13 Reasons Why American Beer Is the Best Beer

Fellow countrymen, there has never been a better time to drink domestically—for we now brew the most innovative and mind-bogglingly flavorful beer on the planet. Better than German beer? you ask. Yes, better. What about those Trappist monks in Belgium? They make good beer! Yes, they do. But ours is better. Renegade American brewers have devoted their lives to blowing up the old European recipes in search of something new, and over time that irreverence has become our signature. American beer is not a style, per se. It’s a philosophy—one founded on improvisation with offbeat ingredients and radical brewing techniques. Sometimes that leads to unusual beers. Other times it just leads to unusually good ones.

The gonzo brewery Dogfish Head—which makes its beers with foodstuffs like green raisins, lime peels, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—has established a beachhead near the Delaware shore with the 16-room Dogfish Inn. Checking in? Expect daily lawn games and nightly drinking sessions around the bonfire. Inside, every room gets a fridge, a hand soap made from IPA, and a set of beach chairs—basically everything you need for a beer-cation, right down to the Advil in the mini-bar.

This country now produces at least 150 different beer styles. That’s 145 more than you need to know. These five summery thirst quenchers will keep your liver occupied through Labor Day.*

Refreshing and pleasantly fizzy, this sub-style of old-fashioned lager was the inspiration for American classics like Budweiser. When all our wildest avant-garde brewers are on their own time, they drink pilsner.

In your glass, it’s the color of a shiny trumpet. In your mouth, it’s similar to a pilsner. But if pilsner has an aroma like a fresh-cut lawn, floral Kölsch is more akin to a tipsy stroll through a botanical garden.

Although the flavors can vary wildly, expect saisons to be spicy and heavily carbonated. In the beer world, they’re the closest thing you’ll find to champagne.

The most polarizing summer style is made with ingredients you’ll either love or hate: coriander, salt, and lactobacillus, the same sour bacteria you find in yogurt and sauerkraut. We find it strangely addictive.

Here we have toasty brews for warm nights. What porters and stouts are to winter—with those roasted, nutty, chocolaty flavors—brown ales are to summer. They happen to pair perfectly with grilled foods.

ABV: Alcohol by volume. The more booze there is, the stronger the flavor will be to mask it.

IBU: International bitterness units. Big numbers indicate massive hoppiness.

You are going to have to trust us on this because it involves the words “blueberry vodka,” but we promise that the mad geniuses at Cisco Brewers on Nantucket have invented the next great beer cocktail. It’s called the Blue Haired Lady, and like most actual blue-haired ladies we’ve met, it is strong and sweet and wild and loose. To make one, top a 12-ounce pour of Cisco’s Grey Lady Ale with a 1.5-ounce floater of blueberry vodka from Triple Eight, Cisco’s sister distillery. Try it yourself. We’re not crazy, right?

Next time your flight is delayed in Atlanta, head to Concourse D. Every draft at Luda’s new restaurant, Chicken + Beer, is from Georgia and costs less than seven bucks.

It’s not Munich. It’s not London. It’s Portland, Oregon, our nation’s largest market for locally crafted brews and a place where beer has seeped into the civic culture. The staggering number and vast variety of bars, pubs, and breweries may just inspire you to drink away an entire day.

11 a.m.

Start outside of town at Timberline Lodge. The mountaintop site where The Shining was filmed is also home to the basement Blue Ox Bar. Have a Mt. Hood Multorporter for breakfast.

1 p.m.

Descend Highway 35 to the charming Columbia Gorge town of Hood River. You’re here for a Cascade Pilsner and a bucket of sweet-potato fries at Full Sail Brew Pub.

4 p.m.

After a tour of the scenic Columbia as you head into Portland, stop at Hopworks. It’s a biker bar—for cyclists, not Hells Angels.

8 p.m.

Cross the river and buy a ticket for whichever indie band is playing at Crystal Ballroom (the concert venue famous for its “floating floor”). Try not to spill your McMenamins Ruby.

10 p.m.

Crawl your way over to the Low Brow Lounge and don’t leave until you set the high score at Big Buck Hunter.

Unless they’re pumped full of artificial flavoring agents—in which case: gross—a lot of fruit beers are crisp and dry rather than sickly sweet. When you’re sprawled out on a picnic blanket with a sandwich and a bag of chips, all you want out of life is Stillwater’s Insetto (made with real plums) or 21st Amendment Brewery’s Hell or High Watermelon (made with…duh).

Sure, a beerfest sounds like a good idea, but crowding into a convention hall to line up for thimble-sized pours has gotta be the worst way to drink. For starters, the venues smell like Staples. But the bigger problem is palate fatigue, which is a 100 percent real thing that happens when you chase your smoked-oyster stout with a peanut-butter-and-jelly porter. Your taste buds just stop firing properly, leaving you to helplessly swish and gargle your beer in a doomed attempt to detect its subtle notes of hibiscus.

The antidote to old-timey beer halls where lederhosened waiters hawk stale pretzels, Tørst is ultra-modern in every way: in its sleek Scandinavian design, in its ambitious food menu (think crispy-chicken-skin snacks), and especially in its radical beer list, which leans on Evil Twin Brewing. (Both are founded by the same guy.)

So serious about beer it doesn’t even have a kitchen, Toronado’s where you go to sip rare grails like Pliny the Elder (on tap!) and The Lost Abbey’s Cable Car Ale, which’ll run you $80 a bottle but give you essential bragging rights.

After mowing your lawn or shaving the Stars and Stripes into your chest hair, sometimes you just want a good old American macrobrew. But which one? To determine the best budget beer, we went to the world’s new number one restaurant, Eleven Madison Park in N.Y.C., for a blind tasting with super-palate sommelier Cedric Nicaise. Behold his notes.

“There’s almost like a citrus component. It’s gonna sound terrible, but: a-couple-days-old lime juice.”

“I would hesitate to call it a totally vegetal smell, but green herbs. It’s fuller. More palate-coating.”

“To be the ideal porch beer or backyard beer, it could be a little bit higher in acid. But I think the flavor’s good.”

“This sort of tastes like nothing.”

“If I had just done a bunch of yard work, this would be the beer I would prefer to drink. It’s a richer flavor. There’s just more everything: more of a caramel note, more of a grassy note to it.”

Nothing’s better than beer-steamed clams at the beach. Follow this recipe from a guy who should know, Chris Fischer of Beetlebung Farm on Martha’s Vineyard.

• Bring 6 oz. of water and half a can of Bud to a boil. Add two dozen clams along with some sort of allium, whether it’s onions, garlic, or leeks.
• Steam the clams as long as it takes you to finish the can at a leisurely pace. You’re basically just shocking them open.
• Pour the clams into a bowl and finish the dish with fresh parsley or cilantro (or both).
• Serve with a hunk of grilled bread.

Searching for the final frontier in flavor, brewers have begun re-purposing old wine barrels to store their suds. Why should you care? That wood adds sweetness and spice to your brew, making it tastier and more complex. Look for the tart and tannic Flora wheat ale from cult Vermont brewery Hill Farmstead and Supplication sour brown ale, from Russian River Brewing Company, which ages in Pinot Noir barrels from Sonoma. The latter even comes with a cork that makes it feel like a special occasion. As all beers should.