The post-Prohibition American beer landscape had a plethora of dark beers and more lagers than you could shake a stick at. Eventually, Guinness came along and asserted itself as the nitro stout of all nitro stouts in the U.S., but it wasn’t until the domestic craft boom of the ’90s that the style was truly adopted stateside.
When Left Hand Brewing opened for business outside Denver in 1993, the plan wasn’t to become known nationwide as “the milk stout brewery” or “the nitro brewery,” and certainly not “the nitro milk stout brewery.” But when it introduced its chocolaty, none-too-heavy milk stout in the 2000s, people loved it, citing the silky smooth nitro draft pour specifically. Co-founder and CEO Eric Wallace and the Left Hand team started wondering: “Hey, if Guinness is able to package nitro beers, can’t we?” Over the course of the decade, the team tinkered with gas solubility and packaging processes until they hit the mark — what they believed to be a true-to-style nitro milk stout in the convenience of a 12-ounce bottle.
Today on “Taplines,” Dave Infante is joined by Eric Wallace himself to discuss the success of Left Hand Brewing’s nitro milk stout and how its bottled iteration gave way to Left Hand becoming forever synonymous with the hard-poured, inky-black, velvety brew. Tune in for more.
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