Last year, Stone Brewing Company, the nation’s 10th-largest craft brewery, announced it was spinning off its Arrogant Bastard line of beers into a separate brand.

Now, when you pick up a six-pack of Arrogant Bastard Ale, “Stone’’ is nowhere to be found (though the familiar snarling gargoyle still greets you with the words “You’re not worthy’’). Stone founder and CEO Greg Koch says the brand distinction is a way to separate several of his aggressively named beers from a product line that includes Stone IPA and Stone Smoked Porter.

“Arrogant Bastard approaches the world from a viewpoint that views typical compromise as offensive,’’ says Koch.

In that vein, Arrogant Brewing has released Who You Callin’ Wussie Pilsner, the brand’s second year-round release. In marketing materials, the gargoyle has plenty of thoughts on what industrialization has done to the pilsner style in the last 100 years. Koch does as well.

“Through a boiling-frog level of homogenization and industrialization, the pilsner has become sort of akin to vodka,’’ says Koch. “Its new ideal is to be flavorless and odorless.’’

Enter Wussie, a 5.8 percent alcohol by volume beer based on some of the pilsners made in Northern Germany.

“It’s closer to the range of what a pilsner might have historically been in some parts of the world,’’ says Koch. “Many pilsners have been dumbed down beyond any recognition. . . . People have been led by the nose by advertising campaigns and price.’’

What makes Who You Callin’ Wussie a good pilsner? Process. Koch says a quality pilsner can’t be inexpensive. Ingredients can’t be an afterthought. In that vein, he calls the hops in this style “critical,’’ despite the beer’s not being hop-forward.

“You may not want fruity, spicy, but basically you’ve got to treat them as they are, which [is as] critical ingredients,’’ says Koch.

The result is a beer that may look like a Budweiser in a glass but drinks with more bite; it’s clean, grassy, and pleasingly bitter with a crisp, cracker-like finish.

There’s some incongruity between what Koch says and what he does. When he says “what pleases the masses is not an ideal,’’ he’s referring to mass-marketed beer and sliced, wrapped, processed cheese. But he’s also trying to capture some of the masses for himself. The birth of Arrogant Brewing accompanies some significant expansion for the company. Plans are for Stone to open new breweries later this year in Richmond, Va., and Berlin, Germany, and to expand its current brewery in Escondido, Calif.

“Now that consumers have also been able to grow in their passion and caring for things that are real, it’s an opportunity to reclaim some of that territory,’’ says Koch.

A drinkable, soon-to-be-everywhere pilsner is one way to do just that. GARY DZEN

Gary Dzen can be reached at gary.dzen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GaryDzen