Quick Sips: Dogfish Head Festina Peche

Seasonal beers are awesome. Winter beers are best, spring beers are fantastic, autumn beers are classic, and summer beers? Well, they can be all over the map, but when they're good, they're GOOD.

Dogfish Head Festina Peche is a summer beer.

And I love this beer. I love it not because it's a low(ish) alcohol beer by a brewery that mostly does BIG beers, but because it drinks awesome.

This is a delicious beer, but it's not for everybody. It's nicely tart, not quite on the level of a sour candy, but tart enough so that it has a mouth-puckering snap at the finish. Some may find that off-putting, but if you enjoy tart foods and fruits, or sour alcohol drinks, you'll probably enjoy this.

It's made with peach puree, just enough to lend it tasty fruit overtones but not so much that it screams out, "This is a fruit beer!" It's a great balance, fruity enough to be a flavorful and refreshing summer drink, but thanks to the tartness, not so fruity that it tastes like a lame wine cool.er

Even better, at just 4.5% ABV it's pretty low alcohol for Dogfish Head, and plenty low enough so that you could put quite a few of these back on a summer day. And it is indeed PERFECT for a summer's day. Like most Dogfish Head beers it won't be cheap -- it runs about $9 a four-pack -- but the cost is worth it.

Count me in for three or so four-packs every summer.

Quick Sips: Bell's Oberon Ale

Bell's Oberon Ale is something of a standard for beer lovers in the middle United States. In some ways, it's the flagship brew of this fantastic Michigan brewery.

Oberon is a wheat beer -- very traditional style during the summer -- with a clean taste and smooth-drinking character. It's often served with a slice of orange, and it's easy to see why. The citrus goes well with it. But even on its own (which is how I had it this most recent time) this is a crisp, refreshing summer beer that goes down easy but still offers good taste.

It's far from the best wheat out there, but it drinks so nice you'll want to go back for seconds (and thirds) on a hit summer day. Worth picking up if you see it.