5 Great Beer Styles For Fall

photo courtesy Cambridge Brewing Company, who serve a wide range of seasonal styles to try

Try these traditional fall beer styles that have nothing to do with pumpkin spice

Pumpkin season has a way of creeping in earlier and earlier each year, aided and abetted by certain coffee drinkers’ collective affinity for pumpkin spice lattes. The heady spices of the pumpkin set—nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, etc.—can also make for an interesting seasonal beer taste profile for sure, but let’s not forget that the month of September still largely belongs to summer.

While the sun is setting a little earlier, however, and nights are becoming chillier, a beer shift may be in order, but there are steps to take between the bright and sessionable sours of high summer and robust and spicy pumpkin ales that start leaning toward the holidays.

Here are recommendations for what beers to drink this time of year, which yielded the following list of 5 styles—both classic and contemporary—that each amounts to the beer equivalent of sweater weather.

Oktoberfest/Festbier

You don’t have to give in to pumpkin temptation before October, but you can still do like the Bavarians do and roll into Oktoberfest season in September. (Munich’s 2020 Oktoberfest celebration is canceled this year, but will commence on September 18 in 2021.) Oktoberfest beers are technically Märzens: a rich, malty lager brewed in the spring and aged over the summer for readiness in the fall. Lighter festbiers took over as the official brew of Munich’s Oktoberfest beginning around the 1990s, but the terms have become somewhat interchangeable. In either case you get a great warm-to-cool weather transition beer with nice maltiness and a little extra heft. 

Beers to try: Left Hand Oktoberfest, Paulaner Oktoberfest, River Rat Brewery Oktoberfest (Gold Medal Winner, 2020 New York International Beer Competition)

Photo courtesy of nicholasjon via Creative Commons

Brown/Red Ale

Brown and red ales are traditions in England and Ireland—places where weather almost always requires sweaters—and traditionally bring forward a little sweetness on the palate, but finish dry and crisp with moderate alcohol content. These brews are hearty without being heavy, perfect for warm days with cool nights. Their characteristically nutty and robust flavors are great matches for autumn supper superstars like butternut squash soup, not to mention that both tend to poetically match both scenery and outfits this time of year.

Beers to try: Brooklyn Brewery Brown Ale, Bell’s Amber Ale, Norbrook Farm Brewery Beckley Furnace Brown Ale (Gold Medal Winner, 2020 New York International Beer Competition)

Dark Lagers/Schwarzbier

For many, easy drinking lagers are a year round affair, but there is something especially delightful about a cold-fermented beer on a cooler evening. While porters and some stouts have a weightiness born of being ales, black lagers offer a similarly roasted flavor on the palate, but maintain the refreshing quality and light body of lagers. Dark lagers are like the beer equivalent of a good fall vest: as the color of the leaves change, so can your go-to lager.

Beers to try: Uinta Brewing Co. Baba Black Lager, Duck-Rabbit Schwarzbier, Ramstein INK Black Lager (Silver Medal Winner, 2020 NYIBC)

Saison/Bière de Garde

Saisons are Belgian and Bières de Garde are French, but both belong to a category of beers called farmhouse ales. Farmhouse ales were traditionally brewed in the spring and stored before the hot summer weather to better control yeast activation. (Similar in approach to Oktoberfest beers, but as ales rather than lagers.) September marks the start of harvest season, giving farmhouse ales a certain literary appeal for fall drinking. Both beers are hard to define historically since any given beer is very much proprietary to the farmer making it. However, both styles have become more popular in modern times, typically showing deep golden color with zesty citrus flavors balanced by spicy esters, and a full, foamy texture. 

Photo courtesy of Elevate via Unsplash

Beers to try: Saison Dupont, Ommegang Hennepin, IBEER Million Reasons (Gold Medal Winner, 2020 NYIBC)

Hazy Pale Ales

IPAs vary widely in production style and are often subject to much experimentation and flavor layering, but mellower, hazy or unfiltered selections with a hint of pine are well suited to the season. Cooler air and heartier dishes welcome a little strength and bitterness back into your beer drinking, and the rustic look of an unfiltered haze begs to be paired with a light jacket and an early sunset.

Beers to try: Nightshift Whirlpool, Elysian Fields Contact Haze, Magic Hat Easy Miles (Silver Medal Winner, 2020 NYIBC)

For related reading on Alcohol Professor about the intersection of beer and pumpkin season, check out Kevin Gibson’s The Evolution and Metamorphosis of Pumpkin Beer, and ‘Tis the Season for Pumpkin Beer.