Nowadays, liquor store shelves sag beneath with double IPAs and imperial stouts -- flavorful, potent brews with ABVs that often hit 10 percent and above. But these beers are as innocuous as apple juice when compared with Samuel Adams' Utopias, which clock in at a liquor-like 27 percent ABV.
"This is the Starship Enterprise of beers," says Jim Koch, founder of Sam Adams. "We're taking beer where beer has never gone before."
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."
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."
Hop heads are hopelessly addicted to Humulus lupulus, the flowering vine whose cones lend beer its piney, floral and even marijuana-like aromas and flavors.
To sate hop lovers' jones, we turn to the West Coast. There, California brewers are engaged in an arms race to craft bigger, burlier double India pale ales like Russian River's wondrous Pliny the Elder, Stone's Ruination and Port Brewing's heavenly Hop-15 Ale (above).
Based in San Marcos, Calif., Port Brewing is helmed by beer magician Tomme Arthur. Though the funky Belgian ales he brews under the Lost Abbey imprint are fabulous, we're happiest when he's hoppiest.
Pumpernickel bread: check. Whiskey: check. It's lurking all over the place out there in the culinary world, but when it comes to beer, rye is still a rarity.
Few brewers incorporate the spicy grain into their brews, mainly sticking with workmanlike barley. Some of us find this a shame, because rye adds a spicy bite and complexity that plays well with floral hops. This lesson has been taken to heart by the crew behind Battle Creek, Mich.'s Arcadia Ales.
Since 1996, the microbrewery has specialized in small-batch British beers, such as London porters and Scotch ales, fashioned with imported English malted barley and ale yeast. But to commemorate Arcadia's 12th anniversary, the brewers looked to the pale ales of the West Coast to construct the Sky High Rye.
The unfiltered American pale ale (6.4 percent ABV; sold in 22-ounce bottles) pours the color of a golden sunrise, releasing a brilliant perfume of fresh-squeezed citrus and cut pine needles. Though the aroma reads as an IPA, this is a hardly a hops demon. The floral profile is grounded by hints of sweet malt, and the rye lurks around the background, providing rogue notes of palate-stimulating white pepper. Despite the surfeit of flavors, none dominate, leaving the Sky High smooth and super drinkable. It's a session beer fit for British and American palates alike.
How do you feel about rye brews? Spill in the comments.
Yup, Lambertville's 13-year-old River Horse Brewing, best known for its malty Hop Hazard Ale and snappy lager, has mastered the delicate art of Belgium's warm season winner, the witbier.
Traditionally, witbiers (aka "white beers," whose cloudy nature is caused by suspended yeast) are constructed with large measures of wheat, then spiced with orange peel, coriander and whatever flavors catch the brewer's fancy. This creates a crisp, frenetically carbonated ale that drinkers of its best-known renditions, Blue Moon and Hoegaarden, sometimes doctor with lemon.
But some would denounce this as foolhardy a move as coating filet mignon with ketchup, and that wondrous wits like Allagash White and River Horse's special-reserve double need no flavor enhancement. Indeed, this heady thirst-quencher decants the color of apricots, with a foamy alabaster cap that quickly dissipates, releasing the fragrance of vanilla and French toast, minus the syrupy sweetness. The creamy and buttery mouthfeel is contrasted by tart, lip-prickling fizz, carrying with it candied sugars cut with lemon and orange and just a hint of stomach-stoking warmth. Peering at the bottle's small print (hello, 7 percent ABV) may be the sole clue that drinking too many of these wits may make you reach your end.
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.
Pumpernickel bread: check. Whiskey: check. It's lurking all over the place out there in the culinary world, but when it comes to beer, rye is still a rarity. 
It's a frothy sip of Belgium via ... New Jersey? 
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.
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.
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