Wynkoop Brewing Releases B3K Black Lager in a Can

(Denver, Colorado) – Wynkoop Brewing Company is now releasing its third canned beer, B3K Black Lager.

A luxurious German-style schwarzbier, the beer has won two recent medals at the Great American Beer Festival.

In 2008 it won a gold medal in the German-Style Schwarzbier bracket. In last year’s GABF it won a 2011 bronze medal in the Kellerbier/Zwickelbier category.

A richly flavored but thirst-quenching version of dark beer, B3K is an unfiltered small-batch wonder with a creamy body, chocolate and coffee aromas, and a hint of smoke.

It is an immensely quaffable beer of just 5.5% ABV.

“B3K has been a staff favorite for years,” notes Wynkoop “Beer Pedaler” Clarke Boyer,  “and has a cult following at Wynkoop and our other places. That following and its two GABF medals made it the obvious choice for our third canned beer.”

B3K is built with German base malts, Caramunich malt, debittered black malt, beechwood-smoked malt (from Bamberg, Germany) and a blend of noble hops.

Wynkoop’s first canned lager, it ages for a lengthy five weeks.

“It requires nearly three times as much tank time as our canned ales,” says head brewer Andy Brown. “But it’s worth it when you taste how smooth B3K is for a dark beer. And our new expansion of the brewery gave us the capacity to start putting it in cans.”

The beer pairs exceptionally well with an array of gourmet foods, from grilled and smoked meats to chocolate desserts.

B3K is packaged in a glorious black can (produced at the nearby Ball Corporation can-making plant in Golden, Colorado) and hand canned (on Cask System’s trailblazing two-head canner) at Wynkoop Brewing Company.

The beer is available in sixpacks and 15.5 and 5.2 gallon kegs, and is now appearing at Wynkoop accounts in the Denver metro area.

Wynkoop Brewing Company was founded in 1988 by then out-of-work geologist (and current governor of Colorado) John Hickenlooper and a group of urban pioneers.

Wynkoop Brewing is Colorado’s first brewpub and a pioneer of America’s craft beer movement. The brewery brewed some of the first styles of craft beer ever seen in Colorado and the US.

The Brewers Association’s annual award for innovation is named after Wynkoop’s original brewer Russell Schehrer.

The brewpub was a key catalyst in the rebirth of Denver’s formerly decaying lower downtown section (now known as LoDo).

Wynkoop began hand-canning and self-distributing its canned and kegged beer in January of 2010.