Lazy days by the pool, cookouts on the beach, Fourth of July shenanigans — sweet summertime (and the food and drink that accompanies it) is here, and ’tis the season of crisp, crushable patio-pounders. Or, more succinctly, it’s time to crack open a beer.
Light, low-ABV lagers — the style favored in tropical climes like Mexico and Thailand — are hot-weather coolers par excellence. Some ales and sours are also summer all-stars. “Lagers, saisons or kölschs are classic choices for hot days,” says Daniel Gadala-Maria, the head brewer of Finback Brewery in Queens, New York. “Fruited sours and sweet wheat beers are more robust, but the pleasing acidity and high carbonation are refreshing when temperatures rise.”
What makes a perfect summer beer?
Note that easy-drinking beer need not be synonymous with watered-down swill. “Great hot-weather beers successfully strike a balance between refreshing and complex,” says Alex Gonzalez, a veteran New York City bartender currently working the stick at AKA Nomad in Manhattan. Gonzalez looks for summer beers with Citra and Mosaic hops, botanical flavor bombs that enliven brews with zips of lemon, tangerine and grapefruit. For a beer cocktail as chill as a June weekend, Gonzalez recommends a Monaco — a quick concoction of lemonade, grenadine, beer and ice.
Best warm-weather beers
So throw some ice in the cooler, pack the sunscreen and toast to vernal joy with these light, refreshing coolers — brews as refreshing as an afternoon dip in the lake and as playful as a sky full of fireflies. (And for those of you abstaining this summer, you can check out our picks for favorite nonalcoholic beers.)
Leave it to Brooklyn hipsters to elevate craft beer to the heights of fine art. Rome has the Vatican, Paris has the Louvre and Williamsburg has Brooklyn Brewery, a temple of creative, masterful suds since 1988. All Brooklyn Brewery’s offerings are exceptional, but I favor the Summer Ale in the peak of summer. As jubilant as a balmy Saturday posted up at Domino Park, Summer Ale boasts a perfect balance of hoppy bite and malty sweetness. Sunny Pale Ale pours a flaxen color with a fragrant white head.
Oskar Blues is a Fort Collins heavyweight that helped establish Colorado as a powerhouse in the first craft beer wave in the ’90s. Beer nerds assert that the surest gauge of a brewery’s chops is its lightest beer, in which flaws cannot hide behind heavy hopping or additives. Dale’s American Light Lager, a pilsner as light as a dream, meets every criterion for an exceptional summer lager: champagne-like bubbles; well-articulated, delicate lupuline notes; and crisp texture. It pours a soft straw color with a bone-white head, and at a gentle 4.2% ABV, it’s a perfect reward after a bike ride or beach volleyball game.
With deep German roots and sweltering summers, Texas takes hot-weather brews as seriously as rodeo and brisket cook-offs. In the Lone Star State, no summer camping trip to Big Bend National Park or jam session at Luckenbach is complete without an ice bucket full of Shiner Lemonade Shandy. Spoetzl brews this golden-hued beauty with two-row malt — lighter than four-row malt — and mixes in freshly squeezed lemon juice and cane sugar. As revivifying as a tall glass of Mom’s lemonade after a flag football match, Shiner Lemonade Shandy pairs fantastically with barbecue, Willie Nelson playlists and honky-tonk two-stepping.
As the name suggests, the aromas of Sweetwater 420 Pale Ale — a melody of citrus, pine and fresh-cut grass — might bring to mind a jam band concert or your college art professor’s office. Light, floral and zippy, 420 Pale Ale is an easy-drinker tailor-made for fishing trips, afternoons on the links or backyard barbecues. Brewed with Centennial and Cascade hops, the beer has just a touch of bitterness to accentuate the citrusy parade of grapefruit, lemon and lime notes. Pair Sweetwater 420 Pale Ale with pizza, watermelon salad and a playlist of Grateful Dead deep cuts.
Beer geeks are wont to thumb their noses at the Big Boys, but this snobbery is, frankly, ridiculous. Heavyweights like Heineken are top dogs for a reason: They have the money to build first-in-class facilities, attract world-class brewers and deliver the goods with aplomb. Heineken uses a special cold-resistant lagering yeast to brew this ethereally light pilsner. The wort ferments at a glacially slow pace, and the result is a buoyant elixir with deeply nuanced flavors. Better yet, Heineken Silver is low in carbs and alcohol. Serve Heineken Silver in a frosty glass and pair it with s’mores, hot dogs fresh off the grill and camaraderie around a beach bonfire.
I steer away from barrel-chested IPAs when the sun blazes, but lighter IPAs bursting with lemon and floral aromas are superb heat quenchers. Lagunitas IPA, a welterweight at 6% ABV, is light enough to cut the heat on the most virile of August scorchers. The beer pours a ruddy copper color in the glass, with an aromatic head as white and fluffy as the lazy clouds on a summer day in California. In contrast to many West Coast juice-bombs, Lagunitas is consummately crushable — a terrific choice when you want to pick off a six-pack by the pool. Try sipping it from a tulip glass to savor the full bouquet of delicate floral notes.
In the depths of their virile winter, New Englanders solace themselves knowing that summer days on Cape Cod with coolers full of Sam Adams Summer Ale await once the snow subsides. Brewed with two-row malt and Grains of Paradise imported from West Africa, Summer Ale is crisp and citrusy, with prominent notes of lemon rind, grapefruit and key lime. Sam Adams purists might balk at this opinion, but Summer Ale makes for a wicked tasty Michelada.
Chill out with Summerfest, Sierra Nevada’s eminently crushable Czech pilsner. Sierra Nevada, a renowned California brewery, brews this light, golden treat with a mix of European and Californian hops. Meeting Gonzalez’s criteria in choosing great summer beers, Summerfest is simultaneously easy-drinking and provocative. Classic pilsner flavors of biscuits, toast and roasted nuts shine in the initial sips, followed by zips of lemon and bergamot orange from the West Coast hops. Here is a beer as fun as a summer night filled with Beach Boys records, bonfires and a Pacific breeze.
The last beer in our roundup is an archetypical hot-weather pilsner, a summer quencher as classic as a draught and hotdog at the ballpark. Brewed with fragrant Simcoe and Tettnang hops, Summer Love dances with notes of lemon zest, sweet malt and a touch of agreeable bitterness. A six-pack of these golden treats is the surest way to make any summer cookout or beach party a Victory.