Kitsap’s Silver City Brewery is greeting the post-winter ale season with a new spring brew apt to give enthusiasts a chill.
“It’s super, super drinkable,” said Kurt Larson with Silver City Brewery.
“I burst when I talk about this beer, because it’s one of my favorites,” he said.
The Cold One is the newest brew from Kitsap’s Silver City Brewery. The beer has been available in 22 ounce bottles and on tap at the brewery for the past month, but it begins stocking local store’s shelves this January. Silver City began canning the beer on Dec. 30.
The Cold One is notable for a few reasons. Silver City’s last new brew was last spring’s West Sound IPA. The Cold One replaces that.
The Cold One is the latest creation from the Kitsap brewery, instead of re-releasing known recipes. It’s a pilsner-style beer; a style commonly found throughout America, but as Larson points out, this is something quite unique.
“The Cold One is more of an international style pilsner,” he said. “It uses Czech ingredients, and it’s a German presentation, and because we have more aggressive hops in it, that has a Northwest appeal.”
Larson said a lot of people think of domestic beers such as Coors and Budweiser when mentioning pilsners, yet, in Larson’s opinion, customers want something different. The Cold One answers that desire, he said.
“This is one of the best pilsners you will find,” he said. “If I have a beer that I am going to choose to drink, and I have a line up, I’m going to drink this all day long. It’s easy to drink.”
The Cold One is also notable because of its process. Larson said that “time is money” in craft brewing.
“If you have beer sitting in tanks because it takes weeks to refine, you aren’t making as much beer and money,” he said.
But the Cold One needs time. It has to sit and refine to come out just right; a six to eight week process depending on the batch.
“From the respect of the beer process, it’s one of the most difficult styles for any brewery to make,” Larson said. “You can’t hide any mistake in it. In regard to a hoppy IPA or an ale, you can have a lot of flavor, so if something is not quite right it can be covered up by other flavors.”
“With pilsner, it has to be perfect from ingredients to the process,” he said. “If not, you get some flaws in the beer that shows up and changes the experience.”
The ingredients are important Larson said.
“We use pilsner malt all the way through, it’s very pristine and crisp,” he said. “We use Czech-style hops which give it a nice floral, like daisies and daffodils, not that northwest style hops.”
“And it’s a pilsner lager yeast that marries that wonderful balance of malt and hops,” he said. “It give us a very pristine bright beer.”
Finally, the Cold One is also notable because it is the first beer that the brewery is releasing that features its new logo.
The new logo consists of an “S” and “C” combination set against a silver background.
“It’s time for a new look,” Larson said. “It’s an initiative, refreshing look.”
