“I think it's important that even craft brewers drink macro lager on some frequency just to have an appreciation for the engineering marvel that macro lager really is.”
Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast · Food & Beverage · October 2026
Asked how he approached his gold-medal American light lager, Shower Beer, Pelechaty says its inspiration was something like a Molson. He wanted a clean, easy beer for taproom drinkers who don't want an 8% IPA, made to the standard the big brewers hit.
Transcript
Cincinnati and Columbus, I'd still say, are pretty close to Cleveland, you know, beer culture-wise. But if you even pop over the border to Pittsburgh, their beer culture is totally different. It is dramatically different.
…to help transform inspiration into market-ready success. Ready to create what's next? Visit adm.com/slash alcohol to learn more. All right, Mike, let's talk about American Light Lager first, shower beer. When you started thinking about how you're going to approach this beer, where did you start?
Well, I think it's important that even craft brewers drink macro lager on some frequency just to have an appreciation for the engineering marvel that macro lager really is. So, the real inspiration on shower beer was probably like a molson, you know? And the idea was to have a beer in our tap room since we don't have macro lager on tap, but to have a beer that fits that mold for the consumers that do want it, but also a beer that we are going to want to drink all the time, you know, when you maybe don't want to obliterate yourself with 8% IPAs and 9% IPAs. So, so we tried to figure out how can we, how can we make the cleanest canvas here to present just really high-quality malt, really clean fermentation character, and just that kiss of hoppiness, you know, that is going to appeal to the macro drinker that we're really going to like to drink that works in the ballpark over here. And where do we, you know, how do we, how do we build that out?
How'd you start with that?
So, so we've, we've for a while had CM Superior pills in our in our silo. So, you know, Sharbers a Canadian lager. We use Canadian malt and we get the water from the Canadian side of the Great Lakes or from Lake Erie here. So, but, you know, we, we, we felt like don't tell the
federal government they might start tariffing your water then.
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