Drinking in Boston: Summer Beer and the Living is Easy

You’re sitting on the back porch, beer in hand, beads of condensation rolling down its sides. It’s warm outside, very, and you wipe the sweat off your forehead. You take a long swig. It’s a summer beer: light and refreshing and everything you need for a steamy summer afternoon. In Boston the temperature got up near hot the last few days, so we thought we could finally talk about summer beers. Breweries in the New England area go mad for summer beer, presumably because they’re so excited to see the sun after months of snow and ice. We recently sampled one, Gritty McDuff’s Vacation Land, and then compiled a list of other popular local summer beers. Vacation Land is a clear, golden, sudsy beer. The first sips have a very hoppy, bitey opening, but this softens as the beer warms. One imagines this would happen quickly outside on a summer’s day. The

hoppyness turns into the tartness of citrus, followed out by a faint feel of butterscotch and an orangey finish. Of course, this is only one of many to try in the area. Naturally Sam Summer is a popular pick, one so popular liquor stores can hardly keep it on the shelf. But it’s not the only local brew that is popular. Other favorites include Shipyard Summer Ale from Portland, Maine, a wheat. Ipswich Ale on Boston’s North Shore makes an unfiltered Blonde. Other classic New England breweries try their hand at summer beers. Wachusett Brewing Company , of the infamous blueberry ale, also has a summer. So too does Paper City Brewery of Holyoke, Mass, this one a Helles Bock. Lastly, don’t miss Smuttynose Brewing’s Summer Weizen, a delicious, tangy wheat ale.

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Drinking in Boston: Summer Beer and the Living is Easy