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11 Best Light Beers

The craft beer revolution has finally come to light beer and we love the results. Here are our favorite IPAs, wheat beers, and lagers, all clocking around 100 calories.

The summer of craft light beer is here. We honestly never thought we'd be excited over light beers. But after decades of decrying the style as bland and watery, craft beer has decided to make it something worth celebrating. Instead of brewers watering down already watery beers (with admittedly impressive precision), they're designing versions of craft's favorite styles with lower alcohol and fewer residual carbs—both up the calorie count. It's a two-fold problem of creating a beer that feels pleasant to sip—not too dry, thin, or astringent—while providing big flavors with fewer calories to rely on. But these 11 beers achieve that. And in this expert opinion, it's a damn miracle of brewing science.

When beer shopping, note the balance between calories and ABV. It's not an absolute rule, but our testing confirmed that you'll typically get a little more to taste in the lower-alcohol light options that have a few more carbs to work with. Here are our favorites.

Southern Tier Swipe Light

The most refreshing pale ale we've ever tasted. Unlike an IPA, there's a balance between the toasty barley flavors and the bright citrus hops. And the flavor is big enough to deliver that post-workout reward and satisfaction. Calories: 110, ABV: 4.0%

Sixpoint Jammer

Jammer was the most fun beer we tasted. WTF does fun beer taste like? Pleasantly surprising. Over a backbone of wheat was a bright, fruity, and sour character, but you weren't sure what you'd taste next. Try the 15-can Jammer Session Pack, which also includes berry, citrus, ruby, and tropical variations. Calories: 125, ABV: 4.0%

Session Light

Dang, this is refreshing. True to Full Sail Brewing's Session line, which provides craft beer takes on classic lagers and easy-drinking beers, Session Light indeed tastes like a light American beer—but improved. There's a clean, barley malt flavor, and none of the odd off-flavors that punish you if you let your typical light beer warm up. Calories: 100, ABV: 3.6%

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Wet hop beer from Lagunitas challenges seasonal limits in brewing

By. Alastair Bland

What is a freshly brewed wet hop beer doing on shelves in June? It may be 5 p.m. somewhere, as daytime drinkers like to say, but it isn’t hop season anywhere on this planet.

Hop flowers are ready for harvest in the late summer and early fall. Usually they are immediately dried in kilns, which stabilizes the hops but also sends a significant bit of their aromas into the air, and then reduced into pellets that last for years. To capture every bit of the hop essence possible, many brewers use hops immediately after harvest — the Beaujolais Nouveau of the beer realm. They may be dried in the kiln and used whole for so-called fresh hop beers; or they may be used undried for so-called wet hop beers.

When consumed fresh, these styles are explosively aromatic and lively — and, naturally, they are strictly seasonal.

Lagunitas Brewing Co. has been making seasonal wet hop beers for years. Born Yesterday is their classic example. It’s released each fall.

But this spring, the Petaluma-based, Marin-founded and — in 2017 — Heineken-bought brewery introduced Phase Change. The beer is a pale ale of exceptional aromatic power, made with the equivalent of 7 pounds of undried hops — Simcoe, Mosaic and Citra — per barrel. As Lagunitas brewmaster Jeremy Marshall characterizes it, Phase Change is a wet hop beer brewed so far out of seasonal sync that until recently it would have been an impossibility.

“You can’t get fresh hops this time of year, anywhere, not even from the southern hemisphere,” Marshall says.

To transcend the Earthly limitations of seasons, Lagunitas has invested about $1 million in a system that macerates the hops, blends them with a little water and produces a sort of hop cream, or mayonnaise, as Marshall describes the green goop. Frozen at 10 degrees, these liquified hops last and last. When they go to the brew kettle — whatever month it may be — they are almost as lovey to the nose as freshly harvested hops.Continue Reading

The search for a non-alcoholic beer that’s actually worth drinking

By. Jessica Lahey

I’m approaching 50 and have been sober nearly five years. I’m profoundly grateful for each and every day, but boy, do I miss a good, cold beer.

Beer has been a part of American culture since Europeans set up the first colonies, first as an English import and later as a home brew made from Indian corn or barley. The first commercial brewing equipment arrived on our shores in 1633, and within a year, every New England community was required by law to have an inn, or “ordinary,” which sold beer to the public at a fixed cost. 

Today, nearly 5,100 American beer producers sell about $111.1 billion in beer annually, much of it marketed as a means to celebrate with friends and quench our thirst.

Various forms of nonalcoholic beer, or “small beer,” have existed since the medieval era as an alternative to contaminated water. Modern nonalcoholic beer, “NA beer,” or “near-beer,” was born during Prohibition, when alcohol levels above 0.5 percent were illegal. Despite the optimistic nickname, most “near beers” are a poor substitute for the real thing, and many are downright undrinkable. As the market share for nonalcoholic beer increases, however, some craft brewers are working to change the reputation of NA beer.

Most fall flat, not because they’re missing the alcohol, but because the process most brewers use to remove the alcohol also removes volatile flavors. To make beer, water and a grain, usually malted barley, are cooked into a “wort.” Hops are added for flavor, and yeast is added for fermentation. The yeast eats the sugar from the barley and excretes digested sugar as alcohol and carbon dioxide. Most brewers bottle the beer at this point, allowing the residual yeast to consume the last of the sugar and carbonate the beer. Brewers of nonalcoholic beer, however, either stop the fermentation before it’s complete (“stop-fermentation”) or boil the beer to lower the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV) below 0.5, and it’s this final step that renders so many NA beers unpalatable.Continue Reading

More hops, less filling? These are some of the best new low-calorie craft beers on the market.

By. Fritz Hahn

Since the dawn of the craft beer era, the mantra has been “Flavorful, complex beers are good. Fizzy, mass-produced yellow lagers are bad.”

And yet the best-selling beers in America continue to prominently feature the words “Light” or “Lite” on their labels. Meanwhile, Anheuser-Busch’s No. 2 brand is no longer Budweiser but instead Michelob Ultra, which boasts about minuscule calorie and carb counts on its packaging. While Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller Lite all posted sales declines in 2018, according to market research firm IRI, Michelob Ultra did not — its 15.9 percent sales increase translated to about $1.9 billion.

It would be impossible for other brewers not to notice these trends, especially as craft beer’s growth slows. “People are paying attention to caloric intake and carbs,” says Jeremy Marshall, the brewmaster at Lagunitas since 2013. “It’s no secret that millennials are more alcohol-averse. Craft beer traditionally has a higher ABV [alcohol by volume], and it has more stuff in it. It’s on the list of things a dietitian would tell you to avoid.”Continue Reading

Ale Sharpton Points The Way To The Best Craft Beer In Atlanta, Other Georgia Cities

By. Gary Stoller

The taste of Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout blew Dennis Malcolm Byron's mind and forever changed his life.

The stout, which Brooklyn has brewed since 1994, pointed the future direction for Byron, an Atlanta-based craft beer ambassador, freelance writer and blogger known as Ale Sharpton. His Cruisin' for a Bruisin' blogs can be found on his website, and he recently collaborated with Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing to brew Piano Keys, a chocolate and vanilla imperial stout.

"Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout introduced me to to how a beer could actually taste like chocolate, yet not be too sweet and still amazingly potent," Sharpton says. "Then I started understanding the various tasting and aromatic properties of individual hops, leading to West Coast pale ales and IPAs."

Sharpton grew up in Ithaca, New York, the home of Cornell University and Ithaca College. He graduated from Cornell and later adopted his monicker, because “I wanted something creative, catchy and more recognizable than my legal name.

“Rev. Sharpton and I are passionate about what we do, and I wanted to incorporate that along with recognizing the best beverage in the world. There is no parody or comedic approach of disrespect.”Continue Reading

Senate moves to let breweries sell beer to go, make it easier to own several liquor stores

The Texas Senate restored a measure Wednesday allowing breweries to sell beer to go from their taprooms to a bill allowing the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to continue operating. It also approved a measure that would loosen restrictions on the number of liquor store permits individuals can hold.

State Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway, said her amendment allowing breweries to sell beer to go — something allowed in every state except Texas — would foster job creation, economic development, entrepreneurship and tourism.

“We stand our best when we stand together, and we come together on issues that have been divisive in the past,” Buckingham said during the floor debate. “Our constituents elected us to be bold — and with that, I give you beer to go, baby.”

The TABC bill's sponsor in the Senate, Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, also added an amendment that would allow individuals to hold up to 250 liquor store permits. Under current law, individuals are prohibited from owning more than five liquor stores, with two exceptions. One exception applies to anyone who owned a liquor store before May 1, 1949. The other allows anyone with a parent, child or sibling who is also in the liquor store business to join forces and obtain an unlimited amount of permits. Together, those two exceptions only apply to 11 of more than 2,600 liquor stores in Texas.Continue Reading