October's chilly winds are causing us to reach for beers that warm our stomachs. And what better beer to stoke a belly fire than one that, well, smells like fire?
So we turn to rauchbiers, an ancient German style in which green malts are roasted over beechwood flames. This imparts a deep, profound smokiness -- imagine a flannel shirt after roasting marshmallows by a campfire. These flavored malts are the building blocks for the beers of Bamberg, Germany's Schlenkerla, a leading rauchbier practitioner.
"They make world-class smoked beers. They set the standard," says Matthias Neidhart, of B. United International, the beer's American importer. Schlenkerla's brews range from the light Helles Lagerbier to what Neidhart calls "the most intensely smoky version": the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Urbock.
Elementally, bocks are strong lagers -- beers designed to combat the cold weather with extra alcohol. And the Urbock is no exception, clocking in at a robust 6.6 percent ABV. Equally stout is the complex aroma, a rich mixture of sweet smoked meat (mmm...bacon) and a touch of tobacco and chocolate. Needless to say, vegetarians will likely crinkle their noses. But drinkers who dare decant the ruby, translucent Urbock are rewarded by a surprisingly smooth ride, the smoky-malt flavor revealing nuances of oatmeal and even the odd hop or two.
But let's not sugarcoat things: Urbock is a little bit like drinking a BBQ dinner.
Care for rauchbiers? Think they're crud? Spill some science in the comments.
It takes a strong man to wear pink. It takes an even stronger man to heft a frothy pint of pink beer, like the rare-burger-hued Rosée d'Hibiscus, from the genre-busting Canadian brewers at Dieu du Ciel! ("god of the sky").
Since 1998, these mad fermentationists have crafted head-scratching, tummy-pleasing beers like the Equinoxe du Printemps, a strong Scotch ale made with maple syrup, and the Clef des Champs, a floral rye ale flavored with heather and mugwort. Naturally, there was no way that Dieu du Ciel would make a conventional wheat beer.
One day, head brewer Jean-François Gravel was watching a TV documentary on western Africa, which included a discussion of bissap -- a tea made from an infusion of hibiscus flowers and sugar. Gravel re-created the drink at home, realizing the flower's floral profile and acidity would complement a tangy blanche (a wheat bear).
Belgium Tripel fans dig burly, nuanced brews cut with candy sweetness. American pale acolytes savor smooth ales with a hoppy edge. The suds' styles are as different as cats and dogs, but Pennsylvania's Weyerbacher brewing has unleashed a hybrid that could cause both beer-loving camps to drool.
For its latest summer seasonal, Zotten (rhymes with verboten), Weyerbacher has taken a super-drinkable (why hello, 6 percent ABV) American pale ale and given it a Belgian tweak via the abbey-yeast strain employed in the brewery's medal-winning Merry Monks' Tripel.
But don't mistake the bottle-conditioned Zotten (Flemish for fools) for a chug-a-lug pilsner or lily-livered lager. Zotten slips from the bottle a glowing rusty orange, perfumed with a bloom of tropical fruit, Bubble Yum sweetness and enough pungent hops to imitate an IPA. Surprisingly, Weyerbacher's liquid magicians keep rampant bitterness at bay. The hops provide a springboard for Zotten's rich flavor constellation of pepper, coriander and yeasty bread, before closing clean and crisp with a lingering spicy bite.
The Belgian ale. The American pale. Two great tastes that taste great together. What's your favorite hybrid beer? Spread some liquid gospel in the comments.
With much of the country smothered by a hot, damp quilt of humidity, drinkers need a brew suited for combating the unrepentant sun. While mowing-the-lawn beers like the Brothers Light (Bud and Coors, that is) may slake thirst, they're like fizzy tap water. A finer alternative is the flavorful German Hefeweizen.
Classically, the cloudy, unfiltered ale (examples include Jolly Pumpkin's sour Weizen Bam and the classic Schneider Weisse) possesses heaps of wheat, creating a lively beverage with a banana aroma and tangy edge.
"When I'm looking for the perfect thirst-quencher, I want a beer with a light body without being watery," says Jonathan Lafortune, the president and brewmaster behind Quebec's Les Trois Mousquetaires."[I like a] beer with a slight acidity that gives me a refreshing sensation and a little bit of spice."
Each week, we round up the top food articles we've spied Web-wide. This week, a special edition of our own bloggers' primo pieces from elsewhere on the Web.
No matter what sci-fi flicks tell us, it's tough to alter a human's DNA. But changing the makeup of a beer's requires no mad scientist. Just look at the Devil.
For years, one of the top sellers for Downingtown, Pa.'s Victory Brewing has been HopDevil Ale, a forcefully floral India pale ale with a smack of malt sweetness. It's pleasure by the pint. Instead of toeing the status quo, Victory's brewers tweaked the HopDevil formula by incorporating a batch of virulent Brettanomyces yeast.
Left unchecked, the wild yeast wreaks havoc on beer, turning brews funky and sour. If handled correctly, on the other hand, it results in nuanced flavors (for tasty examples, sample California's Lost Abbey or Russian River Brewing).
"We were nervous of [the loyal HopDevil] audience's reaction to WildDevil," Victory cofounder Bill Covaleski has reportedly admitted.
He need not worry. After releasing the 750 ml bottle's metal cage and popping the cork, the WildDevil (6.7 percent ABV) pours fast and fizzy: Go slow, or you'll get a glass full of foam. The citrusy hop aroma is muted by a ripe blanket of earth, hay and a touch of fruit tossed in for fun. The taste pinballs from brown sugar to pine to sour cherry -- the spicy hops riding back-seat before finishing tart -- and is dry and super-drinkable, proving the Devil is indeed in the details.
Everyone knows drinking and driving do not mix, so it was sort of strange that Mothers Against Drunk Driving decried Flying Fish's latest limited-edition seasonal, Exit 11.
"The combination of a roadway and advertising for any kind of a beer doesn't make any kind of sense," said Mindy Lazar, executive director of New Jersey's MADD chapter.
For serious? The New Jersey-based brewery's Exit Series does not champion boozing and cruising; Exit Series is a celebration of the state's traffic-clogged turnpike in liquid form. The first release, Exit 4, was a Belgian-style Trippel kicked up with copious hops.
Exit 11, the spaghetti-like juncture where drivers steer toward the Jersey shore, takes a turn toward the land of wheat ales: "[It's] a fresh, citrus-y summer beer perfect for beachgoers and those who only wish they were headed 'downa shore,'" explains Flying Fish head brewer Casey Hughes.
Modus Hoperandi India Pale Ale. Photo: Jenene Chesbrough.
By now, news of another India pale ale -- an occurrence as common as an Alaskan snowstorm -- barely merits mention.
But every blue moon, an IPA arrives to jolt our jaded taste buds, causing us to thank a higher deity for the heavenly, hoppy elixir. So let's bow down and worship a little green can filled with Modus Hoperandi, a brew so skunky and stinky it reminds us of something else.
"We used to smoke a lot of weed," jokes Dave Thibodeau, cofounder of Durango, Colo.'s Ska Brewing Company. Since releasing the "old-man bitter" brew in late winter, it's rocketed to the top of Ska's bestseller list. "It completely caught us off-guard, which is a good problem to have," Thibodeau says.
Crisp, floral Czech pilsners can typically lord their pedigree over their American counterparts -- the champagne to most stateside macro-breweries' bathwater (Miller Lite calls itself a "true pilsner beer.")
"Mass-market pilsners are liquid Muzak," says Marty Jones, the "lead singer and idea man" for Lyons, Colorado's Oskar Blues. To rebut the bland, watery brews littering the marketplace, Oskar Blues -- the first microbrewery to can craft beer -- has unveiled Mama's Little Yella Pils. "We're restoring a little honor to the concept," Jones says of Mama's, which re-creates a classic Czech pilsner with American craft-beer flair.
Instead of relying on cheap adjuncts like rice or corn, Mama's is constructed with 100 percent malt and a generous dose of spicy Saaz hops. But brewing a pilsner is an exercise in restrained elegance, unlike brutish IPAs and boozy stouts potent enough to incapacitate Paul Bunyan.
Delicious on a 90-degree day. Photo: 21st Amendment Brewery
With summer spiking thermometers, few frigid beverages satisfy quite like unfiltered wheat beers, mellow and flavorful thirst-quenchers that drink as easy as fresh-squeezed lemonade.
But a great beer style is just a springboard for innovation, a belief held by Nico Freccia. About a decade ago, the founder of San Francisco's 21st Amendment Brewery was fooling around with home-brewed wheats. Since it was summertime, he tossed ripe red watermelon chunks into his fermenting suds. "I didn't think the flavor would come through very well because watermelon is mostly, well, water," Freccia said.
To his surprise, the experiment was a triumph. Within the cloudy wheat beer, the watermelon shone as bright as a klieg light in a foggy night, without mimicking a Jolly Rancher run amok. "It still tasted like beer," marvels Freccia. "I could drink several without feeling like I was drinking a Slurpee."
Sure, North Carolina's better known for pulled pork than beer, but Black Mountain's Pisgah Brewing Company crafts liquid delicacies more divine than any swine. Since 2005, this Asheville-area microbrewery (named after a local mountain) has fashioned small-batch organic wonders, like the crisp pale ale; the smooth, obsidian-hued porter; and, to your sobriety's enduring detriment, the Solstice.
The Solstice (sold in corked 750 ml champagne bottles) is a Tripel, a Belgian ale so-called because brewers employ triple the normal malt. This makes Tripels serious knockouts, with alcohol percentages that sky into double digits-sipping (Solstice is 9.5 percent). While inelegant Tripels recall jet fuel, the best, like Solstice, finesse the boozy jolt, creating a complex potion that's dangerously delicious.
T-shirt season has arrived at last, and with it the eagerness to trade belly-warming barleywines for more sprightly sippers: namely hoppy India pale ales, whose floral flavors and aromas recall lush spring blooms. Sure, burly, nap-inducing IPAs like Dogfish Head's 120 Minute or Russian River's Pliny the Elder garner megawatt attention, but IPAs need not be monstrously potent to be monstrously delicious.
This principle is fully understood by Bend, Oregon's decades-old Deschutes Brewery. Its newest spring-summer seasonal, the Red Chair IPA (available in draft or 22-ounce bottles), demonstrates the flavorful results of restraint. Named after a favorite lift at Oregon ski resort Mount Bachelor, the Red Chair pours radiant copper, releasing a heady perfume of citrus, black tea and fresh baked biscuits.
To put it mildly, Norway is not known for its beer.
"About 98 percent of the beer consists of light lagers," sighs tall, bearded Kjetil Jikiun, cofounder and brewmaster of Nøgne Ø, one of Norway's scant microbreweries. "Norwegians," he laments, "don't know much about craft beer."
Jikiun is the exception: Since launching Nøgne Ø (naked isle) six years ago, the gregarious, bespectacled Norwegian has begun altering his country's carbonated landscape. He crafts bold, flavorful beers more in line with American microbrews than Norway's watery lagers. "Most bars there just have one beer on tap," he says, holding court in New York City's multi-tap beer bar Jimmy's No. 43. "You just order a beer-no choice needed." But Jikiun, an ex–airline pilot who sampled suds wherever he landed, liked choice. He began homebrewing, looking toward American microbrewers for inspiration. "Everybody I served my homebrews to liked them, so I though there'd be a market," he says of launching Nøgne Ø.
T-shirt season has arrived at last, and with it the eagerness to trade belly-warming barleywines for more sprightly sippers: namely hoppy India pale ales, whose floral flavors and aromas recall lush spring blooms. Sure, burly, nap-inducing IPAs like Dogfish Head's 
To put it mildly, Norway is not known for its beer.
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