Spring beers to get you ready for summer cheer: Russo

So far complaining hasn’t worked, and neither has breaking out the spring wardrobe or starting to plant the garden. Buds still are stuttering tentatively out there in the cold.

Even though the air still occasionally tastes like winter, the beers that taste like spring are out and, if we’re lucky, can transport us. Even if it is just a little.

Objectively, spring isn’t pleasant unto itself in the way that, say, fall is. Spring trades almost solely on the relief it provides from winter and the small sips of summer it sends our way whenever it sees fit.

Given that we haven’t had too many tastes of summer so far, and also that year-round summer styles are trending in the craft beer world, it might be time to try and coax the best parts of spring out of bottles, cans and taps.

Traditional spring tastes

In broad terms, sour beers traditionally were summer beers, a kind of refreshing lemonade for grownups. Beer has undergone something of its own reverse climate change with traditional summer favorites creeping into year-round popularity over the last few years as sour beers have found a voice.

Beers like salty Goses and tart Berliner Weisses have captured the popular imagination, and brewers have taken to making them all year but flavored seasonally.

For example, Evolution Craft Brewing and Key Brewing partnered this spring to make the collaboration Gose “Undertow.” It’s as much briny as it is salty, but just a little bit. The beer is brightened up with blackberries.

In the Berliner Weisse department, 3rd Wave brewing has been releasing pretty much one every month or so. Recently, it’s Orioles-themed O’s Juice acknowledged the boys of summer with a mostly-sweet, but mildly-tart mango, blood orange beer.

What makes both beer styles so popular is they have a very low alcohol content, usually something around 4 percent, that means you can have a couple when your doing yard work, if the grass ever starts growing for real.

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Traditional spring beers

Of course, there are traditional spring beers that ought not to be missed either. The top two are Maibocks and Saisons.

In Germany, Fruhlingsfest (the spring equivalent of Oktoberfest) is well underway, set to end May 8. Maibock beers are just like Oktoberfest beers, crisp and brown and lightly malty, but they haven’t caught on in as big a way as the fall beers have.

Rouge's Dead Guy Ale is probably one of the most popular, and certainly the easiest to get your hands on, but Maibocks don’t so much taste like spring as act as a harbinger.

No traditional spring beer tastes more like the season than a saison. Also sometimes called farmhouse ales, they were made in the winter to be drunk during fieldwork. The farms with the best beers got the best workers. These beers are spicy and green tasting all at the same time.

Many if not most local breweries have a saison. Dogfish Head famously does a collaboration of Saison Du Buff with Victory and Stone breweries where each year they take a turn. This year it’s Stone’s turn, but you’ll still be able to find them on the shelves pretty easily.

If you want to go to a brewery, Dewey Beer Co. has their Saison ‘18 on tap and they do saisons as well as anyone.

Crooked Hammock in Lewes also specializes in Belgian-influenced beers and their Saison Du Fey is right on the money.

Summer beers now

There are some flat-out summer beers that just won’t wait for spring to be over. Like the sours, wheat beers have gone from being traditional summer treats to year-round favorites.

Tall Tales Brewery recently released its Conspiracy Theory Pyramid Scheme Belgian Wit. It’s already got the kind of spicy, orangey flavor that’s traditionally part of the beer, but this one is made with tangerines, which take the edge off the sweetness.

In Georgetown, 16 Mile Brewery recently released its “Seed Free and Joy” watermelon blonde ale. It’s sweet but not overly so. More important, though, if there’s a bigger statement about belief that fair weather is around the corner than shipping in fresh watermelons to make a beer, I can’t imagine what it is.

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