Arizona Beer Class: Four Peaks Kilt Lifter

(Note: Today MXSW kicks off a weekly series of Arizona beer “classes.” Instead of another beer review waxing poetic about “mouthfeel” and “lacing,” we’re instead asking the brewers to share their beers’ backstories.)

Kilt Lifter at a glance

An amber-colored Scottish-style ale, Kilt Lifter (6% ABV) is the flagship ale of Four Peaks Brewing Company in Tempe. The state’s largest craft brewery brewed nearly 1.5 million gallons of beer in 2013, and Kilt Lifter accounted for just over half of that total. No other Arizona beer is brewed in anywhere near that amount. Kilt Lifter has won six medals at the Great American Beer Festival.

How Kilt Lifter got its start

“It was a seasonal, a one-off,” Four Peaks brewmaster Andy Ingram says. “It was originally made as a Scotch ale, and it was upward of 10%. We pared it down and pared it down. The first iteration when we were finally open was just around 9%. In 1997 or ’98, a 9% beer was monstrous.”

Although it wasn’t on tap the day Four Peaks launched, it soon was added to the lineup and simply called Scottish Amber for the first 18 months.

How Kilt Lifter got its name

“When I was brewing at Coyote Springs Brewing Company, prior to coming to Four Peaks, we used the Kilt Lifter name for a seasonal beer,” Ingram says. “I’d always loved the name – it’s hilarious – but Bill (Garrard, owner of Coyote Springs) owned it. Or we thought Bill owned it.

“I moved to Four Peaks, a couple of years went by, and we’re distributing Scottish Amber. A guy came around – Dan MacBeth, who later became kind of an angel investor for us – and just blurts out, ‘Why don’t we call it Kilt Lifter?’ I said, ‘We can’t. Bill owns the name.’ And he says, ‘No, I own the name. I found out Bill didn’t register it so I registered it.'”

How Kilt Lifter has changed

“If you had a Kilt Lifter back then (1997-98), you’d notice a lot more pronounced peat malt in it,” Ingram says. “Early on, it always had some smoked peat malt. The peat malt supplier we had was incredibly inconsistent – which I can’t blame him for because it’s hard to smoke malt in a consistent manner – so we slowly pared it back until there was none at all.”

Favorite Kilt Lifter anecdote

“We had an electrician working in the brewery during the buildout, and I was doing pilot brewing,” Ingram says. “I gave him two or three Kilt Lifters after work – and this was when it was easily 10 percent – and he got a little loopy, went home, got into a fight with his wife, and ended up getting a divroce. Still, to this day, he blames me and that beer.”

Final thoughts on Kilt Lifter

“I think we’ve converted a lot of people with Kilt Lifter,” Ingram says. “When someone came to the bar and said, ‘Give me whatever’s closest to Budweiser,’ the knee-jerk would have been to give them a Fool’s Gold (a discontinued pilsner), but we instructed everyone to give them a Kilt Lifter. They already had some preconceived notion what a Bud’s like. They had no idea what a Kilt Lifter’s like. So they get that in front of them and you can see the wheels start turning: ‘That’s flavor.’ So I think it worked as a marketing campaign.

“The name helped, for sure. But it’s a good beer. It’s not what anyone would have expected for an Arizona flagship beer – 6% alcohol, malty, sweet, caramelly – but it’s incredibly drinkable.”

Where to find Kilt Lifter

You’ll find Kilt Lifter throughout Arizona on draft and in 12-ounce bottles and cans.