What is Forest Beer?
Forest Beer is our expression of place—an homage to the Tahoe National Forest and the flavors it inspires. Rooted in the farmhouse brewing tradition, Forest Beer embraces the idea of terroir, not from fields and barns, but from the forest floor. Instead of cultivating on a farm, we brew among the pines, using foraged ingredients, locally crafted malts, Native yeast cultivated from the forest, and flavor profiles that evoke the changing seasons of the Sierra.
As aroma and taste are deeply tied to memory, each Forest Beer is crafted to transport you—whether it’s the crisp scent of pine needles, the warmth of sunbaked forest trails, or the earthy complexity of moss and woodsmoke. It’s not just beer; it’s a sensory journey through one of the most breathtaking regions in the world. Forest Beer reflects seasonality, locality, and our profound connection to this place we call home.
Locally Produced Craft Malt
Our beer begins with locally crafted malt grains grown with Lake Tahoe runoff, kilned with precision, and fed with fertilizer produced by the same livestock that feeds on our spent brewing grain.
Foraged Ingredients
We gather ingredients from the forest—spruce tips, sage, and wild mushrooms—each one a whisper of the wilderness captured in every hand-crafted batch.
Flavors Inspired by the Forest
Our flavors echo the forest—earthy, resinous, citrus-laced, and herbaceous—crafted to evoke misty mornings, sun-warmed trails, and the untamed spirit of the Sierra.
How Are Forest Beers Developed?
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Much like how a chef builds a dish, we take a culinary approach to forest beer and think about it in terms of aroma, texture, color, flavor, and experience.
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We don’t care about style guidelines or rules. We refuse to follow dogma and believe that beer, just like people, are uniquely individual and don’t belong in boxes.
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Our goal is to create beers that tell a story, and exist on their own delicious terms.
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We use a table-to-farm approach to create beers. First conceptualizing what we want the beer’s sensory experience to be, and then reverse engineering it to determine the sourcing, process, and ingredients we use produce it
When developing a new beer, the special (and often small) area of convergence where concept meets deliciousness is the sweet spot that we aim for. It’s what makes our beers special, and at their best, tell the story of our home- one of the most beautiful and abundant regions in the world.
INNOVATIVE BEER CONCEPT THAT
TELLS A STORY
GOOD WOLF BEER
FLAVOR
DRINKABILITY
DELICIOUSNESS
Consistency of Quality
At the Good Wolf consistency of quality is a pillar of our business, and drives everything we do. We source the best ingredients from all over the globe, regardless of cost. Unlike most breweries, we don’t strive to make the same beer every time we brew it, we just want the beer we brew to be consistently good.
It’s all well and good to talk about quality, but it’s only meaningful if you take action to ensure it. We put our money where our mouth is, so fermenting beer is tasted and monitored daily, using sensory, density and pH measurements. These same standards are adhered to before transferring to a packaging tank, before the actual packaging, and its short lifespan while on tap.
There are many gates that a Good Wolf beer has to pass through before it ever sees the market and we wouldn’t have it any other way. That means when you sit down to have a pint with friends, it will always be fresh, delicious, and deliver all the flavor you expect from a great craft beer.
Brewed from the Woods:
Past Creations
VELVET PLUME
Wood smoked stone fruit ale with caramelized lacto-fermented honey
Fresh Twin Peaks Orchards nectarines picked at peak ripeness, glazed with lacto-fermented salty/sweet Halleluyah Farms honey and caramelized over a peach and hickory wood fire. The smoldering fruit was then layered on a base beer using biscuity 40 Mile Malt Copeland barley malt, golden naked oats, and racked onto a generous amount of fresh peach juice. Fermented with our favorite English yeast strain and cold conditioned until the complex flavors of the smoked summer fruits are perfectly harmonized. At service, Velvet Plume is cold smoke infused to give a quick savory aroma hit before your first taste rolls into the fresh flavors of nectarines, peaches, and honey.
DIRT CANDY
Foraged mushroom ale
Imagine taking a long hike through the forest on a warm spring day and turning a corner to find a shaded grove of moss covered jeffrey pines. Time slows down and you smell the damp bark and earthy-cool air as you rest on a log. This is home for the night.
This experience is what the brew team at The Good Wolf attempted to capture with Dirt Candy. A foraged mushroom ale that captures the terroir of Tahoe National Forest in an incredibly sessionable and unique drinking experience. Earthy, meaty, and crisp, Dirt Candy showcases foraged turkey tail, lion's mane, matsutaki, blue oyster, chicken of the woods mushrooms, a delicate dose of premium English caramel malt, and a touch of campfire smoke.
Digging deep into the umami flavors of the forest, Dirt Candy is a drinking experience like no other.