Stolen Thunder Brings Four Estate-Grown Hops to a Lager House

A German lager house in Austin is putting out an American pale ale, built on four hops it describes as estate-grown and named after exactly what it is about to do to the rest of the board.

• Style: West Coast Pale Ale
• Release Date: 2026-09-11
• ABV: 6.3%
• The Brewtorium (Austin, TX)

The Brewtorium is a German lager house first. Das Daydrinker, Electric Lederhosen, Dr. Doctor - the Austin brewpub's regular board leans firmly in one direction, with IPAs, ales, fruited beers and sours rotating through around it. Stolen Thunder, arriving Friday, is one of those rotations, and it goes about as far from a pilsner as a pale ale reasonably can.

The hop bill is the part worth looking at twice. Cascade, Centennial, Comet and Mosaic, all four described by the brewery as estate-grown, sitting on what it calls a simple pale malt bill. Three of those are American heritage varieties. Cascade arrived in 1972 and more or less set the flavor of American craft beer. Centennial followed in 1990 and still anchors a great many pale ales.

Comet is the odd one in the group. It came out of the USDA breeding program in 1974, then fell almost entirely out of commercial favor within a decade. Growers brought it back in the 2010s, once a wilder, grassier, grapefruit-leaning character had stopped counting as a defect. It does not turn up in many pale ales. Standing next to Mosaic, which is nearly forty years its junior, it gives this beer an unusually wide spread of eras to pull from.

The Brewtorium lists lemon peel, white grape and blueberry. White grape is the entry worth noticing there. It is a descriptor attached far more often to Southern Hemisphere hops than to a bill this rooted in the American Northwest.

The name is doing some work as well. "Some beers just have a way of getting all the credit," the brewery writes, before calling this one crisp, flavorful and worthy of recognition. It signs the description off with a line about pairing the beer with your next great idea, before someone else does. Coming from a brewery whose reputation rests on lager, that is a reasonably pointed thing to say about your own lineup.

Stolen Thunder goes on Friday, September 11 at 11am, on draft and in 4-packs of pint cans to go. The taproom closes early that evening at 5pm for a private event.