With pale out the way, let's move up the colour spectrum a little, into the realm of amber, orange, reddish hues, and even veering into brown - yeah baby, it's BOAB time...
Virginia
- Loden Vienna Lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
- Trilby Best Bitter - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
- Rules of Civility No. 73 - Dynasty Brewing, Ashburn
Honorable mentions: Tabolcloth - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville; Houndstooth - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville; CU Later - Patch Brewing, Gordonsville; Rules of Civility No. 99 - Dynasty Brewing, Ashburn; 1841 Steinlifter - Devils Backbone Brewing, Nellysford.
Given the breadth of the colour spectrum here, this could very easily have turned into the Selvedge show - they are knocking it out of the park with their Central European lagers, indeed Loden is currently my go to beer whenever I am in the taproom...however, for all my Mitteleuropaphilia I am still at heart a Brit, and best bitter is such a rare beast in these here parts, that Trilby nicks it by a short nose. Hopped with a modern British hop called Endeavour, served from either Lukr tap or the beer engine, Trilby is an absolute delight, with blackcurrant and spice being very much to the forefront, but with classic British biscuity notes giving structure and depth to a stonkingly easy beer to drink. I have become so enamored with Endeavour that I have started using it in my own bitters, and I think EKG just relegated to the Championship...
Rest of the USA
- Bauern Bock - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC
- L'il Nator - Tröeg's Brewing, Hershey, PA
- Sommerbier - Bierkeller, Columbia, SC
Honorable Mentions: Ungespundet - Notch Brewing, Salem, MA; Perpetual IPA - Tröeg's Brewing, Hershey, PA; Tumbler - Sierra Nevada, Mills Creek, NC.
I am just going to put this out there, I don't understand sampling culture. The idea of going from brewery to brewery every weekend and just doing flights seems pointless to me, as Dickens had Mr Swiveller say in "The Old Curiosity Shop"..."it can't be tasted in a sip!" I quite agree Mr Dickens, I quite agree. If I do a flight it is to find the beer I want to have a couple of pints of. Anyway, the winner of best BOAB beer in the rest of the USA is the absolute antithesis of sampling culture, is it a beer that requires the devotion of a maß. With a starting gravity of "only", if memory serves, 9° Plato, leading to an ABV of "only" 3.6%, I drank an awful lot of Bierkeller's majestic Sommerbier when I was in South Carolina over the summer, in a maß, naturally. Oh and I bought about 5 litres of it home to Virginia too. It is simply the perfect summer lager. Crushable, flavourful, and demanding of being drunk at length and in volume. Perfekt.
Rest of the World
- Maibock - Privatbrauerei Ayinger, Aying, DE
- Oktober Fest-Märzen - Privatbrauerei Ayinger, Aying, DE
- Kráľovská Taberna 12° - Nestville Beer, Hniezdne, SK
Even though my drinking tastes definitely lean toward the sessionable, there are times when I want something stronger, and so on one of my fairly regular jaunts to Northern Virginia for work I popped into the Wegmans at Gainesville to see what they had available. Unlike our local Wegmans, they had Ayinger's inordinately easy to drink Maibock, and of course I picked up a few 4 packs and enjoyed them in the early spring sunshine, sat on the front porch watching the kids run around like maniacs. Beautifully clean and crispy, but still full bodied and luscious, ideal for relaxing afternoons...
Unlike over categories, there is a clear winner here, for a few reasons. Obviously because it was a simply superb beer, but also the fact that while it was available and I was in that neck of the woods it was practically all I drank, and finally the fact that it has inspired me to make my own version of such a beer in my homebrewing plans for 2025, given a week or 2 of it is not enough. So Bierkeller Sommerbier take the BOAB crown, and I hope to see more beers like it in the future!
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