Blau Brau Pairs a Noble Hop With Its Modern Descendant

Blood Brothers' Bloodtoberfest pilsner runs Tettnanger against Hallertau Blanc, an old noble hop and a modern German variety bred for white-wine character. Five percent, floral and herbal, and finishing dry.

Style: German Pilsner
Release Date: 2026-09-25
ABV: 5%
Blood Brothers Brewing (Toronto, ON)

Blood Brothers Brewing's Bloodtoberfest pilsner takes a classic German hop and stands a modern one next to it.

Blau Brau is a German pilsner at 5 percent ABV, brewed with Hallertau Blanc and Tettnanger. The Toronto brewery describes it as crisp, elegant and refreshing, with delicate floral and herbal aromatics from the Tettnanger leading into subtle notes of fresh bread and honeyed malt. It calls the body light, the bitterness snappy, and the finish dry and clean.

The two hops come from very different points in German brewing history. Tettnanger is one of the classic noble varieties, grown in the Tettnang region near Lake Constance and valued for exactly the floral and herbal character the brewery credits it with here. It is a traditional pilsner hop in the most literal sense.

Hallertau Blanc is the newer arrival, a modern German variety despite the familiar regional name, and it is not a traditional noble hop. It was bred for a distinctly fruity, white-wine-grape aroma, which is a long way from what Tettnanger does. Pairing the two gives the beer a recognisable German pilsner frame with a fruit-forward aromatic layered over it.

The malt side stays simple. Fresh bread and honeyed malt is the language of a continental pale malt bill doing its job quietly, which in a light-bodied pilsner is the correct amount of ambition.

Blau Brau is one of four Bloodtoberfest lagers released together, and the only pilsner among them that has not been near a barrel.

It is available now in 473 mL cans from Blood Brothers Brewing on Geary Avenue in Toronto.

Editor’s Take

There is a quiet bit of matchmaking in this hop bill that I do not think is an accident. Tettnanger is about as old-school German as a hop gets, the floral and herbal one that has been doing this job for well over a century. Hallertau Blanc is the modern German hop bred to taste like white wine grapes, which is the sort of thing the noble varieties were never asked to do and frankly never could.

Put them in the same pilsner and you get a beer having a conversation with itself across roughly a hundred and fifty years of German hop breeding. The lovely part is that neither one has to lose. Tettnanger handles the herbal, classical end that a pilsner needs to still read as a pilsner, and Blanc adds a fruit note on top that has no business being there and works anyway. Serve it cold with something salty and fried and let it do the job a glass of dry white would otherwise be handed.

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.