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Dortmunder Gold Lager

Great Lakes Brewing Co. | www.greatlakesbrewing.com

Great Lakes Brewing Co.

2516 Market Ave.

Cleveland, Ohio 44113

(216) 771–4404

First brewed: 1988

Style: German export bier

Alcohol content: 5.8 percent

IBUs: 30

Awards: Gold medal in 1990 at the Great American Beer Festival

Available: Year-round on draft and in bottles

IF YOU LIKE THIS BEER, here are five other Ohio craft beers to try:

• Thirsty Dog Labrador Lager

• Fat Head’s Starlight Lager

• Black Cloister Helles Angel

• Warped Wing Trotwood

• Lager Heads Barnburner Lager

DORTMUNDER GOLD LAGER was one of the first two beers ever made by Great Lakes Brewing. The other was Eliot Ness Amber Lager.

But in the beginning, way back in 1988, you couldn’t walk into the Great Lakes brewpub and order a Dortmunder. The bartender would give you a quizzical look and wonder if you were in the wrong brewery.

See, Dortmunder wasn’t always known as Dortmunder. At the outset, it was called Heisman, named after John Heisman, a famous collegiate football player and coach who grew up in the Ohio City neighborhood that houses the brewery. Heisman was the beer that won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 1990.

Then the lawyers came calling. Great Lakes received a threatening letter from a high-powered Manhattan law firm representing the Downtown Athletic Club. For nonsports fans, that’s the group that hands out the Heisman Trophy each year to the best collegiate football player. The Heisman Trophy is named after, you guessed it, John Heisman. Basically, the letter said, quit using the Heisman name.

The funny thing is cofounder Pat Conway remembers being out in Denver for the beer festival and people mispronouncing the beer’s name. They called it Heez-man. Nobody back then associated the beer with football unless you struck the famous Heisman Trophy pose.

Instead of putting up a fight, Great Lakes decided to change the name. But to what? They stumbled over their options until original brewer Thaine Johnson’s wife made a simple suggestion: “It’s gold in color. Why don’t you call it Dortmunder Gold? You just won a gold medal.”

The name stuck. Great Lakes helped bring back the Dortmunder style, which is not dry and is more balanced than, as Conway puts it, “tasteless American lagers.”

For years, Dortmunder Gold Lager was the best-selling brand for Great Lakes. It has been surpassed only by Christmas Ale.

Great Lakes still pays tribute to the Heisman legacy. As a little joke, the brewery snuck the image of a football onto its label when the labels were redesigned in 2015.