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Christmas Comes Early in Cleveland: Great Lakes Christmas Ale Is Back for 2026

October 16, 2026 by Dow Scoggins

Halloween candy is still on the shelves, but in Cleveland the holidays officially started yesterday. The first pour of Great Lakes Brewing Co.’s Christmas Ale drew hundreds of people downtown on Thursday, and this year the party also served as an unofficial pregame for the Guardians’ first home game of the American League Championship Series. As one Cleveland station put it, not much work got done in town that day, with First Pour and Game 3 of the ALCS landing on the same date. Talk about a Cleveland double-header.

A Line Around the Block (and a 3:30 a.m. Alarm)
Dedication to this beer is real. The line wrapped around the block, and one of the first fans in it said he got up at 3:30 a.m. to drive in from Youngstown and claim his spot by 6 a.m. The ceremony kept its familiar rhythm: the keg arrived at 11 a.m. and the first pour followed at 11:30. Once the taps opened, the pace was frantic. Great Lakes estimates it pours a Christmas Ale every 13 seconds during the celebration, and it will keep pouring through January. There was a charitable side too: the day included a fill-the-bus winter clothing drive, live music, and Christmas Ale treats from Brewnuts while they lasted.

What’s in the Glass
Christmas Ale is a spiced amber that people either crave every fall or haven’t tried yet. It was first brewed in 1992 using fresh ginger, cinnamon, and honey, and it became one of GLBC’s top performers even though it’s only sold for about ten weeks a year. When Great Lakes expanded into New York City, co-founder Brown called it the largest-selling holiday beer in the U.S. The beer has evolved over the years: in 2020 it showed up in 12 oz. cans for the first time since it debuted in 1992. And for the bourbon crowd, there’s a bigger version: Barrel Aged Christmas Ale, which spends six months in bourbon barrels.

My Own Christmas Ale Quest
My first trip to Oxford, Ohio was in November 2012, and one thing was at the top of my list: find some Great Lakes Christmas Ale. I found it at Noonan’s liquor store in nearby Hamilton and left with my first fresh six-pack. Ask any Christmas Ale fan and they’ll tell you the first fresh six-pack of the year tastes a little better, and I still remember mine. Ohio must have made a good impression, because the next spring my wife’s job brought us to Oxford for good. Since then, Christmas Ale has been part of every holiday season for us.

The Brewery Behind the Beer
Great Lakes was opened in 1988 by brothers Patrick and Daniel Conway in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. It was the first brewpub and microbrewery in Ohio, and it is credited as one of the early forces behind the revival of Ohio City on the near West Side. I have a soft spot for that timeline. A year after the Conways opened their doors, I opened Friends Brewing in Helen, Georgia, the state’s first craft brewery. Those were the days when “craft beer” needed an explanation at every bar. Great Lakes has since built a lineup that includes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and Dortmunder Gold Lager, but Christmas Ale is the one that brings people out at dawn.

The 2026 Holiday Lineup
This year’s release comes with plenty of company. Great Lakes rolled out its full holiday lineup with Christmas Ale at the center, joined by a new Holiday Party Pack and Snowscape Winter Lager, plus returning Barrel Aged Christmas Ale and Barrel Aged Blackout Stout, and a new Barrel Aged Caramel Pecan Blackout Stout. The holiday pack also brings Cran Orange Wheat and Cookie Exchange Milk Stout to the table.

If you missed yesterday, you can still get to it quickly. Bottles, cans, and kegs go on sale at the brewery gift shop today, Oct. 16, with the wider release starting Oct. 19.

Cam, my brewery wingman, has already announced his plan: find out whether Christmas Ale goes with vanilla ice cream. I’m voting for gingerbread cookies instead. Either way, the Christmas Ale season has started, and in Cleveland it begins in October.

Address: 2516 Market Ave., Cleveland, OH 44113
Website: https://www.greatlakesbrewing.com

The Day America Got Its Homebrew Back: 48 Years Since Jimmy Carter Freed the Home Brewer

October 14, 2026 by Dow Scoggins

On October 14, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed H.R. 1337, a fairly dull transportation-tax bill that happened to carry a small amendment with an outsized future. Tucked inside was language sponsored by California Senator Alan Cranston that, for the first time since Prohibition, made it legal for Americans to brew beer at home for personal use. When the law took effect on February 1, 1979, it allowed each adult to make up to 100 gallons a year, or 200 gallons for a household with two or more adults. Nobody at the signing could have guessed that this footnote would help launch the craft beer revolution.

Prohibition ended in December 1933, but the repeal left a strange gap. Federal law specifically allowed heads of households to make wine and cider at home, yet beer was left out. For more than four decades, brewing a batch of ale in your kitchen technically remained a federal offense. Plenty of people did it anyway — homebrew supply shops sold “malt extract for baking” with a wink — but the hobby lived in the shadows, with little shared knowledge, few quality ingredients, and no clubs or competitions to speak of.

The 1978 change simply put beer on equal footing with wine. It was a small fix on paper, but it brought an entire hobby out into the open.

From the Kitchen to the Brewhouse
The timing was perfect. In December 1978, just weeks after the bill was signed, Charlie Papazian and Charlie Matzen founded the American Homebrewers Association in Boulder, Colorado, and began publishing Zymurgy magazine. Papazian’s later book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, became the bible for a generation with the advice “Relax. Don’t worry. Have a homebrew.” Clubs sprang up, recipes got shared, and competitions gave brewers honest feedback on their beer.

Those homebrewers became the founders of America’s craft breweries. Jack McAuliffe, a homebrewer, had already opened New Albion Brewing in 1976, and in the decade that followed, kitchen brewers turned pro across the country — Sierra Nevada’s Ken Grossman among them. Dow Scoggins rode that same wave when he started Friends Brewing in Helen, Georgia in 1989, the first craft brewery in the state. Today, a large share of the brewers that Dow and his son Cam hand medals to at the U.S. Open Beer Championship got their start the same way: a pot on the stove and a recipe they couldn’t stop tinkering with.

The States Took Their Time
The federal law didn’t settle everything. Alcohol regulation still falls largely to the states, and some were slow to follow. It took until 2013 for the last two holdouts, Mississippi and Alabama, to legalize homebrewing, finally making it legal in all 50 states — 35 years after Carter’s signature.

Raise a Glass Today

Fewer than 100 breweries were operating in the U.S. when the law was signed. Today there are more than 9,000, along with an estimated one million-plus homebrewers. So if you have a batch fermenting in the basement, or you’re just enjoying a hazy IPA from your local taproom, take a moment this October 14th to toast a quiet bill signing that changed American beer forever.

Beers of the Day: Rhinegeist Ghost Pils and Ghost Haze To Start the Halloween Season

September 29, 2026 by Dow Scoggins

Two Friendly Ghosts from Over-the-Rhine
Some ghosts rattle chains. These two just want to hand you a cold one that won’t slow you down. Ghost Pils and Ghost Haze are Rhinegeist’s nonalcoholic beers, and the name is a play on the “geist” in Rhinegeist, which means ghost or spirit. The brewery’s pitch is simple: ghost on booze, not on flavor. Both come in under 0.5% ABV. CEO Adam Bankovich describes them as the answer for moments when beer is the perfect drink but alcohol might not be. Rhinegeist made them with Sustainable Beverage Technologies using its BrewVo process, which is built to keep full craft flavor without the alcohol.

Ghost Pils is the crisp one, with smooth, bready malts and a light, clean finish. It made an early splash, picking up a bronze medal at the 2025 Great American Beer Festival. Ghost Haze is the juicy one. It pours bright gold with heavy haze and a thick white head, and delivers big stone fruit and fresh citrus notes on a full, juice-like body. Rhinegeist says it tastes much closer to a regular hazy IPA than older NA beers, which often leaned too sweet and came up short on hop flavor. Both launched in August 2025 and are now year-round releases in six-packs of 12-ounce cans across Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

A Brewery Built in a Pre-Prohibition Bottling Plant
Rhinegeist was founded by Bob Bonder and Bryant Goulding, who met in 2005 while working as business consultants in San Francisco. In August 2011 Bonder called Goulding with an idea for a brewery in Cincinnati, a city he saw as a vacuum for locally brewed craft beer. They brought in head brewer Jim Matt, a chemist for 20 years before he moved into beer at Sun King Brewery in Indianapolis. Their flagship, Truth IPA, began as one of Matt’s homebrew projects.

The building made the brand. It was built more than a century ago as a Christian Moerlein bottling plant and closed in 1919 because of Prohibition, which is where the name Rhinegeist, or ghost of the Rhine, came from. Goulding said his first look inside felt like walking into a cathedral. Rhinegeist opened on June 29, 2013, and more than 2,000 beer lovers turned out for the debut. It has since become a regional heavyweight, with a mid-20s percentage share of craft beer in the Cincinnati market, and it remains independently owned with no parent company and no outside investors.

Any Real Ghosts?
The honest answer is that the brewery’s ghost is more tribute than haunting, and there are no well-documented sightings in the taproom. The “Rhine” part of the name comes from the old saying that German workers were “crossing the Rhine” when they walked across the canal into downtown, and “geist” honors those immigrants. The neighborhood itself has plenty of spooky lore, though. By the 1860s there were 36 breweries in Over-the-Rhine making 30 million gallons of beer a year, and many left behind lagering tunnels deep underground. Nobody knows how many there are because riots in the 1880s burned the County Courthouse and destroyed most records, but about a dozen have been found so far. Local ghost tours stop at Rhinegeist to talk about hauntings in the area, calling it one of the last remaining pieces of the old Christian Moerlein Brewery, before heading down into tunnels 30 feet below the street.

So grab a Ghost Pils or a Ghost Haze, head up to the rooftop deck, and raise a can to the Moerlein bottlers who worked here before Prohibition shut the doors.

Address: 1910 Elm St., Cincinnati, OH 45202
Website: https://rhinegeist.com

Epic Brewing Unleashes Six New Big Bad Baptist Variants for 2026

September 24, 2026 by Dow Scoggins

Salt Lake City’s Epic Brewing is bringing back one of craft beer’s most anticipated annual releases, with six new takes on its celebrated barrel-aged imperial stout, Big Bad Baptist. Fans can get first crack at the 2026 lineup at the brewery on Friday, October 9, with wider distribution following in November. This year’s series pushes the flagship stout in bold new directions, layering barrel character, coffee, spices, honey, and even peat smoke over the rich, roasty backbone that made the original a cult favorite.

The 2026 lineup includes:

Big Bad Baptist 10-Year Anniversary, a celebratory blend of vanilla, cinnamon, cacao, and house-roasted Mexican coffee marking a decade of this fan favorite.

Godfather Part II, the return of the Godfather series, built to showcase the depth and complexity of Epic’s whiskey barrels.

Beehive, an imperial stout brewed with local Utah honey and cacao nibs, a nod to the Beehive State.

Big Easy, a rye whiskey barrel-aged stout inspired by New Orleans’ classic Sazerac cocktail.

Irish Baptist, featuring smooth vanilla bean and coffee flavors.

Scottish Baptist, brewed with coffee, cacao nibs, and peat-smoked barley for a distinctly smoky, layered finish.

All six variants will be packaged in 16-ounce cans and will ship across Epic’s distribution footprint beginning in November. Stout lovers in Washington, Oregon, Southern California, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin should keep an eye on shelves, since these limited releases tend to disappear quickly.

From Brine Shrimp to Big Beers: The Epic Story
Epic Brewing’s roots trace back to an unlikely source: brine shrimp. Founders and co-owners Dave Cole and Peter Erickson, originally from California, started an international aquaculture company in Utah in 1992. The two had met in San Diego in the mid-1980s, when Erickson was managing an indoor aquaculture facility producing brine shrimp and Cole was hired on, and they spent years watching the Bay Area microbrewery boom with envy. Their chance came when Utah passed a law in 2008 permitting breweries to produce and sell “heavy” beer, over 3.2% alcohol by weight, directly to the public. Epic opened in May 2010, and billed itself as the first brewery in Utah since Prohibition to brew only high-alcohol beer.

Growth came fast. The brewery started with six 10-barrel fermentation tanks, and within a few short months it was earning medals domestically and internationally. In 2013 Epic expanded into Colorado with a second brewery in Denver’s River North district, giving it room for national distribution, a larger barrel-aged program, and a new line of sour beers. Beyond the Big Bad Baptist family, Epic has built a loyal following for beers like the award-winning Utah Sage Saison and Hopulent IPA, and the company has even branched outside of beer with Clearly Coconut, a brewed coconut water made from 100% USDA Organic coconut. Visitors to the flagship taproom on State Street will find a wide rotating lineup, from hazy IPAs and sours to the big barrel-aged stouts that put Epic on the map.

For more information about the 2026 Big Bad Baptist series, visit epicbrewing.com or email info@epicbrewing.com.

Address: 825 South State Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111
Website: https://www.epicbrewing.com

DESTIHL Launches Normal Beer, an All-Malt American Light Lager Starting in Illinois

September 18, 2026 by Dustin Scoggins

NORMAL, Ill. (Aug. 26, 2026) — DESTIHL Holdings is rolling out Normal Beer, a standalone American light lager meant to be simple on purpose.

The first cans hit Illinois in September. After that, DESTIHL plans to move the brand through its roughly 40-state network. The beer is 4.0% ABV and 99 calories per 12-ounce can. It is brewed with 100% barley malt and no rice or corn. Suggested retail on a 12-pack of 12-ounce cans is $15.99 to $16.99. Draft kegs are also available.

Normal Beer is a separate brand from DESTIHL Brewery’s core craft lineup, including the DeadHead IPA Series and Wild Sour Series. Packaging, pricing, and positioning are built for cookouts, tailgates, golf, yard work, and a cooler — not for tasting notes and limited drops.

“A perfectly normal beer”

“Somewhere along the way, beer and other beverages got complicated — tasting notes, stars and everybody telling you what you should be drinking. We don’t think it has to be that way,” said Matt Potts, founder and CEO of DESTIHL Holdings. “Normal Beer is a crisp, clean lager brewed with all malt and no shortcuts, made for the normal things people actually do — cookouts, fishing, hiking & ski trips, fire pits, tailgates, golfing, concerts, yard work and every cooler worth opening. It’s a perfectly normal beer, and we think that’s exactly what a lot of drinkers are looking for right now.”

About DESTIHL

DESTIHL started as a homebrew habit. In December 1995, Lyn Potts gave her husband, attorney Matt Potts, a five-gallon kit. He later opened Elmwood Brewing Company in 2001, then left law to build a larger concept. On November 23, 2007, Matt and Lyn Potts opened DESTIHL Restaurant & Brew Works in Normal, Illinois, with partners Troy Nelson, Laurie Nelson, and Jason Bratcher — a week before the Great Recession. The brewpub poured seven beers, including Normal Lager and Baldock IPA. A Champaign restaurant followed in 2011. Production left the 8-barrel pub system in 2013, and in May 2017 DESTIHL opened a $14 million, 47,000-square-foot brewery and beer hall in Normal. That plant made the company a regional player and helped put the Wild Sour Series into cans early, when canned sours were still unusual.

From there DESTIHL Holdings became more than a brewpub group. DeadHead IPAs, Dosvidanya barrel-aged stout, and the Saint Dekkera / Wild Sour lines won medals at GABF and FoBAB and pushed distribution toward 40 states. In 2023 the company launched Canopolis, a contract brewing and canning shop inside the Normal plant. DESTIHL Spirits followed in 2024. In 2026 it added Normal Beer, a separate all-malt American light lager at 4.0% ABV, as a lower-price brand beside the craft portfolio. The holding company still sits in Normal and still uses the same line: flavor over bland.

For more information, please visit https://destihl.com/

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