2018 Midwest Beer Guide

Pity the oatmeal stout. It isn't full of trendy hops. It isn't crammed with weird, sugary ingredients. It's just good beer — creamy, roasty and satisfying. The Poet has been one of the Midwest's definitive oatmeal stouts for nearly 20 years. It remains so.

Jolly Pumpkin claims a lofty distinction in American brewing: the nation's first all-sour, all oak-aged brewery. There's really not a bad beer in Jolly Pumpkin's lineup, but this low alcohol (4.5 percent) farmhouse ale is an essential starting point with a web of earthy flavors: lemon, rind, straw, hay and a touch of oak and a bit of a tart tealike character. Layered, complex and approachably refreshing.

A chocolate oatmeal coffee stout isn't so radical now, but 15 years ago it sure was. An instant classic that remains so, even after graduating from rare specialty release to a year-round part of Founders' portfolio.

Goose Island gets credit for launching the barrel-aging revolution, but the best barrel-aged coffee beer in our fair region may be this one from central Wisconsin. Rich coffee sits alongside notes of ripe fruit, creamy vanilla and chocolate. This beer had a couple of down years with infected batches, but the most recent release shows Peruvian Morning to be back atop its game.

Nothing says Midwest quite like the easy-drinking flagship of Wisconsin's most renowned craft brewer. As one industry veteran recently described it, Spotted Cow isn't just a beer — "it's an institution." Spotted Cow may not be New Glarus' best beer, but its enduring charm is undeniable, fueled mostly by its accessibility ("fun, fruity and satisfying," the brewery says). Spotted Cow can please persnickety veteran beer fans or someone more likely to reach for a can of "lite" beer. Also in its favor is Spotted Cow's irresistible name, its charming hand-drawn label (a cow jumping over the state of Wisconsin) and the fact that New Glarus doesn't distribute beer beyond the Cheeseland borders. If you want the most classic of Midwest beers, you need to step into the heart of the Midwest. Doesn't get more Midwestern than that.

It was an unlikely sight when it first appear in 2015: a traditional tart Belgian-style beer … in a 12-ounce can! As part of Destihl's Wild Sour series, Flanders Red is just what it should be: tart and jamlike fruitiness wrapped in pleasantly puckering sourness, lingering like sour candy.

Two Hearted may be the Midwest's pioneering hop bomb, but Alpha King hasn't been far behind since debuting as Three Floyds' very first beer, in 1996. Plenty of other trendy pale ales have appeared since — including Floyds' own Zombie Dust — but Alpha King remains an expert piece of Midwest beer history. And it's still a damn fine pale ale.

There was a "holy smokes" moment back when this little brewpub an hour south of Chicago won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2012 in the American-style pale ale category, one of the festival's most competitive. But the beer was pitch perfect: An initial burst of lush mango and grapefruit notes dry out into a clean, bitter finish accented by a dash of juicy sweetness. Tastes have moved on, but this remains a definitive American pale ale.

This wasn't supposed to be Off Color's flagship. But the people spoke, and they came down firmly on the side of a modern American saison, a zesty explosion of orange, lemon, clove, honey and a touch of vanilla laced with bright yeasty backbone. Refreshing and effervescent.

This IPA was a later arrival — in 2014 — for a brewery that's been grinding out renowned beer since 2005. But Todd the Axe Man was among those shepherding in the new era of IPA: bold, robust and fruity. An instrumental part of the Midwest's transition from where hoppy simply meant "bitter" to meaning "fruity and bitter."

Beer drinkers in a certain swath of the lower Midwest and Plains states — Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska among them — would likely cite Boulevard's Unfiltered Wheat as the single most essential beer to come out of the Midwest. (Said one such person, "Countless people cut their better beer teeth on that beer.") But here's where my bias comes in: among Boulevard Brewing's very fine lineup, it is Tank 7 saison that was the game changer. Introduced in 2009, Tank 7 is as responsible as any beer for bringing the earthy, elegant style — one that 10 years earlier wasn't being made by any American brewery — into the mainstream.

A modern classic that got the Midwest on board with the bold fruity-citrus direction hop-forward beers were headed, while almost single-handedly putting the Hawkeye state on the beer-drinking map.

Capital Brewing, dating to 1984, is of the old guard of Midwestern brewing — which makes it a perfect fit for an old guard German style like maibock. This malty golden-copper brew, rife with caramel richness and a wisp of butterscotch in the sweet, grainy finish, is released every spring. As the brewery says: "When you see our Maibock hit the shelves you know things are about to get better … including the weather!" How Midwestern.

Very much of the new generation of stouts, a fudgy, sweet decadent treat that makes the beer nerds go mad.

I was at one of Chicago's better bars recently, where all sorts of trendy IPAs and adjunct-laden stouts were on tap. The most satisfying thing I drank? This smooth and roasty porter, which originates to 1990 and remains tasty as ever.

First introduced in 1999, this French-style ale from suburban Chicago is a well-honored example (seven major medals during the past 11 years) of elegance and balance — not too hoppy, not too malty, not too earthy, not too dry but a little bit of all of the above. Biere de garde never quite caught on in the mainstream, yet Domaine DuPage was still somehow ahead of its time.

An alluring web of toffee, caramel and milk chocolate and a wisp of coconut mingle in a beer that's also lightly nutty and deeply drinkable. Sadly, this beer was only available in Chicago for a short time. But hey, Michigan isn't so far.

It's no exaggeration to call Piece one of the nation's great brewpubs. The pizza is delicious and the beer, made by Jonathan Cutler — who has been the brewer since Day 1, in 2001 — is even better. Cutler makes a variety of styles well, and his dozens of medals prove as much. Among the classics is the dark German-style ale, rife with notes of banana and cocoa. It's typically a cold-weather release for Piece, which makes it one of the few reasons to — gasp — actually look forward to winter in the Midwest.

Most ambitious breweries age imperial stout in bourbon barrels these days. First to do it, back in 1995, was Chicago's Goose Island. Though most Goose Island production has been exported to Anheuser-Busch breweries, Bourbon County Stout is still made in Chicago and remains a benchmark in the genre. Other breweries may rival or even surpass the quality, but "Bourbon County Stout" is among the most iconic words in beer for a reason.