Angry Horse Brewing • 9th Anniversary Beer
Ninth Rein
Nine Years in the Saddle. One Damn Good Helles.
We brewed Ninth Rein to celebrate nine years of Angry Horse Brewing with a beer that puts craftsmanship front and center: brilliant gold, crisp, clean, malt-forward, and dangerously easy to drink.
Built to Celebrate Nine Years
Anniversary beers have a habit of getting bigger, louder, and more complicated. For our ninth year, we went the other direction.
Ninth Rein is a Munich-style Helles lager built around precision, balance, and drinkability. There are no fruit additions, no giant dry hop, and no tricks hiding behind the curtain. This is a beer where the ingredients and the brewing process have nowhere to hide.
Pale malt. Noble hops. A clean lager fermentation. Cold conditioning. Time.
The result is the kind of beer we love having in our own glass: flavorful enough to slow down and appreciate, crisp enough that ordering another one feels like the obvious next move.
Ninth Rein at a Glance
Style: Munich-Style Helles Lager
ABV: 4.9%
IBU: Approximately 18
Color: Brilliant Pale Gold
Fermentation: Traditional Lager Fermentation
Character: Crisp • Malty • Clean • Refreshing
What Does Ninth Rein Taste Like?
Appearance
Brilliant pale gold with a tight, persistent white head. It looks exactly like the kind of lager you want handed to you on a warm Southern California afternoon.
Aroma
Fresh bread and clean grain lead the aroma, followed by a subtle honey-like malt character. Hallertauer Mittelfrüh adds a restrained floral and herbal note in the background.
Flavor
Soft Pilsner malt comes first, bringing fresh bread, cracker, and light grain character. A small addition of Munich malt adds another layer of depth without making the beer sweet. Perle and Hallertauer Mittelfrüh provide just enough bitterness and classic lager hop character to keep everything balanced.
Finish
Clean, crisp, and refreshing. The malt hangs around just long enough before giving way to a dry, balanced finish that makes the next sip come quickly.
Simple Ingredients. No Place to Hide.
Helles rewards restraint. Instead of building a long ingredient list, we focused on getting a handful of classic ingredients to work together exactly the way we wanted.
Rahr North Star Pilsner Malt
The foundation of Ninth Rein. North Star Pilsner gives the beer its pale golden color and its clean bread, grain, and delicate honey-like malt character.
Weyermann Munich I
Used with a light hand, Munich malt adds another layer of bread and malt depth without weighing the beer down or introducing caramel sweetness.
Perle
Perle provides the majority of the bitterness: clean, restrained, and designed to balance the malt rather than compete with it.
Hallertauer Mittelfrüh
One of the classic German noble hop varieties, Mittelfrüh contributes the subtle floral, herbal, and lightly spicy character that gives the finish a distinctly European lager edge.
SafLager W-34/70
A classic lager yeast chosen for a clean fermentation profile that lets the malt and hops speak for themselves.
Montebello Water
Ninth Rein starts with the same local Montebello water we brew with every day, carefully treated for a pale lager. It is one more piece of what makes this beer ours—from the city where Angry Horse began.
What Exactly Is a Helles?
“Helles” is German for “bright” or “pale,” and that description fits the beer perfectly.
A Munich Helles is a pale lager where malt takes the lead, but balance is everything. Compared with a German Pils, the bitterness is softer and the malt character is more noticeable. Compared with a richer amber lager, Helles stays pale, crisp, and highly drinkable.
The style looks simple. Brewing a great one isn't.
When a beer is this clean, there is nowhere for fermentation flaws, harsh bitterness, oxidation, or muddy malt character to hide. That's exactly why we wanted to brew it for our anniversary.
How to Describe Ninth Rein?
The quick answer:
“It’s the Angry Horse 9th Anniversary Helles—a crisp, clean German-style golden lager
with fresh bread and light honey-like malt flavor, subtle floral hops,
and a really refreshing finish.”
For someone who normally drinks light lager:
“If you like clean, easy-drinking lagers, start here. It’s crisp and
refreshing, but the German-style malt gives it a lot more flavor than
a typical domestic light lager.”
For a craft beer drinker:
“It’s a malt-driven Munich Helles. Mostly Pilsner malt with a touch of
Munich, restrained Perle and Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, and a clean
W-34/70 lager fermentation.”
Three words to remember:
Crisp. Malty. Clean.
Why “Ninth Rein”?
The name marks nine years of Angry Horse Brewing while staying rooted in the identity that has carried us from the beginning.
The label circles a massive number nine with cowboys, cowgirls, and horses in motion—a nod to the people, personalities, chaos, hard work, and community that have all been part of the ride.
Nine years means thousands of batches, countless conversations across the bar, long brew days, late nights, celebrations, setbacks, friendships, and a community that continues to show up for us.
Ninth Rein was brewed for all of it.
Nine years in the saddle. One brilliant golden lager brewed for the road ahead.
Raise One With Us
Angry Horse has always been about more than what's inside the glass. Beer gives us an excuse to gather, talk, celebrate, argue about music, meet somebody new, and turn a taproom full of strangers into a community.
Ninth Rein is our toast to the first nine years—and to everyone who helped get us here.
So pull up a chair, grab a pint, and raise one with us.
Here's to the road behind us, the people beside us, and everything still ahead.
