Pils Alsacienne Hops One French Variety Against Two German Ones

A returning Alsatian Pilsner built on Strisselspalt, Hallertau Mittelfruh and Tettnanger - one French hop and two German ones, which is a fair description of Alsace itself. The lightest beer in the release at 4.5 percent.

Style: Pilsner
Release Date: 2026-09-17
ABV: 4.5%
Brasserie du Bas-Canada (Gatineau, QC)

Strisselspalt is the hop that makes this one worth a second look. It is grown in Alsace, it is low in alpha acids, and it is one of very few French hops with any real international reputation.

Brasserie du Bas-Canada has brought its Pils Alsacienne back for Oktoberfest, and the beer went on sale online this morning alongside six others. It is 4.5 percent ABV in 473 ml cans, limited to 24 cans per person, which makes it the lightest beer in the release by some margin.

The brewery pairs the Strisselspalt with Hallertau Mittelfruh and Tettnanger. Bas-Canada describes the result as a dry, crackery Pilsner with a nice touch of hops, and says the balance between malt and hop is what gives the beer its drinkability.

All three hops belong to the same delicate, low-alpha family, and none of them is there to supply bitterness in bulk. What they offer instead is aroma and a herbal, floral, faintly spicy lift - the sort of hop character that gets lost immediately if the malt underneath is too sweet or the beer too heavy. A dry, crackery base is not a stylistic flourish in that context. It is the only environment where hops this understated are audible at all.

The geography is the neat part. Strisselspalt is French, Hallertau Mittelfruh is Bavarian, and Tettnanger comes from southern Germany near Lake Constance. An Alsatian Pils hopped mostly with German varieties is a reasonable reflection of Alsace, a region that has been claimed by both traditions and has taken its brewing culture from each.

This is a returning beer rather than a new one, brought back for the occasion, which puts it in the category of recipes the brewery keeps on hand for when a lager release calls for one.

Cans went on sale at 11 a.m. today through bascanada.beer, from the Hautes-Plaines site, with a week to collect orders. Pils Alsacienne is among the four lagers in the brewery's $30 Oktoberfest tasting package, running September 17 to 20 at both the Gatineau and Hautes-Plaines tasting rooms.

Editor’s Take

The hop bill here is a small geography lesson that I do not think is accidental. Strisselspalt comes from Alsace. Hallertau Mittelfruh comes from Bavaria. Tettnanger comes from the shore of Lake Constance. Draw those three points on a map and you have essentially traced the Rhine, and Alsace - the region that has spent several centuries being thoroughly French and thoroughly German depending on the decade - is the one holding the pen.

So a Pils called Alsacienne, hopped one part France to two parts Germany, is a more honest portrait of the place than a single-origin version would have been. Alsace has never been a single origin of anything. It is the region that gives you a French wine list, a German beer hall and a plate of sauerkraut with the same shrug, and at 4.5 percent this is the beer in the release most obviously built for sitting down with that plate for a few hours.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.