Into the Pizza Oven with Rahr North Star Pils™

Queen and Bowie. Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks. Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C. You know the songs, and they all belong on any ‘80s hits mixtape worth its salt. What’s more, these rippin’ tunes also speak to the power of collaboration. Whether you want to kickstart new ideas, reach new audiences, or have some fun while building buzz for your brewery, teaming up with other businesses in your community can check several boxes. Possibly even pizza boxes. 

That’s just what happened when Wild Mind Ales said yes to developing a beer with the crew from Chef Ann Kim’s Minneapolis pizza restaurant Pizzeria Lola. For their collaboration Helles brew Keeper of the Flame, Wild Mind’s Head Brewer Austin Myrhan roasted Rahr North Star Pils™ in Lola’s world-famous wood-fired copper pizza oven. For more on that spicy sausage, we welcome Austin to the RahrBSG Blog. Grab a slice and keep scrolling! 

RahrBSG: Hi Austin! Who are you and what do you do at Wild Mind? 

Austin Myrhan: I’ve been the head brewer here for just over three years. Along with my brewer, James, there’s two of us. As with most small breweries, we wear a lot of hats. We do every single thing from wort production to cellaring and packaging and everything in between. 

RahrBSG: Tell us more about Wild Mind. What kinds of beer are y’all known for? 

Austin: Wild Mind is about to celebrate its 8th anniversary next month. Our mixed culture program and fruited sours have always done well. We do a ton of hazy beer. Since I took over, I’ve been focused on doing more Lagerbier, Contintental styles, and rustic farmhouse-style beers. We have a lot of creativity and a lot of different beers we like to brew, especially old-world lagers and Saisons. 

RahrBSG: How long have you been brewing, Austin? 

Austin: I’ve been doing this professionally for about 12 years. I was previously at 612Brew for six and a half years. (Ed. Note: 612Brew is now Padraig’s Brewing.) Before that I was at a brewpub outside Chicago called Flossmoor Station. And then before that I was with Indeed Brewing, right when they opened. 

I originally caught the beer bug in college. I was going to UMD in Duluth and worked at the beer store at Fitger’s – selling t-shirts and stuff in their gift shop. Because the packaging operations were nearby, I was in contact with the brewers all the time. I was only 21, but I was getting obsessed with beer and seeing the whole process. Some of those guys had been to Siebel and my folks were nice enough to say, “Yeah sure, go for it!” So, I left UMD for Siebel. I also spent time at the Doemans Academy for school. 

RahrBSG: Let’s talk about Keeper of the Flame, your Copper Oven Helles. How did this idea germinate? 

Austin: Some of the back-of-house folks from Pizzeria Lola like to come over here after work. We’re close by. They got to know our bartender, they were fans of the beer, and I hung around to meet them. We talked about collaborating, and when the time was right, we all got to sit down together with everyone from Lola and with Ann Kim. We knew we wanted to incorporate the oven from the start, and we wanted to make something that would be really drinkable and food-friendly – just a true collaboration. So, we ended up with an Oven-roasted Helles. 

RahrBSG: What goes better together than pizza and beer? 

Austin: Right? It’s so obvious. It’s funny because we took such a circuitous route to get there. We had ideas for kimchi and fennel and just all kinds of stuff, but it came full circle with a nice drinkable beer that goes with pizza. 

RahrBSG: Why did you select Rahr North Star Pils™ for this brew? 

Austin: We use North Star in virtually everything here as our base malt. We just love it. It was naturally our first idea for this beer because it’s our first ingredient with a lot of our beers. Also, it just makes a really good base malt for a Helles. 

RahrBSG: What was the process like, smoking the malt at the pizzeria? 

Austin: We took a bunch of malt over to Pizzeria Lola in the morning during their prep. Jordan, their oven master, had saved charcoal at the end of the night and used that in the morning to get the oven smoking and hot for us. I didn’t want to overcomplicate anything. We laid a ton of malt out on sheet trays, like hotel pans. I didn’t want to singe the husks on the malt, so we wet it down a little first. We threw it in the oven for 15 minutes and we nailed it on the first try. We popped the door to the oven open and it smelled amazing. It tasted amazing. It had a nice little color to it.  

So we [repeated] that for the rest of the malt and the flavor that came out was just great. When I got it back to the brewery and laid it out to finish drying before milling the next day, the whole brewery smelled like Pizzeria Lola. It smelled like the pizza oven. It really translated across our process.  

RahrBSG: How did North Star Pils perform? 

Austin: I was sort of surprised how much roast and smoke was picked up in that short amount of time. Some of the malt sugars crystallized really nicely, and that layer of caramelization came across in the final beer. It was cool. But aside from the changes to its color and a bit of flavor, it performed like it always does. Nice run off, beautiful color and flavor, and consistent. 

RahrBSG: What other ingredients did you brew with? 

Austin: The smoked malt came out to about 12% of the mash. We also used unroasted North Star Pils and some Weyermann® Specialty Malts. We used their Acidulated Malt, which we like to use because our water is pretty alkaline here. We also used CARAHELL® and CARAFOAM® and a touch of Floor-Malted Bohemian Pils. We wanted to accentuate the breadiness of pizza crust and give it some additional body. 

For hops, we bittered with HVG Hallertauer Magnum and HVG Hallertau Mittelfrüh the rest of the way, 28 or 30 IBUs. We fermented with our house lager yeast Fermentis SafLager™ W-34/70. We thought about using a more expressive yeast strain, but we wanted to keep that malt flavor in the forefront. And like all of our lagers, it was open fermented and spunded for natural carbonation. 

RahrBSG: How’d the beer come out? Have you had it with pizza yet? 

Austin: I was really happy with it. Those simple beers can be intimidating sometimes. You don’t want to screw that up. The whole idea coalesced well, and it came out really close to what I was picturing in the beginning. And the Lola crew all loved it. I was really happy about that. It moved fast, too. We sold out of kegs in about 10 days, which is great. 

It’s great with pizza. I love the Lady Zaza, Lola’s kimchi pizza. But the one I like best with this beer is the fennel and sausage pizza, MY SHA-RONI. Classic sausage pie. 

RahrBSG: What would you tell another brewer considering smoking or brewing with North Star Pils? 

Austin: It’s our base malt for a reason. It performs well and it performs well consistently. It’s got nice color, nice flavor, great extract. It’s everything you want in a base malt and applies well to almost any style you want to do. I recommend it across the board. As for smoking it, it turned out good for me. Why not give it a shot? 

RahrBSG: What else is on the horizon for Wild Mind? More beer and pizza? 

Austin: There’s no firm plan for anything yet, but we have more recipes we’d love to try with Lola. Also, Wild Mind’s 8th anniversary is coming up in August. We have a lot of fun beers coming for that, some collabs and funky beers. We’ll have music and food. We’re going to keep rolling. 

RahrBSG: Fantastic news. Thanks for brewing with Rahr malt and for joining us on the blog, Austin! Cheers!