Brewed awakening

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG COLLEGIATE KNOW-NOTHING, I drank the same dirt-cheap domestic lager year-round. No matter if it were 90 degrees or 9 below, I’d wrap my hands round a can of something crappy and cold. It was equal parts routine and bullheaded ignorance.

While I wasted my weekend nights sipping Natural Ice and Busch Light, I spent Saturday morning shopping at southeastern Ohio’s superb Athens Farmers Market. A die-hard cook since childhood, I followed the harvest with a religious zeal. In the spring, I sautéed asparagus with freshly trimmed garlic scapes. During summer, I made cooling cucumber salads and roasted corn. Fall was reserved for cauliflower curries and roasted pumpkin.

What I later discovered is that beer also follows its own distinct seasonal rhythms. Through spiced Christmas ales have long been earmarked for winter, and cloudy, banana-scented German hefeweizens have a toehold in summertime, craft brewers have begun broadening the definition of seasonal beer by either creating new brew styles or taking a shine to an old beer. These days, summer is perfect for the saison, a Belgian farmhouse ale typically brewed during the winter to be ready for hot-weather quaffing. A snowy December night is the ideal time to sip a sweetly potent, hopped-up American barley wine. Fall is fit for grassy, aromatic ales made with freshly harvested hops, or perhaps a pumpkin beer that tastes like pie. No matter the month, a beer is always in season.

Spring

Witbier

Too often, I’m harsh on global brewing giants who’ve sacrificed taste for a fat bottom line. But once in a blue moon, I’ll give conglomerates credit for a beer brewed well—in this case, Blue Moon.

In a macrobrew industry mired in an endless slump, the Blue Moon witbier is MillerCoors’ brightest beacon. I’d wager its success on a simple fact: Blue Moon doesn’t taste half bad. The cloudy, unfiltered brew is spiced with coriander seeds and orange peel, resulting in a lightly sweet, orangey treat that’s fit for a sunbaked afternoon or an easygoing eve.

It’s a witbier with real mass appeal. And its existence is due to the efforts of a milkman named Pierre Celis. He lived in the Belgian village of Hoegaarden. For centuries, the region was lauded for its witbier (“white beer”). These were gentle, graceful beers made with wheat, oats, and barley and doctored with dried orange peels and coriander. But by the mid-1950s, Hoegaarden’s last brewery had closed. Witbiers weren’t seen again until 1966, when Celis exchanged milk bottles for beer bottles and founded Brouwerij Celis.

A DISASTROUS SUCCESS

His witbiers took off like wildfire—but it was fire that doomed him. After a blaze decimated his brewery in the mid-1980s, Celis accepted an investment from Stella Artois in order to rebuild. Stella merged with another firm to form Interbrew, which later becoming big, bad InBev. Quality diminished. Angry at how the recipe was changing, Celis divested himself of his shares. “I sold my brewery, but not myself,” Celis once said.

To capitalize on American interest in witbiers, he moved to Austin, Texas, started Celis Brewery, and made Celis White according to the original Hoegaarden recipe. It was a hit. But his investors wanted a bigger return on their bucks. To buy them out, he sold a company stake to Miller. The brewing giant skimped on ingredients, nixing imported Czech hops. Again, quality suffered. As time passed, Celis had the opportunity to reacquire company shares, or sell the brewery outright to Miller. He sold. Since Celis wasn’t very profitable, Miller eventually shuttered the brewery, and the brand was pawned off to the Michigan Brewing Company. It still makes Celis White today, but sadly, it ain’t the same.

While Pierre Celis was, pardon my French, screwed by big business, his legacy is that witbiers have survived and thrived. In Cleveland, Great Lakes Brewing Company’s Holy Moses White Ale gets an additional fragrant nudge from chamomile, while Japan’s Hitachino Nest White Ale gets a hit of nutmeg. Then there’s cloudy, spicy Allagash White from Portland, Maine, and light, subtly tart Witte Ale from Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, New York, neither of which need a lemon squeeze—there’s already plenty of citrus pop in the bottle.

While drinkers can shoot for the Moon, they’d be happy to sip these stars of craft brewing.

Four to Try

(512) Wit

(512) Brewing

ABV: 5.2%

The 512 denotes the area code for this Austin, Texas, brewery, where owner Kevin Brand has won over Texans with his terrific lineup. Chocolaty, pitch-black Pecan Porter is brewed with locally harvested nuts. The IPA is an apricot-kissed, dry-hopped dream. But I’m wild about the hazy Wit. The blend of barley, oats, and wheat is spiced with coriander and grapefruit peel, creating a tart, crisp drinker that’s aces during the hot Texas summer.

Mothership Wit Organic Wheat Beer

New Belgium Brewing Company

ABV: 4.8%

Colorado-based New Belgium’s Mothership is a terrific riff on the zesty Belgian classic. Kowtowing to style, Mothership pours cloudy as all get-out, releasing sublime notes of coriander, orange, and banana—potpourri for a beer geek. That sour tang is a nice touch too.

Hitachino Nest White Ale

Kiuchi Brewery

ABV: 5.5%

The wisp of bitterness in this Japanese witbier (about 13 IBUs), is complemented by a ton of flavor thanks to coriander, orange peel, nutmeg, and even a splash of orange juice. The ale goes down as easy as water.

St. Bernardus Witbier

Brouwerij St. Bernardus

ABV: 5.5%

Witbier savior Pierre Celis helped develop this specimen, which is every bit as excellent as you’d expect: The hazy golden brew has a white head like Santa’s beard, and a perfume of coriander, clove, and lemon—textbook witbier. A secondary bottle fermentation ensures that the beer’s carbonation is crisp and nearly endless.

Summer

Saison

Thirsty field workers, combined with a lack of refrigeration, helped foster one of Belgium’s singular refreshments. In southern Belgium’s French-speaking Wallonia region, pastoral grain farms dot the countryside. Local farmers typically double as brewers, but not during summer—brewing during hot weather increases the risk of blemished beer, thanks to yeasts and microbes run amok. Hop-packed batches of saison (French for season) brewed in the winter were stored until summer, when the tart, earthy, low-alcohol beer served as potable drinking water for toiling farmhands. (Saisons are also called farmhouse ales.)

“Saisons couldn’t have been sweet and cloying,” says Steven Pauwels, head brewer at Kansas City, Missouri’s Boulevard Brewing Co. “If you’re working your butt off, you don’t want a beer that’s sweet and aromatic. You want a beer that’s dry, thirst-quenching, and flavorful.” That’s where the guidelines for making saison end.

Rustic, bottle-conditioned saison remains open to creativity and interpretation. The varieties range from dry and hoppy to sweet and spicy, from the color of pale straw to burned amber. “It’s like, here’s a big bucket where you can add in any ingredient you want,” says Pauwels, who crafts several Champagne-corked saisons at Boulevard—a fresh, well-hopped rendition and one spiked with funky, barnyard-like Brettanomyces yeast. “Saisons already have earthy, musty characteristics,” Pauwels says. “Adding Brettanomyces just makes that beer even earthier.”

INSPIRED ELIXIRS

Pauwels is hardly the only brewer doing as he pleases. For instance, Long Island’s Southampton Ales & Lagers fashions its Cuvée des Fleurs with edible flowers and the tropical fruit-like Saison Deluxe, while Pennsylvania’s Bethlehem Brew Works makes Space Monkey Raspberry Saison. But experimentation only partly explains saison’s resurgence. More important, “If you’re not into extreme beers, the average saison is not going to shock you,” says Brian Strumke, the founder and brewmaster of Baltimore’s Stillwater Artisanal Ales (see Natian Brewery). When creating batches of what has become his flagship brew, the Stillwater Stateside Saison, he used friends as guinea pigs. “Even if they didn’t like craft beer, I’d be like, ‘Hey, try some of my saison.’ Every time they were, ‘Wow, this is really good,’” the brewer recalls.

Dose it with funky yeast, ferment it with blueberries—Pauwels couldn’t care less about particulars. “You can do whatever you want to it,” Pauwels says. What’s more important, he says, is that “we’re reviving one of brewing’s grand old styles.”

Four to Try

Hennepin

Brewery Ommegang

ABV: 7.7%

Housed on a former Cooperstown, New York, hop farm, Brewery Ommegang is one of America’s foremost Belgianinspired breweries. There’s nary a miss, including the elegant amber Rare Vos, plum- and licorice-like Abbey ale, and—be still my heart—the Hennepin. Equally ideal for quaffing on a 90-degree day or at dinner, this lively tonic is fantastically flavorful, filled with sweet grapes, lemon zest, and a spicy, bitter finish.

Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale

Boulevard Brewing Company

ABV: 8%

Named after the brewery’s malfunctioning fermentation tank, the hazy, straw-hued Tank 7 reeks of grapefruit and oranges, thanks to Simcoe, Tradition, and Amarillo hops. But when sipped, the hop bitterness relents to sweet malt, lively pepper, and spicy yeast. Toss in a dry finish, and Tank’s a treat.

Fantôme Saison

Brasserie Fantôme

ABV: 8%

Based in southeastern Belgium’s Wallonia region, Fantôme has made saison its flagship brew. It has a vividly citric fragrance tempered by sweet malt and a bit of barnyard. Consider the flavor chameleonic: served cold, it’s snappy and bracing and has a flavor of muted cloves and fruit. When warm, the flavors become fuller and more pronounced, coating your palate. It’s a classic.

Saison Dupont

Brasserie Dupont

ABV: 6.5%

Operating since 1844, this farmbased Belgian brewery uses springwater and proprietary yeast strains to manufacture the marvelous Saison Dupont. Its vibrant lemonhoney hue is partnered with a bouquet of cloves and pears and energetic carbonation. Take a sip, and semitart apples segue into bananas, with a dry, crackling finish. It’s the style’s standard-bearer.

Kölsch

“If you tell people they’re sipping a kölsch, it’s meaningless to most beer drinkers,” says Brock Wagner, cofounder of Houston’s Saint Arnold Brewing Company “Instead, we just tell people they’re drinking our Lawnmower Beer—Fancy Lawnmower beer, that is.”

Still, calling kölsch “Lawnmower Beer” may be a minor slander. Hailing from Cologne, Germany, this light, elegant beer is a study in balance, restraint, and pinpoint craftsmanship. To develop gentle, fruity flavors, the beer is fermented at warmer temperatures before cold lagering rounds out the sweet malts and subdued hop bitterness. The pretty, pale result is traditionally served in a narrow, cylindrical glass called a stange. (At bars in Cologne, kölsch is delivered in specially designed trays by brusque waiters called Köbes, who wear blue shirts and long aprons. They’ll keep bringing you kölsch until you put a coaster over your glass.)

Since kölsch possesses such mild flavors, it’s tricky to craft. Any off notes will shine through, ruining the brew. (That’s why brewers often favor IPAs and stouts, which are flavorful enough to masquerade defects.) Style-wise, kölsch inhabits a wide spectrum. Some are as innocuous as a baseball-stadium light beer, while others are well hopped, but their commonality is drinkability: “Beers don’t have to be big to be great,” Wagner says.

Restrained Charm

In the rush to create burlier beers, the subtle pleasures of kölsch are often overlooked. But since this easy-sipping style is so summertime friendly, it’s become an increasing favorite of brewers searching for an unusual hot-weather seasonal. “I didn’t want to do a typical golden ale or a corn ale,” says Josh Brewer, the appropriately named brewmaster at Mother Earth Brewing in Kinston, North Carolina. To fit the bill, he created Endless River, a kölsch that is crisp, refreshing, and highlighted by a gentle grassy bitterness. “I wanted something with a little more flavor.”

But, just like the Fancy Lawnmower, the new crop of kölsch beers often doesn’t bear the umlaut-topped moniker. Instead, snag a stange and search for the beer named after summer. Geary’s Summer Ale is a mellow, citrus-hinted treat, as is Harpoon Summer Beer and the Alaskan Brewing Co.’s Alaskan Summer Ale. Savor them as long, lazy afternoons dissolve into evening. “If you’re thirsty, a kölsch is mellow enough to sip several of them,” Wagner says. “Kölsch is the anti-extreme beer.”

Four To Try

Endless River

Mother Earth Brewing

ABV: 4.9%

Located in eastern North Carolina’s BBQ country, Mother Earth makes beers every bit as tasty as the region’s famous pulled pork. The Sisters of the Moon IPA is a floral and citric hop bomb, while Endless River is as golden as a polished wedding band. It smells of fresh-clipped flowers drizzled with honey, and drinks as crisp as Perrier. You’ll savor the grassy hop bite.

Geary’s Summer Ale

D.L. Geary Brewing Company

ABV: 6%

David and Karen Geary’s pioneering Portland, Maine, brewery released its first—and flagship—British-style pale ale in 1986. Since then, Geary’s has become a New England mainstay, with its roasty London Porter, toasty Hampshire Special Ale, and the golden Summer Ale. The kölsch-style sipper boasts bread malt, a hint of hops, and a crispness that’s like biting into a fresh apple.

Yellowtail Pale Ale

Ballast Point Brewing Company

ABV: 5%

While the San Diego brewery is known for its resinous IPAs, it shows a deft hand with this pale ale, which is modeled on kölsch. The golden Yellowtail smells lightly malt sweet and, with restrained notes of grass, citrus, and fruit, drinks as easy as a Sunday morn.

Gaffel Kölsch

Privatbrauerei Gaffel Becker & Co.

ABV: 4.8%

Cracking a bottle of this brew from Cologne, Germany, releases a bouquet of honeysuckle, plum, and grapefruit. Refreshingly brisk carbonation leads to flavors of bready yeast and earthy hops, before closing with a twist of lemon peel.

Fall

Fresh-Hop Beer

How many freshly harvested hops can fit inside a Honda Element? A few late summers back, Ben Love answered that question by driving out to Goschie Farms, one of Oregon’s top hop producers. Harvest season was in manic, 24-hour-a-day mode, with the air perfumed with the pungent, earthy scent of the bines’ ripe flowers. Love stuffed his car with four burlap sacks—each about four feet tall and two feet around and containing about 100 pounds of whole-cone hops—and hustled back from Silverton, Oregon, to his head-brewing gig at Portland’s Hopworks Urban Brewery. Every minute counted.

“Those hops were in the beer within three hours of me leaving the field,” says Love, who created a batch of fall’s new fleeting brew delicacy: Parsec Pale, a fresh-hopped beer. Typically, the moist, just-plucked hops go straight from the bine to the kiln, thus preventing spoilage. That’s because hops are like cut grass. Initially, the smell is superb, but it quickly goes rotten. Hence, fresh hops (also called wet hops) are best used within 24 hours of their plucking and ideally in a pale ale—instead of a mouth-puckering IPA—which permits the flowers’ flavors to shine. Done right, “you get that lovely, green hop character that’s very delicate,” says Jamie Emmerson, executive brewmaster at Full Sail, which crafts the draft-only Lupulin Fresh Hop Ale and Hopfenfrisch Fresh Hop Lager.

THE FRESH START

The seasonal style’s inception can be traced to Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. The California brewery kicked off the fresh-hop movement with its Harvest Ale, dosed with Washington State’s fresh Cascade and Centennial hops. However, it is Pacific Northwest breweries such as Oregon’s Deschutes, Ninkasi, and Pelican that have helped popularize fresh-hop ales, so much so that “it’s becoming something of a Pacific Northwest style,” Emmerson says.

That’s partly due to the breweries’ locations near the hops fields of Oregon and eastern Washington’s Yakima Valley, where three-quarters of America’s hop crops are grown. When harvest-time hits, it’s no hassle to send a brewer to nab four or five burlap sacks of sticky, aromatic hops. Still, this style isn’t region specific. In Easton, Pennsylvania, Weyerbacher Brewing Company makes its Harvest Ale with Cascade hops culled from brewery founder and president Dan Weirback’s farm. Founders Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, uses both West Coast hops and some hops harvested from employees’ homes to create its Harvest Ale. Still, if a brewery is far from a farm, sourcing hops can cause a migraine.

“Getting the hops here is a logistical nightmare,” says Brian Dunn, owner of Denver’s Great Divide Brewing Company. “We contract a truck and put two drivers on it, so they drive straight through from Washington to Denver.” Once the hops are hours from arrival, Great Divide starts brewing. When the hops arrive, they’re unpacked and immediately dumped into the brew kettle. The painstaking effort pays dividends upon first sip of their Fresh Hop Pale Ale: “Fresh, grassy, and crisp, it’s such an amazing beer,” Dunn says. “I wish we could brew it more than two or three days a year.” But fresh-hop beers’ brief season is what makes this style such a September-October treat. “They’re like beaujolais nouveau—enjoy the drinking season, and when it’s gone, it’s gone,” Emmerson says. “The magic in these beers is that they’re so fleeting.”

Five to Try

Harvest Ale

Weyerbacher Brewing Company

ABV: 6.2%

When hops harvest season hits, this Pennsylvania brewery needs no outside supplier for its stinky green cones; instead, Weyerbacher sources Cascade hops grown on founder and president Dan Weirback’s farm. The resulting wet-hop IPA bursts with bright and enticing aromas of lawnmower-cut grass and just-peeled citrus, while the bitterness remains present yet reserved. Even hops haters should adore this ale.

Fresh Hop Pale Ale

Great Divide Brewing Co.

ABV: 6.1%

Whole-cone hops culled in the Pacific Northwest are overnighted to Denver, where brewers dump the hops into a brew kettle on the double. The result pours sunset orange and packs a gentle hop wallop—a grapefruit aroma leads to grassy flavors cut with a hint of pine needles. There’s balance, not tongue-whipping bitterness.

Hop Harvest Ale

Bridgeport Brewing Co.

ABV: 6.56%

Oregon’s oldest craft brewery cherishes its proximity to area hop fields, sourcing freshly plucked hops, whisking ’em to the brewhouse, and dumping them into a pre-prepared batch of beer—all within an hour. The result, in this case 2010’s Centennial hop– based offering, is transcendent: a sweet, citrus-floral scent and a harmonious framework of fullbodied malt.

High Tide Fresh Hop IPA

Port Brewing Company

ABV: 6.5%

Each batch of High Tide is stuffed to the gills with 180 pounds of field-fresh hops, such as Centennial or Chinook. Though the recipe is tweaked annually depending on crop availability, expect the IPA to have a dank aroma of wet grass, grapefruit, or pine resin; a doughy sweetness; and a sticky mouthfeel.

Halcyon Green Hop Harvest

Thornbridge Hall Country House Brewing Company

ABV: 7.7%

To fashion the fresh version of its Halcyon imperial IPA, U.K.-based Thornbridge dry-hops each fall’s selected crops (typically Target, though the brewery may experiment with other English varieties) for two weeks, then lagers the beer until at least April. The process clarifies the unfiltered, sharply bitter ale, creating a hay-colored looker scented with pine resin and pineapple. Flavors vary annually.

Pumpkin Ales

During the early days of America, colonial brewers had a problem: there was barely enough malted barley to go around. The grain was imported from England, a costly and lengthy undertaking. In order to make their grain supply last, brewers turned to readily available indigenous fermentables such as spruce, Jerusalem artichokes, molasses, and pumpkins.

“When I see everyone replicating the beers of the past, I kind of laugh,” said Bob Skilnik, author of Beer & Food: An American History, in an interview with the Contra Costa Times. “What most people don’t know is there was some pretty foul stuff passing for beer in colonial America.”

While these early American beers may not have been palate pleasing, brewers’ necessity led to an interesting discovery: pumpkin is a darn fine fermentable. But over time, as Americans learned to cultivate barley, the use of pumpkins in brewing beer faded.

RETURN TO THE PATCH

In recent years, brewers have rediscovered the gourd, spurring the birth (or perhaps rebirth) of a singular, thoroughly American fall delight: pumpkin beer.

Stylistically speaking, these beers inhabit a broad flavor spectrum. Some pumpkin brews are pie sweet, spiced with clove, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon, while others trade sweetness for a bitter streak. Stouts, saisons, even sours—name the style, and you can likely use pumpkin.

One of the first breweries to craft pumpkin ale was Buffalo Bill’s Brewery in Hayward, California. While reading a brewing book, founder Bill Owens happened upon the tidbit that George Washington once brewed a beer featuring squash. That brainstorm led, in 1986, to the creation of Pumpkin Ale, an amber-tinted brew made with roasted pumpkins, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. (The brewery later introduced the stronger, similarly spiced Imperial Pumpkin Ale, incorporating brown sugar.)

The vegetable-based beer became a big hit for the brewery. Since then, hundreds of breweries have released their own pumpkin brews, typically in the fall. Shipyard Brewing Co. in Portland, Maine, offers sweet, strong Smashed Pumpkin, while Dogfish Head Craft Brewery makes its Punkin Ale with brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

SILLY FOR SQUASH

However, one brewer stands apart in his pumpkin dedication. Over the last decade, Dick Cantwell, the cofounder and head brewer at Seattle’s Elysian Brewing Company, has devised more than twenty different gourd-based beers, each one odder and more innovative than the last. The wheaty Hefe-Pumpkin was spiced with cinnamon and cloves. PK-47 was a pumpkin-based malt liquor. The Great Gherkin starred, along with the pumpkin mash, cucumber and chai spices, including Sichuan peppercorns and cardamom.

“Our devotion to pumpkin ales shows both how serious and how ridiculous we can be,” says Cantwell. “It’s like the fortune cookie thing, where you add ‘in bed’ to the message to make it funny. We add ‘with pumpkin’ to everything to give it a new comic twist, but it still has to be a fabulous and engaging beer.”

Elysian’s pumpkin journey began in 1998, when the brewery wanted an offbeat beer to serve at its Halloween bash. Markus Stinson, now Elysian’s lead brewer and production coordinator, developed a pumpkin beer recipe, with Cantwell contributing his thoughts. That first beer, dubbed Night Owl, featured every bit of the pumpkin, right down to seeds, both roasted and green. The eight kegs were consumed in 48 hours. “We didn’t think it would be as good or as popular as it was,” Stinson recalls.

The following year, production doubled. The beer disappeared on the double. The next year, the same result. “People are into the pumpkin,” says Cantwell, whose brewery now sells three bottled pumpkin-based fall seasonals: Night Owl, imperial-style Great Pumpkin Ale, and pumpkin stout Dark o’ the Moon. Moreover, in 2005, Cantwell and Elysian launched the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival. The two-day event features dozens of different pumpkin beers, as well as the showstopper: beer served straight from an enormous hollowed-out pumpkin, where it’s undergone a secondary fermentation.

“There’s no limit to the beers that can be made with pumpkin, or the things you can do with pumpkins in connection with making and serving beer,” says Cantwell, who sees the style as America’s homegrown version of Oktoberfest lagers, Germany’s classic fall seasonal. “People’s faces light up when you talk about pumpkin beer—except maybe Germans, at first. I’ve talked about pumpkin beers with quite a few German brewers. At first, as a rule, they’re horrified. Putting pumpkin in beer? Outrageous! Then they laugh. Then they ask if they can have some.”

Tapping a brew-filled gourd at Elysian Brewing’s annual Great Pumpkin Beer Festival.

Five to Try

Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale

Southern Tier Brewing Company

ABV: 8.8%

This western New York brewery raids the spice cabinet’s supply of ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg to construct Pumking, which is a bit like boozy pumpkin pie. The copperorange elixir has a terrific nose of rum and vanilla, and a tonguesticking sweetness that cements Pumking as a dessert brew.

Pumpkin Imperial Spruce Stout

Rock Art Brewery

ABV: 8%

If your tastes run toward savory, try the Vermont brewery’s slow-drinking stout brewed with pumpkin and plenty of spruce tips. They supply a piney, fresh-from-the-forest flavor and, just like hops, a bolt of bitterness.

Dark o’ the Moon

Elysian Brewing Company

ABV: 6.5%

Pumpkin takes on a sinister tint in Dark o’ the Moon, a fullbodied stout made with roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin flesh, and a sprinkling of crushed cinnamon. The outcome is a creamy, chocolaty indulgence with a cinnamon-spicy scent and long, roasty finish.

Frog’s Hollow Double Pumpkin Ale

Hoppin’ Frog Brewery

ABV: 8.4%

This Akron, Ohio, brewery is known for its big, full-bodied beers, so it’s no surprise that Frog’s Hollow is a weighty brew. The orange-colored ale smells strongly of pumpkin meat, cloves, and nutmeg. Despite the strength, the well-carbonated beer is smooth and not super-sweet.

Pumpkin Ale

Smuttynose Brewing Co.

ABV: 5.6%

The harvest-season ale incorporates a heap of pumpkin flesh and plenty of nutmeg and cinnamon. The result is a sprightly, medium-boded brew with a spicy nose that verges more toward pumpkin’s vegetal side, with a lightly bitter end.

Winter

Barley Wines

Don’t let barley wine’s name throw you for a loop: The beer style has little in common with fermented grapes—except for an alcohol content that can hit double digits. That explains why the thick, sometimes fruity, always strong belly-warming ale has become one of winter’s signature sips. But to suss out the style’s genesis, we need to turn to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.

Back then, many farmhouse breweries around the British Isles and Europe used a process called parti-gyle brewing to produce multiple beers from a single grain mash. (Today, one grain mash makes one beer batch.) The first running, or wort, contained the most fermentable sugars—the fuel that yeasts require to create alcohol. The second running created “common” beer and, if there were enough residual sugars left for a third batch, “small” beer. (Fun fact: Parti-gyle brewing was also common in Belgium, creating the styles now known as tripel, dubbel, and blond.)

The less-potent beers were quickly consumed, but the stronger first runnings were often stored to be sipped later, as the beers’ higher ABVs kept them from spoiling. What happened next is debatable: perhaps to better preserve their ales, or maybe to one-up fellow beer makers, British brewers kept boosting their strong beers’ alcohol content. Accomplishing that required elbow grease. Since yeasts don’t thrive at elevated alcohol levels, brewers would jostle them into action by occasionally rolling barrels of beer around the brewery or pumping oxygen through the brew to revive the essentially drunken yeast. The longer fermentation process made barley wines mellower and more multifaceted, adding intricate layers of flavor.

In the 1800s, these potent aged brews (which were sometimes blended with weaker beers to provide complexity) went by several aliases—strong ales, stock ales, winter warmers, old ales—or, quite commonly, they were simply marked by three Xs or Ks branded into a wooden barrel. Not all were what you’d consider a barley wine, but they would knock your socks off. In fact, the term barley wine wasn’t used commercially until 1903, when what is now Bass Brewers Limited released its Bass No. 1 Barley Wine.

AN AMERICAN RESURGENCE

Over time, barley wines in Britain were marketed more for their booziness than for their flavor. The style fell out of favor. In America, few beer drinkers had ever heard of barley wine until 1975, when San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing released Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale, which was (and still is) substantially hopped with flowery Cascade hops. And there began the divide. While England offered more balanced, less liquored-up barley wines, American brewers used a heavy hand with the hops and ratcheted up the alcohol content.

For example, Rogue Ales’s XS Old Crustacean boasts more than 100 IBUs and an 11.5 percent ABV (see tasting note); Great Divide Brewing’s Old Ruffian annually offers more than 85 IBUs and 10 percent ABV. And while the namesake barley wine of Farmville, North Carolina’s Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery registers 11 percent ABV, “it’s not bitter enough to really be an American barley wine,” says Paul Philippon, the brewery’s philosopher turned founder, who brews some of America’s finest dark brews. At the same time, “it’s too bitter to be an English barley wine, and it uses American hops.” As for a definition, he says, “I tell people that it’s a Farmville-style barley wine—and we’re the only brewer in Farmville.” (The burgeoning wheat wine variant incorporates a large percentage of wheat, which creates a soft, rich mouthfeel.)

That’s the thing about modern-day barley wines: While it’d be nice to set them in a nice, tight box, they’re as mutable as the big ol’ strong beers of yore. Some are warming and a smidgen spicy, like Real Ale Brewing Company’s rye-infused Sisyphus Barleywine Style Ale. By contrast, the Flying Mouflan, from Pennsylvania’s Tröegs Brewing Company, is ruby-brown and IBU’d up the wazoo with Warrior, Chinook, and Simcoe hops. Flying Mouflan is released in the spring, which makes sense: The brewers recommend cellaring the barley wine for four months, letting the hops and alcohol mellow, thus making it ready to serve as a toasty respite in the cold heart of winter.

You can age most barley wines (see Of a Certain Age), but these dark, powerful beers are also excellent fresh, which is why Duck-Rabbit’s Philippon releases his in January. “We make it with the intention that it should be enjoyed right away,” Philippon says. “I always feel like beer is for drinking, not saving.”

Five to Try

Corps Mort

Microbrasserie À l’abri de la Tempête

ABV: 9%

Since this Quebec brewery sits on one of the islands of the Îles de la Madeleine archipelago in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, its locally sourced barley is licked by a sea breeze that imparts a slightly salty profile. For Corps Mort (“dead man”), the barley is smoked, resulting in a beer that smells like spicy, peaty Scotch. Sticky-sweet caramel and toffee come into play on the tongue, with a salinic underpinning. It’s singular.

Olde Gnarlywine

Lagunitas Brewing Company

ABV: 10–12%

An American-style barley wine built for the long haul, this ale begins life with mouth-bending hop bitterness of pineapple and pine. Give GnarlyWine time and the bitterness will recede as the malts assert themselves, lending flavors of toasted bread, toffee, and caramel.

Barleywine Ale

The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery

ABV: 11%

A hefty load of Amarillo hops gives this mahogany, North Carolina-brewed barley wine plenty of sweet, tropical fruit aromas, plus a bitterness that verges from citrus to pine. The hops serve as a counterpoint to the toffee-malt presence, while the smooth, silky mouthfeel will keep you sipping.

Arctic Devil Barley Wine

Midnight Sun Brewing Co.

ABV: 13.2%

Named after the wolverine that haunts Alaska’s woods, this English-style barley wine is a malty monster. To tame it, the brewer lets the beer spend months hibernating in oak barrels that have been previously used to age port, wine, or whiskey before being blended and bottled. Each annual vintage is unique, but expect a robust, complex brew worthy of a snifter glass and a seat by the fire.

Nils Oscar Barley Wine

The Nils Oscar Company

ABV: 9.5%

Hailing from Sweden, the “Swedish Barley Wine Style Ale,” as it’s called, skews toward the sweet side. Flavor-wise, it offers loads of dark fruit and a light bitterness, instead of off-thecharts IBUs. It’d be divine for dessert. The beer won gold in Sweden’s national home brewing competition in 1993.

International Spotlight: Norway’s Nøgne Ø

To put it mildly, Norway is not known for its beer.

In that frigid Scandinavian land of reindeer jerky and smoked salmon, more than 90 percent of the country’s quaffs are light lagers and neutered pilsners. Moreover, many Norwegian bars pour just one tap beer, providing drinkers as much choice as voting in a dictator’s election.

“Norwegians,” laments bearded giant Kjetil Jikiun, cofounder and brewmaster of the microbrewery Nøgne Ø in Grimstad, Norway, “don’t know much about craft beer.” Consider Jikiun an exception. Since launching Nøgne Ø (“naked isle,” taken from a poem by Henrik Ibsen) in 2002, the gregarious, bespectacled Norwegian has begun transforming his country’s carbonated landscape. With an artisan’s touch and missionary zeal, he crafts bold, flavorful porters, stouts, India pale ales, and herb-packed oddities more in line with experimental American microbrews than Norway’s weak swill.

Nøgne Ø brewmaster Kjetil Jikiun (far right) discussing his delicious Scandinavian brews.

Norwegians weren’t always content to consume simple lagers. Several hundred years ago, the government mandated that farmers must grow hops and brew beer. If farmers refused, they were fined or could lose their land. Special brews were crafted to honor deceased Norwegians. “You couldn’t bury the body until the beer was ready,” explains Nøgne Ø manager Kjell Einar Karlsen. “In the summertime, this could be a problem.”

As in America, the temperance movement, taxation, and big brewing killed tradition. Enter Jikiun. An airline pilot, he sampled suds wherever he landed, developing an affinity for releases from Stone Brewing and Dogfish Head. He began homebrewing, using American craft brewers as his muse. Big mistake.

“I brewed what I thought was my best IPA ever,” Jikiun says of his riff on hoppy, West Coast ales. “I entered it in a homebrew competition—only to receive the second-lowest score of any IPA.” To the judges, Jikiun’s brew was as alien as those saucer-eyed Roswell creatures. Still, “everybody else I served my homebrews to liked them, so I though there’d be a market,” Jikiun says. He started Nøgne Ø with more optimism than money. “Our first three years, we were about to go bankrupt every month,” Jikiun says, laughing. In Norway, brewers pay taxes commensurate with their beer’s alcohol percentage: a higher ABV equals higher taxes.

“Our beers are more expensive in Norway than in America,” says Jikiun, whose beers often flirt with an eye-spinning 10 percent ABV. A second factor is that the government restricts sales of beers stronger than 4.75 percent ABV (comparable to Bud) to specially licensed shops or state-run chain Vinmonopol—unsurprisingly, it translates to “wine monopoly.” Even nuttier is that Nøgne Ø was barred from publicizing its beer online. “The government said, ‘If you don’t close down the site immediately, we’re going to close it down,’” Jikiun recalls. The government’s decree was as strange as its solution: The brewery could tout its beer provided the copy was written in the language spoken in Nøgne Ø’s export markets—English. “And Norwegians speak English,” Jikiun says, laughing.

’Tis the Seasonal for Success

Despite Mount Everest odds, Jikiun refused to compromise his mission to craft unfiltered, unpasteurized, and bottle-conditioned brews. Nøgne Ø found success with yuletide ales such as the spiced Underlig Jul (“Peculiar Christmas”), which is inspired by mulled wine gløgg, and strong, caramel-sweet God Jul (called “Winter Ale” in the United States). Now the brews are found on American shores (and even in Australia and Japan), armed with flavor profiles that resonate with fans of craft beer.

Nøgne Ø’s India pale ale is similar to a California hops bomb; bold and rich, the beer’s malt-sweet foundation keeps the bitterness from going overboard. The saison is a funky summertime refreshment redolent of pears and apples. The oil-thick imperial stout packs a coffee and bittersweet-cocoa flavor punch, making it perfect for brownie pairings. Still, the standout is #100, a beer originally unintended for public consumption.

“We wanted it to be beer for the brewers,” Jikiun says. “Not many bars in Norway wanted craft beer—but they wanted this one.” Understandably so: The barley wine–like brew possesses a spicy aroma complemented by cardamom and a lovely, lingering belly warmth owing to its 10 percent ABV. It tastes familiar, yet distinctly foreign. “We’re inventing a Scandinavian brewing identity,” Jikiun says.