Saint Arnold Summer Pils

A true bohemian-style pilsner. Crisp and refreshing, this beer is perfect for a hot summer day. Saint Arnold Summer Pils has a delicate, sweet malt taste complemented by an abundant hop aroma and flavor. This beer is brewed with fine German malt, and a copious quantity of "noble" hops imported from the Czech Republic.

Saint Arnold Summer Pils is best consumed at 36° Fahrenheit.

Recommended pairings: Spicy Mexican, pizza, & lamb kebabs.

Awards:
Silver Medal, GABF, Munich-Style Helles, 2013
Gold Medal, GABF, Münchner-Style Helles, 2009
Silver Medal, GABF, Münchner-Style Helles, 2008
Silver Medal, GABF, Münchner-Style Helles, 2005
Silver Medal, GABF, Münchner-Style Helles, 2003
Gold Medal, Colorado State Fair, Pilsner, 1997

History and Trivia:
Debuted June 1997.
Saint Arnold Summer Pils was our first lager recipe.

The Summer Pils was our first lager. It has one of the most simple recipes and proved to be the hardest to create. It took over 20 test brews before we rolled it out. The key ingredients are the malt and the hops. OK, so you're saying "Duh!" But it really is. We weren't happy with the recipe until we found the right German pils malt. We settled on Durst pils which has a great nutty flavor that gives the delicate beer such a complex flavor. Also important was combining the hops in the right fashion to get the spicy finishing flavor of the Czech Saaz correctly balanced.

Most all of our recipes have not changed since introduced. The Summer Pils is the big exception. We have adjusted this recipe nearly every year until we settled on a three year plan in 2003 to reach a final recipe in 2006. We knew where we wanted to go in 2004 but to make all of the changes in one year would have been too drastic. The 2006 recipe was perfect: light and refreshing with a crisp, clean bitter. Oooo, we're salivating just thinking about it.

Summer Pils was originally called Summerfest. Then we got into a legal battle with Sierra Nevada over the name. We had the legal high ground since they hadn't used the name in Texas for over 3 years, but they were bigger and paid us the cost of changing the packaging. Ironically, today we prefer "Summer Pils", so we all won. At the end of the legal battle, Ken Grossman said that one day he would buy us a beer. And sure enough, seven years later, as Brock reminded him of this after a Brewers Association board meeting, he was good to his word!

We brainstormed about different ideas about what to use as the color theme for the Summer Pils packaging. We thought about blue sky, beaches, but nothing resonated with us. Then we thought about tie dye. We had a customer, Hunter, who started tie dying Saint Arnold t-shirts for himself shortly after we opened. We liked the look and asked if we could pay him to make some for us. He said, "Sure, dude." They proved to be popular and out of this has come many other tie-dye themes including three art cars and, of course, the Summer Pils packaging. Dude.

The tie dye on the label was scanned from a t-shirt Kevin had bought years ago at the Kerrville Folk Festival.

Summer Pils has ended up having the longest season of any of our seasonals. This makes sense, of course. It seems to be summer for most of the year in Texas!