Stoudts beer is being brought back by Philadelphia brewery Evil Genius

Two years ago, when craft-beer pioneer Carol Stoudt retired and closed Stoudts, the Lancaster County brewery she founded in 1987, she left open the possibility that the brand would live on.

So it shall.

Stoudt has made a deal with Trevor Hayward and Luke Bowen at Philadelphia’s Evil Genius Beer Co. to produce at least four Stoudts beers at its brewery on North Front Street in the Kensington-Fishtown section of town.

“We’re leaving the beer in good hands,” said Stoudt, 72, from her home on a horse farm in Vermont, where she tends a garden and fruit orchard.

She said she and her partners chose to work with Evil Genius “because they agreed to keep the integrity of the beer.”

Also key was its location in Philadelphia — “always a strong and important market,” she said. “We have a lot of good friends and customers, so it’s important for me to be here. I also have a good relationship with Trevor and Luke. They were following me from the early days when I started my micro-festivals.”

The first beer to be made under the new licensing agreement is Stoudts Oktoberfest, a traditional German-style lager, which returned this week in kegs in the greater Philadelphia region (through the distributor Muller) as well as in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

One of the beers that cinched Stoudts’ reputation in American brewing — Gold Lager, which in 1988 won a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival — is also planned.

Evil Genius will begin canning Stoudts beers starting next year, Hayward said.

He said he and Stoudt met in early 2020 to talk about continuing the brand. At the time, Stoudt said she was closing because the brewery was “not moving enough volume to justify the expense of keeping the brewery open.”

“The conversation went on pause” during most of the pandemic, Hayward said.

Talks resumed in February. “I felt very eager to [work with Stoudts] because it’s well-established and well-known,” Hayward said.

Culling Stoudts’ 30-plus years of beer recipes was both a challenge and a treat, he said. “They made every style,” Hayward said. “You name it and they’ve done it.”

Stoudt became the first woman to be a head brewer in the United States since Prohibition in part because of Pennsylvania’s liquor laws.

In 1978, Stoudt and her husband, Ed, opened the Black Angus complex, a flea market on Route 272 in Adamstown. They rented booths to dealers, and operated a restaurant and a 1,300-seat beer garden.

According to an Inquirer account, the Stoudts — both of German ancestry — decided to make a batch of homebrew to add a little local flavor to the beers they sold at Black Angus’ annual Bavarian Summer Festivals. Customers loved it.

They researched and found that many local so-called boutique beers were using contract breweries to create beer from their recipes. The Stoudts decided to build a brewery from the ground up.

But at the time, the state prohibited the same business entity from both manufacturing and retailing alcohol. Carol Stoudt became president of the brewing company, while Ed Stoudt remained at the restaurant.

A former teacher with a master’s degree in education, Carol Stoudt was all in with the idea of producing German-style lagers based on the Rheinheitsgebot, the regulations of 1516 in which only four basic ingredients for beer are permitted: barley, hops, yeast, and water.

Stoudt toured 29 breweries in Bavaria, took a short course in brewing at the University of California at Davis, and visited microbreweries along the West Coast. She also did a one-year internship at a microbrewery in Louisiana.

She found a supplier of malted grains in Wisconsin. She sourced hops from Washington, Germany, and what was then Czechoslovakia. She went to Bavaria for yeast.

The awards and accolades poured in.

After the brewery’s closing and the Stoudts moved to New England, the property in Adamstown — once a popular stop for Philadelphia-area beer aficionados — became a wedding venue and complex of shops called the IronSpire Complex.

As part of the new partnership with Evil Genius, she and Hayward communicate regularly. She was involved with the rebranding and the packaging, and has a say in new beers. “Consulting about new recipes is exciting,” she said.

She said she and Evil Genius head brewer Matt Lally are working on a winter beer. “I have my ideas, he has his ideas and then I said, ‘Reach out to your sales team and ask them, ‘What style of beer do you think has legs?’” she said. “Historically, the winter beers I made — the bocks, the double bocks — they only can be marketed to a small customer base. Let’s see what the sales team dreams up and then we’ll formulate a recipe.”

Hayward said Stoudt would set her own schedule. “She’s retired, so she gets to do as much or as little as she wants,” he said.