5 Great Beer Styles for Summer
Hot days, cold beers! Summer is the perfect time to get outside and bring a beer or two with you. Many breweries brew easy drinking, lighter options for summer (and all year-round, hooray!), and when the temperature climbs, that’s exactly what I want. When “summer” is on the label, you can expect easy drinkability, usually a golden color and a refreshing lightness that will prompt you to reach into the backyard cooler for another can or bottle.
Here are my favorite beers for summer and their corresponding style.
Michigan based Bell’s makes high quality, consistent beers of all stripes. Their popular Oberon wheat is a summer staple throughout America. Pleasant graininess and citrusy flavor makes this wheat ale a real crowd pleaser. The beer also comes in a 5L mini-keg, which would make a handsome addition to your refrigerator on the 4th of July when friends and family come over.
Houston, TX brewer Saint Arnold makes one of my favorite beers of all time in their Lawnmower kolsch but their Summer Pils is also lovely, especially when temperatures and humidity in the summer are on the rise. Saint Arnold Pils is a bit of a misnomer as it is technically a Munich Helles, a German beer style that focuses more on cracker malt flavor than hoppiness like a true pilsner but don’t worry about that, just drink it because it’s good.
Blonde Ale
A classic blonde ale makes sense for summer and Victory has been making Summer Love for over a decade now. The Pennsylvania based brewery’s Summer Love is lovely golden ale (golden ale and blonde ale are the same thing by the way!) brewed with German and American hop varieties which impart an earthy, lemony flavor. Victory says on their website that this beer “pairs well with summer” and I agree 100%.
Summer Ale
Had to give props to a local brewery in my home state of Connecticut. Back East Summer Ale is unique in that it’s quite hoppy and higher ABV at 6%. It reminds me of more of a hoppy blonde ale or even a light American Pale Ale. I love it because it’s always on draft at the local baseball stadium and the two go hand in hand for me when it comes to summer.
Sour
Sours are excellent in the summer and Revolution’s Freedom Lemonade is unique in that it’s brewed like if a lemonade and a beer had a baby. This could change a lot of minds of people who don’t like beer as it’s NOTHING like a beer at all. Sours are a great gateway beverage in that regard. On the plus side too, Freedom Lemonade is available all year round so don’t worry about missing out when summer ends as you can imbibe it into the winter months. I also love it because it makes a great base for beer cocktails.
So fill the cooler, hit the beach, pool, baseball game or mountainside trail and enjoy a beer or two (responsibly of course) this summer. Cheers!