#*beer

Ciders are great! If you dig ciders, you’ve got a whole lot of options out there! I’ve seen a huge surge of new and interesting ciders hit the taps and shelves, although most of the ciders I’ve had aren’t sweet as much as they are tart and crisp. I wish I had more experience with ciders to be able to point you in the right direction here.

If you’re looking to stay closer to ciders with lighter-colored/flavored beer you might like cream ales as a whole. Cream ales like Mother Earth’s Cali Creamin' or Ballast Point’s Calm Before the Storm are soft, vanilla-y beers that are pretty malty and sweet, and low on bitter hops. They get about as close to a vanilla creme soda as a beer can get, in my opinion. Both of those beers should be available at a well stocked grocery store, a long with Anderson Valley’s Summer Solstice.

What’s it like making mead!? Blease tell me, the idea of turning honey into delicious booze sounds so good. I want to try making cider at some point!

Hmmm if by “sturdy” you mean like thick and full, I can recommend some nice sweet dark beers! I haven’t run into many sturdy light beers.

Y’know - you might like dunkleweizen style beers? It’s a hefeweizen but the grain is roasted before it’s used so you end up with a rich, caramel-y, slightly sweet, toasty and full. Trouble with this style is that I’ve only seen it in bottles and only from Germany. I have found the bottles in beer specialty stores like Bevmo and bougie bottle shops.

If you’re looking for sweeter beers that are full-bodied you can’t go wrong with most Belgian beers in general, though: Gulden Draak, St Bernardus, etc. You might really like North Coast’s Brother Thelonius which is a US-made Belgian. It’s sturdy and sweet.

🎺 I 🎺 LOVE 🎺 DARK 🎺 BEER 🎺

I love porters and stouts! I would gladly trade half of the IPAs I see on the shelves for some more porters.

Some of the porters I can recommend are:

Marin Brewing’s Airporter Chocolate Porter

Santa Clara Brewery’s Peralta Porter

Ballast Point’s Victory at Sea (the regular version and both the peppermint and coconut versions)

Drake’s Jolly Rodger

Atwater Brewery’s Vanilla Java Porter

If you like porters, you might like Big Sky’s Moose Drool, although it’s a brown ale and not technically a porter, it tastes like a porter to me. I see it in grocery stores often, it’s easy for me to grab for a camp out or BBQ.

For pumpkin beers I enjoy:

Elysian’s Punkaccino Coffee Pumpkin Ale

Midnight Sun Brewing’s T.R.E.A.T. (this is a porter nudge nudge)

Central City Brewers’ Red Racer Spiced Pumpkin Ale

Buffalo Bill’s Original Pumpkin Ale (my absolute favorite but a local brewery, I’ve seen them in Trader Joe’s three states away though so they could make it to a place near you?)

There’s a style of beer called Lambics which are Belgian and they are very true to their fruit flavors. They can get a little tart if the fruit itself is tart, but peach is pretty mellow. I’ve only ever found it sold in bottles, never on tap. You usually can find these at beer places like Bevmo, they’re a little more difficult to find at grocery stores or liquor stores.

For something from the US, I really like Dogfish Head’s Festina Peche - it’s a berliner weisse meant to help folks deal with Berlin’s hot summer weather, which means it’s a bit tart but light.

Because both of these are based on Belgian/German ales, you won’t run into hoppy flavors, but they do have tartness to brighten the fruit flavors.

There’s also Ballast Point’s Peach Kolsh. It’s also a tart one but kolsh’s are bright and light beers. Kolsh’s aren’t known to have that bitter hop flavor in them so you should be good there.