While it’s warm most days, it’s not quite nice enough outside to go floating the rivers just yet, but COOP’s Ice Chest IPA is especially cruel on the days when the wind bites. An IPA with less sting than January gusts at 30 IBUs, it goes down easy at 4.3 percent ABV. If you were thinking a localized version of Founders All Day IPA, you wouldn’t be far off from this one.
After trying the Stonecloud Lite, it gave me a taste for another light, rice-based beer. And it doesn’t get much lighter than Sapporo Pure. At only 4 percent ABV and 2.4 grams of carbs per can, these are extremely easy to drink, but the 90 calories per can will easily stack up so beware of the less filling sensation that may lead you to catch more of a buzz (as well as more than 500 unplanned calories) than you expected.
It’s not really fair to call Lite and Nite flip sides of the same coin, but they definitely could be cousins. Stonecloud, while definitely not a brewery to shy away from experimentation, has been hitting it out of the park lately with their classic beer styles. The Lite is a lager brewed year-round from rice malts with only a tinge of hops and the Nite is a seasonal dark lager brewed with roasted malts. At 4.3 percent ABV and 4.8 percent ABV respectively, they both have sessionability. The other difference: the Lite comes in standard 12-ounce cans, the Nite is packaged by the pint.
Since we’re straddling the line between autumn and winter (the winter solstice was officially the third week of December for those who forgot due to recent weather patterns), it was fitting to try on a beer that did the same. A pumpkin ale aged in rum barrels, this beer definitely has that robust flavor on the front end with a spiced aftertaste. As sweet as it is stout, these are probably handled best one at a time at their 9 percent ABV, which works since they come packaged as a two-can pair.
We saved the heaviest hitter for last, and this is another legendary beer among fans of European beer. A process known as freeze distillation takes this double bock wheat beer and converts it into a prizefighter with a 12 percent ABV punch. As the story goes, the brewmaster heard a story in the 1930s about a batch of the Aventinus freezing during a winter transport which led to its unusually high alcohol content. Fortunately, the complex flavors in the beer itself take the sting out of this eisbock.
