Customer Spotlight: Why Yellow Springs Brewery Made Raspberry Springer a Year-Round Beer

Raspberry Springer started as a fruited take on the brewery's flagship golden ale, made for a single studio touring event before the brewery even opened to the public. It is now a year-round release that regularly outsells their better-known Boat Show IPA in the taproom each summer.

We talked to Natalie Iseli-Smith, Yellow Springs' head brewer, about how the beer came together, why puree instead of fresh fruit or extract, and how a woman-led brewhouse with a real collaboration streak keeps building on it. Raspberry is also Oregon Fruit's best-selling puree, so we had our own reasons to be curious.

Natalie came to brewing sideways. She started bartending in the craft beer world 16 years ago at Dragonmead outside Detroit while working on her undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology at Wayne State University, then picked up a second job a year later at Motor City Brewing Works, in the city's historic Cass Corridor district. After graduating, she took a gap year to figure out her next step, and her boss at Motor City recommended her for a job at Brew Detroit, a contract facility building out a taproom around a small two barrel nano system. They wanted bartenders who could brew, so customers could get real answers about what was in their glass. She was their first hire.

She brewed a pale ale first and was hooked. Her second batch, an ESB she designed herself, caught the attention of the owner of Atwater Brewery at a Christmas party, who hired her on the spot. Two weeks later she was brewing second shift on Atwater's 20 hectoliter German system. From there she helped a colleague open his own brewery in 2017, then moved to Grand Rapids to brew on a 300 barrel system at Founders, before returning to Detroit two years later to run research and development at Founders' satellite taproom. She stayed there until she and her husband moved to Dayton, Ohio in 2022, which is when she started at Yellow Springs. As Natalie puts it, her career spans eight different breweries across 16 years, from Michigan to Ohio, and she says she cherishes something from every one of them.

She has been with Yellow Springs since February of 2022 and took over as head brewer in July of 2024. She and her husband had visited the brewery once before the move and loved the beer, the staff and the taproom's warm, inviting feel. They were not actively hiring a brewer when she reached out, but a two-hour phone call with the head brewer at the time was enough to bring her on anyway.

Natalie says Yellow Springs Brewery is a real cornerstone of its small village community, best known as a supporter of the arts, a maker of exceptional and approachable beer, and a safe space for people to be their authentic selves. If it is someone's first time in, her top recommendation is Boat Show, the brewery's flagship IPA and about 70 percent of its wholesale business. Her second recommendation is Raspberry Springer, especially for anyone who is not sure they like craft beer yet.

The story predates Natalie's time at the brewery. Co-owner Nate opened Yellow Springs with his wife Lisa in April of 2013, but the groundwork was laid the fall before, while the two of them were still cobbling together the brewhouse. They had already brewed a golden ale called Springer, recently retired from the core lineup to make room for a new lager, and wanted a fruited version for an upcoming local studio tour event. Nate and head brewer at the time Jeffery McElfresh blended frozen blackberries with an immersion blender and poured the mix straight into a couple of corny kegs for the event. 

They decided to try a different fruit and lean fully into a natural, authentic fruit character rather than anything that read as artificial. Raspberry was the one that stuck, using Oregon Fruit's aseptic raspberry puree from that very first real version. It stayed on as a beloved seasonal offering from March through August until Yellow Springs gave it a permanent, year-round spot in January of 2025.

As a seasonal release, Raspberry Springer frequently outsold Boat Show in the taprooms over the summer, and demand kept showing up even in the winter months. That is what pushed Yellow Springs to add it to the year-round lineup in January of 2025, and it has kept Raspberry Springer fans happy ever since.

Nate, the co-owner, is one of its biggest fans, and Natalie likes to point out how many big, burly men she knows who order it without a second thought about the color. It pours a bright pink in the brewery's pilsner glasses, but she describes it as crisp, clean and approachable, more tart than sweet, which is exactly why she calls it the perfect lawnmower beer.

The base beer is a golden ale with a simple grain bill of Pilsen malt, flaked rice and a bit of dextrose, which boosts crispness and ABV while thinning the body slightly. A small addition of Saaz hops gives it a balanced, earthy bittering, and Cascade and Amarillo go in toward the end of the boil to complement the raspberry's citrus and herbaceous notes.

The puree goes in heavy. A 30-barrel batch takes 504 pounds of Oregon Fruit's aseptic raspberry puree, added on day seven of fermentation. It takes a team of two to shake and pour twelve 42-pound boxes of puree into a brink, a modified keg, which is then injected into the fermenter with the help of CO2.

The result is a vibrant and refreshing easy drinker, more tart than sweet, with a nice crisp finish.

Natalie is direct about why puree wins out over the alternatives. Extracts, she says, tend to taste medicinal and sharp, more fake than fruity, and she is personally sensitive enough to them that she avoids using them when she can. Fresh fruit brings its own cost and time to work with.

She has also come to appreciate the small variations that come with a real ingredient. Viscosity shifts from fruit to fruit, with some purees running more watery, and she finds Oregon Fruit's raspberry puree lands in a workable middle. She has noticed the color intensity and density shift a little from season to season too, and she takes that as a feature rather than a flaw. It is a reminder, she says, that the puree came from a shrub and not a bottle.

According to Natalie, collaborations with other breweries and partnerships with nonprofits have been part of who Yellow Springs is from the beginning, built into the business model from day one. The team is intentional about who they work with, usually looking for a partner that aligns with their values, supports a cause they believe in, or offers a chance to learn something new.

Two collaborations stand out to her. The rotating International Women's Day collab is the highlight of her year, a chance to reconnect with fellow women brewers that leaves her feeling inspired every time. She also looks forward to Just Be Nice, the brewery's annual Pride collaboration, a quick sour that features a different rotating fruit each year and often gives her a chance to feature something new from Oregon Fruit. She is especially proud of both projects for the way they support and raise awareness for minority groups in and outside the craft beer industry.

Building a career in an industry that is still mostly men has been both challenging and rewarding, in Natalie's telling. She says she knows more women in brewing today than ever, even as the industry still has real ground to cover on leveling the playing field. The women brewers she knows tend to be the hardest working people at their breweries and make some of the most incredible beer around.

Becoming a head brewer was not one single moment for her so much as something that happened gradually, as she proved herself a steady, reliable brewer people trusted. She says she does not always love the spotlight, but she takes real satisfaction in leading a production team that makes beer people want to drink.[GU2] Her advice to any woman considering brewing as a career is enthusiastic and direct: do it, find a female brewer as a resource and mentor, and learn to trust yourself, because women were the original brewers and it is a role she believes they are meant to have.

Winter brings back several seasonal favorites, starting with:

• Jörd’s Bounty, a Viking inspired, gruit-style ale made with rosemary, caraway seed and Oregon Fruit's cranberry puree on November 7th.
• BA Greet the Mind, a Barrel-Aged Barleywine releasing November 25th
• Gather Near - their popular Spruce Tip Pilsner on December 7th
• BA Magical Moments, a Barrel Aged Winter Warmer. This is a popular collab with High Bank Distillery from Columbus, OH, who provided the barrels for aging, that returns on December 18th

And come January 2027, Yellow Springs is releasing Abstract Reality, a quick sour made with Oregon Fruit's peach and mango purees.