Summer’s Here; Time For Beer

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• 4 Summer Beers To Get You Through The Season

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  It’s officially summer, which means it’s time to switch out the heavier, sweeter beers of winter for the lighter beers of summer.

  Robin Shepard, beer writer and senior contributor to Isthmus, says summertime is the season for cleaner, crisper and more refreshing beers.

  “Summertime is one of those seasons of the year where beer becomes part of whatever you’re doing,” he said. “It might be that beer to go alongside the lake or the water … it might be what you’re enjoying at a backyard barbecue with friends.”

  In other words, beers that are not the star of the show.

  “You don’t want something that’s going to stain your palate, or be so high in strength that you get sleepy,” Shepard said. “Whatever you’re doing in the summer … you don’t want to be drinking these big heavy things that destroy the other experience that you’re having.”

  Shepard highlights four of his favorite summer drinking beers:

  Ale Asylum Unshadowed

  A traditional German Hefeweizen, one of the oldest beer styles around, it has a floral sweetness with banana and clove notes, he said.

  “What’s really special about this one … is it’s a German-style Hefeweizen, and it’s a true Hefeweizen where the malt grist exceeds more than half of the beer,” Shepard said.

  The malt lends to Unshadowed’s lightly sweet and yeasty flavor, and the wheat adds some body to the beer. When poured, it has a golden color and a hazy cloudiness to it, but it’s quite light and refreshing, he said.

  3 Sheeps Brewing Company Fresh Coast Pale Ale

  Hoppy beers have really taken over the market, Shepard said, and for summer their strong, piney flavor and higher alcohol content can be too much.

  “For summer, I feel like you really want something that we call sessional beers, these are beers that you might have more than one at a drinking session,” he said. “They are lighter, little cleaner, little fresher on the palate and generally less than 5 percent alcohol.”

  His pick, Fresh Coast Pale Ale, has a nice amount of hops — citra, mosaic and amarillo — but is balanced out with citrus and fruity notes.

  “In the last four or five years, the quest of the craft beer drinker is to find these wonderful hops that are there not so much about bitterness as they are about fruit flavors,” Shepard said.

  Milwaukee Brewing Co. Walk Off Tripel

  “Even as a craft beer enthusiast I wouldn’t normally say I’m looking for a good Belgian Tripel in the summer, but it’s a style that I just love,” he said.

  A blonde ale, it’s a fragrant beer with yeast and floral notes and is somewhat sweet with earthy tones. While it’s not a session beer and falls at about 8 percent ABV, it’s still a drinkable summer beer, Shepard said.

  “This is a beer that … would be great as a little after dinner kind of relaxing on the front porch at the end of the day,” he said.

  Wisconsin Brewing Co. Re: Fresh

  A German Radler, which is similar to a shandy but with grapefruit juice, Re: Fresh comes from a collaboration between Wisconsin Brewing Co. and fermentation science students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Campus Craft Brewery. It’s made with 50 percent lager and 50 percent grapefruit soda from Wisco Pop in Viroqua.

  “This one probably is on the sweeter side for a radler,” Shepard said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that this tastes like soda pop, but this one definitely is a sweet radler.”

  While a beer mixed with soda may have caused hardcore beer lovers to scoff at one time, times have changed, he said.

  “That’s where we’re at in our pursuit of craft beer today, is that beers like this, they’re not just brushed aside,” Shepard said. “You don’t lose the beer … there’s got to be a touch of wonderful, malty, breadyness in the background.”