarian (Wisconsin again, more widely distributed than Buchanan's, slightly maltier and less dry). Any of these will give you the schwarzbier experience.

A small philosophical note to close on. The American craft beer scene, for the last twenty-five years, has been an arms race for stronger, hoppier, more aggressive flavors. The IPA conquered everything. Imperial stouts, sours, pastry beers, kettle this and triple that. There is nothing wrong with any of these. But in the last few years, a quiet counter-trend has been gaining strength: the small American brewery making honest, traditional, low-ABV German and Czech lagers. Schwarzbier is one of the small banners of that movement. Buchanan's flies the banner well.

This is Day 118. The pick is a small dark Wisconsin lager. Buy a sixer. Pour it into a glass. Watch the light come through it from the side. You will see, briefly, a glow.

That's the whole pitch.