Among the many many beers on tap at this year's Vermont Brewer's Festival was a home brew voted best in the state: Salute Your Schwarz, a schwarzbier concocted by Brett Seymour of Warren for the Make the Cut challenge.
The name is an homage to a favorite childhood program Salute Your Shorts.
The schwarzbier was the winner of a competition to give an amateur Vermont home brewer the chance to sell their beer to the masses. The Beverage Warehouse in Winooski and 14th Star Brewing in St. Albans came up with the Make the Cut Home Brew Challenge. It gave the winning home brewer a limited distribution deal to bars and stores around the state, and the honor of pouring beer at the Vermont Brewer's Festival.
Schwarzbier is a traditional dark lager from Germany. "Schwarz" means black, and schwarzbier is named for its characteristically black coloring. "[Salute Your Schwarz] has all of the dark malt characters that you would want in a dark beer, but since it's a lager it drinks a lot lighter and smooth. The color is deceptive," says Seymour.
"It's a lot easier to drink than people think," says Seymour about his 4.9 percent ABV brew. Flavor-wise, it features "chocolately notes, a little roasty-ness, a little smokey-ness."
A schwarzbier was Seymour's response to the recent popularization of hoppy beers in popular drinking culture. "I like hoppy beer, but I'm tired of going to a bar or a store and the only thing I ever see are 8 percent hoppy beers," he says. "There's other stuff out there. A lot of the time you go into a place and they don't have that many taps, and all you can get are hoppy beers."
"Sometimes you want something with a little malt backbone, and not so many hops. I just wanted to do something different than what was out there." - Brett Seymour, creator of the "Salute Your Schwarz" schwarzbier
"Sometimes you want something with a little malt backbone, and not so many hops. I just wanted to do something different than what was out there," says Seymour.
In order to bring out the malt flavor, Seymour says you just "back off on the hops a little and let the malt or the yeast do the talking." Home brewers can take advantage of the many varieties of malts available in order to craft their ideal flavoring.
Seymour served his beer at the 14th Star Brewing tent at the Vermont Brewer's Festival. The response was largely positive, he says, and "a few people came back multiple times."
As for his future plans, Seymour says that he's been approached about various opportunities, but "these things take time." Salute Your Schwarz was canned and distributed to local craft beers across the state, but has largely sold out. Seymour's competition-winning beer is also on tap at select bars and restaurants.
