Spring Bock

Malted Barley:
We use five different types of malt to create a rich, sweet complex malt flavor. We use only malted barley, no other grains or cereals such as corn or rice. Our 2-row pale malt comes from the North Plains (Minnesota and Wisconsin). Our specialty malts comes from Belgium.

Hops:
We use two hop varieties in this beer: Perle and Saaz.

Debuted February 1998.

Of all our beers, the Saint Arnold Spring Bock is the laziest. It takes eight weeks to ferment and age.

Spring Bock was our second lager and also proved challenging to devise. Not the least of the issues was the time we had to wait between brewing and tasting. When brewing most of our ales, we knew what we had in about 2 weeks. Now we had to wait 2 months with the Spring Bock test brews. Anticipation. And when we weren’t happy with it: frustration.

Bocks were traditionally brewed in the spring to mark the end of the brewing season. Prior to the advent of refrigeration (can you imagine Texas without air conditioning?), the brewing stopped once the weather turned too warm. So brewers would use up the rest of the store of grains to make a bigger, higher alcohol beer, some of which could be stored over the summer. There is no truth to bock being what you get when you clean out the brewkettle or any other such legend. It is its very own recipe, and a tasty one at that. The name most likely comes from the town of Einbeck which was well known in the Middle Ages for brewing great beer. Over the years, the “ein” was lost and “beck” became “bock”.

By law in Germany, to call a beer a bock it must be brewed to a high starting gravity and thus to a high alcohol content. Our beer follows these guidelines. There are many beers in the United States that use the term “bock” for their beers which aren’t really bocks. They may be perfectly good beers, but they’re not bocks. They are just dark colored light bodied American lagers.

Available: December – March
Formats: Draft | 12 oz Cans | 12 oz Bottles