Welcome to October! This is the month where the frost starts greeting you every morning as you start the day. The air start to cool. The nights are growing longer. And you need a great beer to enjoy all that waning nature. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back.
We’ve compiled a shortlist of some of the best beers being released this October. Some of them are easier to find and have larger distribution. Some of them you’ll have to travel for and do a bit of sleuthing to uncover. A good beer is always worth the effort! Happy hunting!
Enjoy By 10.31.17 IPA — Stone Brewing
Stone’s ‘Enjoy By’ IPAs have become a crowd-pleasing favorite among the mega-craft brewer’s accolades. The double IPA is a heavy hitting beer with a lot of IBUs and an ABV of 9.4 percent. It’s gonna get you buzzing in one or two glasses. The beer is very West Coast IPA, with good hits of tangerine and floral juicy edges followed by a distinct pine resin funkiness that IPA lovers covet. It ends dry and hides its alcohol well. Overall, this is the hop lovers beer that’s fresh made every 90 days or so.
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Nightowl Pumpkin Ale — Elysian Brewing Company
You can’t get through October without a great pumpkin ale or two. Elysian is renowned for brewing one of the best representations of the style. They add pumpkin and pumpkin seeds to their mash for fermentation. Then there are over seven pounds of pumpkin added to the barrels during conditioning along with a spice matrix that screams the Pacific Northwest in October. Expect good hints of allspice, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon in the background, along with a nice and mellow sweetness from the pumpkin and malts. It’s a great novelty beer for pumpkin patch hunting with the kids on a cloudy October afternoon.
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Mocha Milk Stout — Alaskan Brewing Co.
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This is the season where a crackling fire becomes a part of daily life. And there’s nothing better than a sweet, creamy milk stout while warming up next to a fire. Alaskan’s Mocha Milk Stout utilizes Pacific Northwest coffee traditions to make a seriously satisfying beer. Guatemalan Huehuetenango coffee beans and cacao nibs are added to layer in delicious depth to this stout. Lactose is added to bring a creamy smoothness that’s wonderfully accented by a whisper of hop bitterness and strong malt sweetness. Expect nice hints of roasted malt, stark coffee, dark chocolate, and vanilla on the taste while you warm up next to that fire.
Unsessionable — Revolution Brewing
A ‘session beer’ is something that you can drink all day and night. It’s light, low ABV, and easy. This ain’t that. Clocking in at a hefty ten percent ABV, Rev’s Unsessionable is Chicago’s biggest IPA to date. Six hops bring out a heavy dose of almost cannabis level funk that gives way to pine resin, passion fruit juiciness, and citrus rind tartness.
This is a big IPA that almost feels like a throwback as sours and lagers start taking center stage.
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Blood Orange Saison — Upslope Brewing Company
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Upslope keeps hitting it out of the park with their take on Rocky Mountain high beers. Their Blood Orange Saison hits a lot of beautiful flavors with aplomb. There’s a balance of blood orange rind, yeast tartness, and an almost hay-like hop bitterness whispering in the background that’s accented with a slight peppercorn spiciness. There’s a lot going on here and it all works.
Home Grown, a New American Lager — Victory Brewing Company
Victory has been tearing up the beer scene out in Pennsylvania. Their New American Lager is a great example of their brewing acumen. The beer is well hopped without overdoing the bitterness while maintaining a nice, almost buttery toasted maltiness. This beer is refreshingly easy to drink with a ‘session’ ABV of 4.8 percent. The beer was released at the end of the summer and will become part of their year-round rotation. And since it’s Oktoberfest season, a good lager like this is definitely in order.
Red Stonington Wild Saison — Trillium Brewing
This New England Wild Saison beer is the funky sour beer of your tarted up dreams. Red Stonington is fermented with wild yeasts and grape skins then barrel aged for a year before bottling. There’s a dark fruit sweetness with hints of nut underpinning an earthy, almost barnyard funk that gives way to a mellow sourness. It’s a refreshing and complex beer that works wonders on cold autumn nights around a fire pit.
Bouffon — Jester King Brewery and Bruery Terreux
Texas and California have come together to create a stunning sour collaboration beer. Jester King and Bruery Terreux yeasts are at play here creating a tart and well-aged beer. There are classic Belgian styles hints of banana, coriander, bubble gum, white peppercorns, vanilla, and orange rind on the taste leading to a super dry, almost champagne finish. It’s a complex glass of sour beer that jukes your beer power-ranking up a couple levels with every bottle sipped.
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Harrington’s Bourbon Aged Northwest Red Ale — Full Sail Brewing Co.
Full Sail is a classic Oregon microbrewery that has been killing it since the 1980s. They’ve known the finer points of craft before that word was dreamed up in a Mad Men boardroom. Their latest beer is a collaboration with former NFL quarterback Joey Harrington. Together they brewed a deeply malted Red Ale with caramel rye malts and minimal hops. The heavy-hitting 10.2 percent ABV ale is aged in Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels where the spiciness of the rye malt shines through with a strong peppery edge anchored by sweet caramel malts and hints of vanilla.
Full Sail is also donating part of the profits from this limited run ale to Joey Harrington’s Harrington Family Foundation which helps Oregon’s youth.
