Summer seasonal craft brews have made it to shelves | Beer Chick
Summer has finally arrived, and in my opinion, it wouldn’t be official without all of the seasonal beers arriving on the shelves. In the past, it’s been about the wheatiest wheat, the crispest lager, and the hoppiest session IPA, but this year the tides have come in with the no-longer-taboo of fruit. Splashes of orange and doses of mouth-watering watermelon — it’s like a giant fruit basket filling your beer bucket. Cheers to the fresh lineup of the sweet brews of summer!
Kamikaze Kaleidoscope from Dark Horse Brewing Co. (Marshall, Mich.) might have come up with the perfect summertime wit. Dry, refreshing, and delightfully cloudy it’s brewed with a subtle dose of orange and lemon peels to bring forward a crisp and citrus hint to the full, yeasty wheat flavor. A surprisingly true-to-style offering that can hang with the Belgian and German wits and weizens that traditionally dominate the style. If you’re a fan of Blue Moon or Shock Top, or know someone who is and want to introduce them to something that’ll knock their flip-flops off, you can’t do much better than this!
For many, watermelon is the go-to summer-time treat and with good reason: it’s sweet, refreshing, and just plain fun to eat! However, when a lot of breweries started adding it to their beers a few years ago, it wasn’t always a success. Trust me on this: as a home brewer I have also tried to tame watermelon and failed badly. The trouble with watermelon is that it turns rancid pretty quickly, so it’s hard to get that natural flavor and it’s been hard to pair it with a style of beer that supports its melony nuances appropriately. Terrapin Beer Co (Athens, Ga.) may have finally hit the mark though with their Watermelon Gose, a slightly sour and salty wheat beer that carries soft sweetness of the fruit and makes you believe that you’re chomping on a chunk of melon! It’s light, dry, and easy drinking, and at 4.5% abv you’ll want to toss a few of these in the cooler for your next picnic!
Hop lovers: I didn’t forget about you! Stick your face into a glass of Stone’s Enjoy By July 25 Tangerine and you’re going to take a nosedive into hop heaven. It’s got that malty body that you know and love, with a massive amount of dank hop additions and a splash of tangerine to keep the citrus brightness and fruit in your face. The Enjoy By series is known for the variety in flavor and hop selection, but the main focus is that by abiding by the date to “enjoy by”, you get the consistent experience that the brewers at Stone want you to have.
New South Brewing (Myrtle Beach) has brewed up the perfect session ale for everyone in town to enjoy this summer, known simply as Dry-Hopped Summer Session ale. It’s a simple and classic take on a lightened up pale ale, with full doses of fruity Mosaic, Amarillo, and New South’s go-to Falconer’s Flight hops, and several gallons of locally sourced honey! The resulting flavor is full of citrus that keeps you reaching for another glass of this local treasure. Get it while it lasts around town, or directly from their taproom at the brewery!
Captain Lawrence, a microbrewery from Pleasantville, N.Y., recently made its debut in the area with some of its most sought after selections, including an endlessly enjoyable summer session IPA, known as Effortless Grapefruit IPA. The can (a perfect fit for outdoor summer-time activities) says “Lay back and enjoy an effortless grapefruit IPA experience” and they couldn’t have chosen a better phrase. This beer is everything it should be: it’s refreshing, with the perfect dry finish and hop bitterness, and grapefruit juiciness that quenches your thirst and leaves your tastebuds ready for more. With a Mosaic dry-hoping providing an additional layer of sweet, peachy aroma, the only thing effortless about it is drinking it!
Alltech’s Lexington, Ky., Brewery and Distillery is not your average brewery. It’s a part of Alltech, which is a company that focuses on crop sciences, animal nutrition, and by extension, they know A LOT about grain. Part of the barrel aged seasonal series, the Kentucky Peach Barrel Wheat Ale is a delicate marriage of light and decadence. South Carolina is the top producer of peaches in the country (sorry Georgia!) and as one of the many discerning, self-proclaimed peach connoisseurs, this lively wheat ale has an honest, natural flavor and then some. Aged in oak barrels, each sip is full of rich, real peach flavor, biscuity wheat, and a touch of toasted oak at the finish. The flavors linger and leave a soft, buttery and tangy flavor dancing on the tongue. At a whopping 8% abv, this is one to sip and savor, a perfect way to wind down during a long summer evening.
This story was originally published July 5, 2016 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Summer seasonal craft brews have made it to shelves | Beer Chick."