If you are a white man over the age of 59 you are legally required to start being interested in military history. That piquant mix of self-entitlement coupled with erudition, it’s universal.

There’s a beer version of that. This solipsistic regression to old things, WHAT I KNEW WAS BEST. If most of your touchstones are prescriptive instead descriptive statements, you might be turning into a boomer. Sometimes, through a natural progression, old things just organically become cool again, and not just to guys who drive orthopedic Dodge Challengers.

Watching dark Czech lagers become the 2022 hotness has been strange. So imagine my jaw dropping when the amber versions now started to take hold. It is like when the school collectively rejects the popularity caste system and votes a nice person as homecoming king. Making amber lagers popular undermines the reserve society based, raffle driven, waxed bottle, marginally different lambic, fruit puree smoothie enthusiast side of current beer.

I am here for it. Every taproom should have a LUKR faucet and mliko should be actively encouraged. Start stocking Underberg bandoliers while you are at it. They added Czech ambers to the BJCP style guides in 2015 and homebrew nerds chortled in that “listening to an audiobook isn’t the same as READING a book” way that jowly entitlement feels. They are here to stay.

This beer is like an altbier with water added to it, or a heftier Vienna lager, a breadier ESB? If any of that is in your wheelhouse, then you had a CD cassette adapter in your car and downloaded things off of limewire. It’s a barmat shot of the mid-malt offerings in the lager world. Hops have mild hallertau/Mount Hood zing. The can really doesn’t do it justice but like the Wayfinder example or the insanely good Cohesion variant, this style is a hidden gem.

Insouciantly declaring people SHOULD drink this style is that same self-centered dude rattling off Seven Years War facts unprompted. I merely suggest you try it. Like how you lightly suggest to the guy with the cauliflowered ear that he is uh standing on your jacket. Just please, like im sorry, this is probably my fault, just uh, Czech amber? No? Ok.