Name: Old Dusseldorf Altbier
Brand: Great Lakes Brewery
Availability: InStock

Altbier translates to old beer, and the name has nothing to do with aging. It refers to the older method of brewing: Dusseldorf held onto top-fermenting ale yeast while much of Germany moved to lager, and the style takes its name from what the city declined to give up.

Great Lakes Brewery is bringing back its version this week. Old Dusseldorf is a 5.0 percent altbier, described by the brewery as a perennial favourite around the brewery, arriving alongside three other releases for GLB Beer Week.

The brewery's stated goal reads as a fair summary of the style's central trick: noticeable depth of malt flavour and aroma, combined with the dry, refreshing qualities of a session beer, and a hop-forward bitterness to balance the malt. Those three things pull against one another, and resolving them is the whole exercise. An altbier ferments warm with ale yeast, then goes through a long cold conditioning of the sort normally associated with lagers. The result keeps some of the malt character a warm fermentation develops, while the cold rest strips away the fruity esters that would otherwise announce it as an ale.

The copper colour that typically results can mislead. This is not a heavy beer, and the hop bitterness is there specifically to keep it from drifting sweet.

Great Lakes is framing the return as seasonal, filed under an old favourite and time for darker beers. For a brewery running four releases in a single week, bringing back a returning recipe alongside a collaboration IPA and an English bitter gives the lineup a clear autumn shape.

Old Dusseldorf arrives Thursday, October 1, at the Etobicoke brewery, the GLB Brewpub on Lower Jarvis Street, and the online shop. Cans are 473ml at $3.35, or $65 for a case.

Editor’s Take

The name is the best joke in German brewing and almost nobody gets to hear the punchline. Alt means old, and it refers not to the beer's age but to the method: Dusseldorf kept fermenting with top-fermenting ale yeast while the rest of the country was busy converting to lager, and the style ended up named after the technique everyone else abandoned. It is the brewing equivalent of a shop sign reading The Old Way, still open, still busy.

What the brewers there worked out is genuinely clever. Ferment warm like an ale, then condition cold and long like a lager, and you get malt depth with a clean finish instead of the fruity esters a warm fermentation usually leaves behind. Great Lakes lists exactly that combination as the goal: noticeable malt depth, dry refreshing qualities, hop bitterness holding the balance. Having tried for years to explain to people that a dark-looking beer is not automatically a heavy one, I would happily hand them a glass of this and let the beer do the arguing. It pairs about as well with a plate of schnitzel and sharp mustard as anything at 5.0 percent reasonably could.

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.

The Altbier Is an Ale Pretending to Be a Lager, and Says So

A perennial return for the brewery, and a style that solves a puzzle: malt depth with a dry, sessionable finish and enough hop bitterness to keep the whole thing upright. Back Thursday at 5.0 percent.

Source & Editorial