The Top Beers in Boston

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Whirlpool

Night Shift Brewing Company
New England Pale Ale

ABV: 4.5%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Hazy, juicy, and extensively hopped, New England-style IPAs are a delicious regional variation, but they can sometimes carry a high ABV and throat-burning dankness. For fullness of flavor and milder everything else, try Whirlpool, a pale ale variation and one of Night Shift’s earliest entries. It’s a forever-favorite for being enthusiastically redolent of hop notes like ripe peach and citrus, yet lands soft at under 5% alcohol.

Everett, Boston; nightshiftbrewing.com.

Lavenade

Springdale Beer Co.
Sour Ale

ABV: 4.5%
Availability: Spring
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: No

Like a sweet breeze rustling the crocuses on the first open-window day of the year, the annual arrival of this lavender-lemon sour ale ushers in spring in Boston (for beer lovers, anyway). Thanks to a soft, floral quality that eases the intensity of the tart citrus, Springdale’s Lavenade sips more like a not-so-sweet lemonade than a boozy beverage—and that makes it a must-have accessory when it’s time to go digging (or lounging) in the garden.

Framingham, springdalebeer.com.

Three Decker

Redemption Rock Brewing Co.
Helles Lager

ABV: 4.2%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans
Taproom: Yes

A beer for when you just want a beer—something simple to slake your thirst after, say, a hot afternoon spent weed-whacking the perimeter of your family’s three-decker—this super-light helles lager always hits the spot. Brewed in Worcester (that’s WUH-stuh, of course), it goes down easy with balanced honey-malt and floral-hop flavors. Like its namesake style of New England apartment building, it’s a utilitarian triumph.

Worcester, redemptionrock.beer.

Goody Two Shoes

Exhibit ‘A’ Brewing Company
Kölsch-Style Ale

ABV: 4.5%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Refined Kölsch ale—the signature brew of Cologne, Germany—is a gateway to good beer for many Bud-reared Americans. It certainly opened the eyes of a teenage Matthew Steinberg, founder of Exhibit ‘A,’ who studied up on it in Europe (read: drank it on vacation) years before becoming one of the state’s top brewmasters. Today, his Goody Two Shoes pays tribute to the style: light-bodied, effervescent, and crystalline gold, with lemony zeal and fresh-baked-cracker crispness.

Framingham, exhibit-a-brewing.com.

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Session Pils

Notch Brewing
Czech Pale Lager

ABV: 4%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Brightly herbal and slightly hoppy, this pilsner-style lager proves worthy of its own pouring method at Notch’s taprooms, where “side-pull” faucets control the flow to create an optimally creamy head. At neighborhood packies and pubs, though, Session Pils successfully camouflages itself in cans as a straightforward pick for something inexpensive and crushable: It’s brewed for you to have a few—so break out a beer mug and bring the foam party home.

Salem, Brighton; notchbrewing.com.

Julius

Tree House Brewing Company
New England IPA

ABV: 6.8%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Even if a certain smoothie shop wasn’t a formative food-court hangout for many mall-reared millennials, we’d probably still love the orange-juicy Julius from Tree House. The storied Charlton-based beermaker is famous for advancing the hop-driven possibilities of New England IPAs—and this flagship, characteristically creamy with a blend of fruit flavors, reminds us why we’re always eager to see what they’ll have in store.

Charlton, Sandwich, South Deerfield; treehousebrew.com.

The Streets

Trillium Brewing Company
New England Triple IPA

ABV: 10%
Availability: Limited
Format: Cans
Taproom: Yes

Boston’s biggest craft-beer name celebrates its March anniversary by giving us a gift: a special-occasion IPA that is also one of its most pioneering. The Streets is the ultimate in a series of Trillium beers that perfected the cloudy look and texture key to the craft-brew world’s ongoing “haze craze.” Nothing comes close to the candied-fruit-flavored punch of this singular sipper, which gets its “bam!” factor from an armload of hop varieties.

Canton, Fort Point, Fenway; trilliumbrewing.com.

Honeymaker

Widowmaker Brewing
New England Double IPA

ABV: 8%
Availability: Limited
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Sweet ingredients, such as lactose, are commonly added to New England IPAs to build body and temper bitterness. Nothing complements the style’s signature tropical-fruit flavors, however, like South Shore-harvested honey, which Widowmaker gets from a beekeeping bartender on staff every few months to brew Honeymaker. Its nectarous quality nips any über-boozy taste in the bud—plus, it lends a velvety mouthfeel that’s (forgive us) the bee’s knees.

Braintree, widowmakerbrewing.com.

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Gate 37

Honest Weight Artisan Beer
Grisette

ABV: 4.8%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Honest Weight, an industrial Western Mass. outfit housed inside a former factory, doesn’t need its own wheat fields to turn out ace farmhouse ales—styles historically produced by farmers from their own grains. Gate 37 owes its peppery earthiness to a base of raw buckwheat and malted red-winter wheat supplied by Valley Malt in Hadley, which in turn supports growers across the region. Investing in the locavore landscape? That deserves a toast.

Orange, honestweightbeer.com.

Emelyn

Idle Hands Craft Ales
Zwickl Lager

ABV: 5.8%
Availability: Limited
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

From its home base in Malden, Idle Hands interprets a whole world of beers, with Belgian-inspired brews and baseball-themed American IPAs among its many successes. Our favorite, though, is Emelyn: a malt-forward Vienna-style lager that’s unfiltered, unaged, and customarily enjoyed as close as possible to the beer’s source. Does jet-setting to Austria sound appealing? Sure. But in a pinch, it’s a lot easier to cross the Mystic River than the pond.

Malden, idlehandscraftales.com.

Copper Legend

Jack’s Abby
Märzen

ABV: 5.7%
Availability: Fall
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Stock the fridge with this German-style Märzen when Oktoberfest comes around. From lager specialists Jack’s Abby, Copper Legend is crisp, smooth, and oh-so-drinkable, thanks to a woodsy-sweet malt character rounded out with subtle spice and fruit flavors from the hops. Seeing fall beers roll out during the sunny days of summer sometimes invokes a low-key sense of dread (just us?), but this one makes us look forward to lederhosen season.

Framingham, jacksabby.com.

Rickey Weisse

Night Shift Brewing
Sour Ale

ABV: 4.5%
Availability: Summer
Format: Cans
Taproom: Yes

New Englanders tend to love anything that taps into our collective nostalgia, so it’s no surprise that the raspberry-lime Rickey Weisse is hotly anticipated every summer. The fizzy favorite brings juicy, tangy flavors to Night Shift’s fruited sour series, and it takes us right back to sharing a raspberry-lime rickey with friends outside the ice cream window—but without the syrupy sweetness (and awkward teenage flirting).

Everett, Boston; nightshiftbrewing.com.

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Sour Pipe Project: Blueberry Pancake

Vitamin Sea Brewing
Sour Ale

ABV: 6%
Availability: Limited
Format: Cans
Taproom: Yes

Vitamin Sea always makes waves with bodacious, flavorful beers, and this sating entry in the brewery’s fruited sour beer series is one of its most wonderfully weird creations: With your eyes closed, you could be convinced you’re sipping on a liquid stack of vanilla-scented flapjacks drenched in maple syrup. (Blink them back open to soak in the beer’s unusual purple color.) Beer for breakfast? Not every day, but when this is on the menu, we’re definitely at it early.

Weymouth, vitaminseabrewing.com.

Quantum Reggae

Roundhead Brewing Co.
Berliner Weisse

ABV: 4.3%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans
Taproom: Coming in 2022

The addition of dragon fruit gives this Berliner weisse its pink hue, but groovy music gives it its verve. Among the initial releases from Hyde Park’s new Roundhead Brewing, Quantum Reggae really does benefit from 72 hours of funky tunes bumping near the tank, according to the cofounders of Boston’s first Latin-owned brewery. They selected the syncopated soundtrack because yeast are living organisms, and they feel the rhythm. We do, too.

Hyde Park, roundheadbrewing.com.

Spencer Trappist Ale

Spencer Brewery
Patersbier

ABV: 6.5%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Bottles
Taproom: No

The next time anyone questions your bold assertion that Massachusetts is the best state for beer, remind them that the commonwealth is home to the only Trappist brewery outside of Europe. With centuries-old origins in Belgian abbeys, Trappist beers command respect worldwide for their immaculate quality. The monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer craft their flagship with full-bodied fruitiness and a dry finish—and quietly live up to their forefathers’ lore.

Spencer, spencerbrewery.com.

Cuppa

Lamplighter Brewing Company
English-Style Pale Ale

ABV: 5.8%
Availability: Limited
Format: Cans
Taproom: Yes

Considering that their Cambridge space is also home to a java-pouring café, it’s no surprise that the beverage wizards at Lamplighter woke us up to the idea that coffee flavors, most typically found in porters and stouts, can also work wonders in pale ales. In the case of Cuppa, an English-style base of biscuit-y malts blends with locally roasted cold-brew for something lightly sweet, with vanilla, blueberry, and toasted-toffee notes.

Cambridge, lamplighterbrewing.com.

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Keeper

Castle Island Brewing Company
American IPA

ABV: 6.5%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Castle Island Brewing Company has offered its flagship India pale ale since even before it had a taproom. Now the maker has two (including a new location near its namesake Southie landmark) where beer fans can discover how the indispensable Keeper earned its name: with highly fragrant pine, citrus, and melon-hop flavors that enliven a smooth grain backbone and lend just the right bit of bite.

Norwood, South Boston; castleislandbeer.com.

Great Pumpkin Ale

Cambridge Brewing Company
Harvest Ale

ABV: 5.4%
Availability: Fall
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Too often, pumpkin ales are the pumpkin-spiced lattes of the beer world: totally cheugy, in other words. New England’s first and finest pumpkin beer has nothing in common with the saccharine swill out there. Rather, it’s a lovely cornucopia of organic, locally grown sugar pumpkins and caramel malts, enhanced with cinnamon and allspice in the brew—a sweetish sip, sure, but earthy hops keep it balanced, and far from basic.

Cambridge, cambridgebrewingcompany.com.

The Future Is Unwritten

Small Change Brewing Company
English-Style Dark Mild

ABV: 3.1%
Availability: Fall/Winter
Format: Cans
Taproom: No

Instead of building its own brewery, Small Change partners with other Massachusetts makers to produce its recipes. Why? Minimizing overhead allows the mom-and-pop operation to focus on niche styles. The Future Is Unwritten, for instance, is a take on the dark mild, a low-alcohol British pub classic. It’s tough to predict much nowadays, but we do know this: With its toasty undertones of nutty chocolate and cola, it’ll become your new cold-weather favorite.

Somerville, smallchangebrewing.com.

Flannel Friday

Harpoon Brewery
Amber Ale

ABV: 5.7%
Availability: Fall
Format: Cans, Bottles, Draft
Taproom: No

The beer version of a favorite fall shirt, Flannel Friday layers up radiant, roast-y flavors that feel perfectly tailored to the season: Harpoon’s hoppy amber ale earns a woodsy richness from the caramelized grains, which are balanced with citrus and pine hops as bright as peak foliage. Perfect, because a pint like this is exactly what you’ll want to drink after raking up leaves or hitting a postcard-pretty hiking trail.

Seaport, Windsor (VT); harpoonbrewery.com.

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Old Fezziwig

Samuel Adams
Winter Warmer

ABV: 5.9%
Availability: Winter
Format: Bottles
Taproom: Yes

Over the winter, Sam Adams blessed Boston beer fans with a pleasant ghost of Christmases past: Old Fezziwig, a spiced ale first released by the craft-beer trailblazer in 1995 and—when we’re lucky—included in wintry mix packs. With notes of toffee, nutmeg, and caramel, it has the spirit of the jolly Dickensian character that inspires its name. A vet like Sam Adams doesn’t often get beer-geek hype these days, but this seasonal rarity deserves it.

Jamaica Plain, Faneuil Hall; samueladams.com.

Mayflower Porter

Mayflower Brewing Company
American Porter

ABV: 5.2%
Availability: Year-round
Format: Cans, Draft
Taproom: Yes

Raise your hand if you remember learning that the Pilgrims disembarked in Massachusetts because the ship’s beer supply was dwindling. (Thank you, middle school field trips.) Some 400 years later, we’ve come a long way thanks to Plymouth’s Mayflower Brewing, which made an early splash with this dark beer. Not too big or bitter, the porter is smoky and sweet and finishes dry. It charted a new course for American craft beer, and we’re still on board.

Plymouth, mayflowerbrewing.com.

Intertidal Oyster Stout

Devil’s Purse Brewing Company
Oyster Stout

ABV: 5%
Availability: Winter
Format: Cans
Taproom: Yes

Here’s a beer that screams “Bay State”: At Devil’s Purse on Cape Cod, the brewers toss locally harvested oysters directly into the kettle, adding mineral complexity and a true sense of place. It may sound odd, but the bittersweet nature of a stout pairs nicely with briny shellfish—think: salted butter on charred toast—and while oysters might traditionally shout “summer,” this annual winter release is a reminder that good taste is always in season.

South Dennis, devilspurse.com.

PM Dawn

Trillium Brewing Company
American Stout

ABV: 9%
Availability: Limited
Format: Cans
Taproom: Yes

There’s no golden ticket required for entry, but for craft-beer lovers, a visit to Trillium’s taprooms offers the same excitement as a trip to Willy Wonka’s factory. The chocolatey PM Dawn is especially seductive for stout fans: Infused with locally roasted cold-brew coffee, the big beer evokes notes of mocha and vanilla. Look out for variations kicked up with coconut and peanut butter—ingredients that, it turns out, are even better in a beer than a candy bar.

Canton, Fort Point, Fenway; trilliumbrewing.com.