Not all beer is summer beer. Sure, we don't want some heavy, sticky stout when the sun is at high noon. Duh. But when we’re organizing cookouts around perfectly-glazed meats and smoky, charred vegetables, we want a summer beer to match. The game day lagers aren’t going to do.
So what makes for good summer beer? It isn’t just one thing. It’s the entire summer feeling, packed into a cool glass. It’s the smell of freshly cut grass, the sound of a marinade sizzling on a ripping hot grill, and the feeling of splashing water cooling baked cement. Summer beer is the slide of a screen door and the “Dinner time!” yell that follows it. These are the five styles of beer that will get you to that state of pure summer relaxation:
American Pilsner
Thanks to our beer-loving friends in the Czech Republic, we’ve been drinking pilsner for well over a hundred years. And the Champagne of Beers? Yeah, that’s a pilsner. It’s a common style, a lager brewed with pilsner malt, but American brewers are pushing the pilsner away from watery suds of frat parties past and embracing the flavors of zingy hops and soft, toasty malt. A local pilsner is the stepping stone for the craft beer newcomer, something familiar and refreshing at the same time.
We Love: Suarez Family Brewery Palatine Pils, Victory Brewing Prima Pilsner, Threes Brewing Vliet, Firestone Walker Pivo Pils, and pFriem Family Brewers Pilsner
Berliner Weisse
Vinyl lounge chairs. Lifeguards twirling whistles. And hot dogs from the snack bar. Berliner weisse is an afternoon at a suburban swim club. This German wheat ale is gently tart, chug-able, and very open to the addition of fruit (although we’ll gladly drink Berliner weisse without it). Brewers love throwing tropical fruits like mango, passionfruit, or lychee into Berliner weisse, which welcomes a little sweetness to balance out that tang. Get ready to experience lemonade stand flashbacks.
We Love: Creature Comforts Athena, The Referend Bier Blendery Berliner Messe, J. Wakefield Brewing Miami Madness, and Perennial Artisan Ales Peach Berliner Weiss
Gose
If Berliner weisse is a day at the swim club, a gose (goes-uh) is a day at the beach. Brewed with salt (seriously) and coriander, this low-ABV German style is summer’s ultimate food beer. It’s light and refreshing in the lip-smacking, get-this-rib-sauce-off-my-face type of way, something like a spray of cold ocean water. We wouldn’t recommend eating ribs on the beach though. Too much sand. Too much sauce. Stick with with the gose, at least until you get home.
We Love: Lost Nation Gose, De Garde Hose, Westbrook Gose, Grimm Artisanal Ales Super Spruce, and Sierra Nevada Otra Vez
New England Style IPA
IPAs aren’t about bitterness anymore. Gone are the days of syrupy-sweet, hangover-inducing hop bombs. We live in a new era now, one filled with aromatic, fruit-forward, drink-on-repeat IPAs, beers that taste and smell like boozy fruit salad. The new-school IPA exploits the fruity flavors in hops, instead of their bitterness, and they look completely different too. These IPAs are unfiltered, which means they’re cloudy, looking something like orange juice. We’ll take an unfiltered IPA over a mimosa any day.
We Love: Mikkeller San Diego Windy Hill, Triple Crossing All Neon Like, Fieldwork Brewing Pulp, Hill Farmstead Susan, and Narrow Gauge Fallen Flag
Farmhouse Ale
There’s no real definition for a farmhouse ale. Sorry. Sometimes they’ll be called saisons and other times wild ales. But the common thread is the place they evoke. Farmhouse ales are yeast-driven ales that take root from beers historically brewed on Belgian farms. They taste like fresh baked bread and hay, with melon-y undertones of barnyard funk. Where the pilsner is a pristine example of simplicity, the farmhouse ale is an artful showcase of thought-provoking flavor. Not to fall into cliches...but these are the beers that will change you.
We Love: Brewery Bhavana Till, Allagash Little Brett, Side Project Biere du Pays, Our Mutual Friend Saison Trystero and Holy Mountain Witchfinder
Want to know what the deal is with IPAs? Here ya go:
