Dortmunder Gold Lager
Great Lakes Brewing Co. | www.greatlakesbrewing.com
Great Lakes Brewing Co.
2516 Market Ave.
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
(216) 771–4404
First brewed: 1988
Style: German export bier
Alcohol content: 5.8 percent
IBUs: 30
Awards: Gold medal in 1990 at the Great American Beer Festival
Available: Year-round on draft and in bottles
IF YOU LIKE THIS BEER, here are five other Ohio craft beers to try:
• Thirsty Dog Labrador Lager
• Fat Head’s Starlight Lager
• Black Cloister Helles Angel
• Warped Wing Trotwood
• Lager Heads Barnburner Lager
DORTMUNDER GOLD LAGER was one of the first two beers ever made by Great Lakes Brewing. The other was Eliot Ness Amber Lager.
But in the beginning, way back in 1988, you couldn’t walk into the Great Lakes brewpub and order a Dortmunder. The bartender would give you a quizzical look and wonder if you were in the wrong brewery.
See, Dortmunder wasn’t always known as Dortmunder. At the outset, it was called Heisman, named after John Heisman, a famous collegiate football player and coach who grew up in the Ohio City neighborhood that houses the brewery. Heisman was the beer that won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 1990.
Then the lawyers came calling. Great Lakes received a threatening letter from a high-powered Manhattan law firm representing the Downtown Athletic Club. For nonsports fans, that’s the group that hands out the Heisman Trophy each year to the best collegiate football player. The Heisman Trophy is named after, you guessed it, John Heisman. Basically, the letter said, quit using the Heisman name.
The funny thing is cofounder Pat Conway remembers being out in Denver for the beer festival and people mispronouncing the beer’s name. They called it Heez-man. Nobody back then associated the beer with football unless you struck the famous Heisman Trophy pose.
Instead of putting up a fight, Great Lakes decided to change the name. But to what? They stumbled over their options until original brewer Thaine Johnson’s wife made a simple suggestion: “It’s gold in color. Why don’t you call it Dortmunder Gold? You just won a gold medal.”
The name stuck. Great Lakes helped bring back the Dortmunder style, which is not dry and is more balanced than, as Conway puts it, “tasteless American lagers.”
For years, Dortmunder Gold Lager was the best-selling brand for Great Lakes. It has been surpassed only by Christmas Ale.
Great Lakes still pays tribute to the Heisman legacy. As a little joke, the brewery snuck the image of a football onto its label when the labels were redesigned in 2015.
Dreamsicle
MadTree Brewing Co. | www.madtreebrewing.com
MadTree Brewing Co.
3301 Madison Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45209
(513) 836–8733
First brewed: 2014
Style: Kolsch
Alcohol content: 4.7 percent
IBUs: 11
Available: Year-round on draft
IF YOU LIKE THIS BEER, here are five other Ohio craft beers to try:
• Land-Grant Creamsikolsch
• Taft’s Nellie’s Key Lime Caribbean Ale
• Christian Moerlein Strawberry Pig
• Mt. Carmel Hibiscus Blueberry Blonde
• Numbers Apple Ale
MADTREE COFOUNDER Brady Duncan is the first to admit that Dreamsicle started off as a silly beer.
How else would you describe a brew that mirrors the flavor of a Creamsicle? Remember the orange Popsicle wrapped around ice cream that overwhelms your palate with orange-and-vanilla goodness? Well, that’s Dreamsicle.
MadTree created the beer as part of a competition among beer bloggers in 2014. To produce it, MadTree took its kolsch Lift and aged it with orange peel and vanilla beans.
The beer proved so popular that the brewery opted to keep making it. It’s now regularly one of the top three drafts sold in the taproom.
“Maybe it started off a bit silly but it’s a really good beer,” Duncan says. “Those two flavors really play well together.”
Dreamsicle has gained a cult following in the Cincinnati area. Because it’s available only on draft and has limited distribution outside the brewery taproom, MadTree fans are always clamoring to have the brewery release it in cans.
MadTree played a joke—some may say a cruel joke—on Dreamsicle lovers on April Fool’s Day in 2016 saying it would soon package the beer. (Here’s a lesson: Don’t believe any posts by MadTree on April Fool’s, because the brewery has a history of having fun on that day.) As part of the gag, MadTree released an orange Dreamsicle featuring an octopus eating an ice cream cone. Not everyone got the joke.
Later that year, super fan Adam Marcum of Fort Wright, Kentucky, even launched an online petition—all in fun, of course—to urge the brewery to can the beer. Hundreds of people signed it. Duncan says MadTree appreciates the passion.
And while there were no immediate plans to package Dreamsicle, Duncan notes, “There’s always a possibility.”
Edmund Fitzgerald
Great Lakes Brewing Co. | www.greatlakesbrewing.com
