Ale

From Chicago’s Burning Bush Brewery, this amber ale includes two types of basil grown right there on their patio next to the Chicago River.

Scratch in Ava, Illinois, has won a national reputation for its combination of foraging and flavor finesse. Here’s how the brewery’s duo ended up putting 131 different botanical ingredients into one (very tasty) beer.

Call it black IPA, Cascadian dark, or anything else—whatever you call it, this American black ale goes all-in on flavor with dark malts and robust hopping.

This rich amber ale, featuring layers of roasted orange spice mingling with hops, is a vamp on the English winter warmers that are stronger, darker, and toastier than pale ales or bitters.

From Offset Bier in Park City, Utah, this session-strength IPA—which features the new public hop, Vera—is fresh off a gold-medal win at the Great American Beer Festival.

From Dundulis in Panevežys, Lithuania, this recipe is based on their interpretation of traditional keptinis beer brewed from an oven-­baked mash.

When beer gets high enough in alcohol content, it can pose a threat to can lining and affect how we perceive carbonation. In this clip from their video course, River North founder Matt Hess explains how and why they bottle in glass and adjust for carbonation.

There are many kinds of dark beer around the world, but there’s one that stands out as profoundly different from the others—and it features a deep, caramelized flavor that can only come from a nice, hot oven.

This extra pale ale is a crowd favorite at Craft Coast Beer & Tacos in San Diego’s North County. It’s also found success at the highest levels of competition, winning two straight World Beer Cup medals—bronze in 2024, then silver in 2025.

For River North’s coffee-infused beers, it’s whole beans, fresh and medium-roasted. In this clip from their video course, founder Matt Hess explains the method.

From the angel’s share to dilution, River North founder Matt Hess lays out some key considerations to keep in mind when you’re planning to age your beers in spirits barrels.

Here’s how homebrewers can punch up their pale ales with the bright flavors of New Zealand hops. Plus: a method for getting a whirlpool-like flavor burst without having to whirl anything.

From Shawn Cooper and Joran Van Gingerachter of Atlanta’s Halfway Crooks, here’s a recipe for their own “brewer’s beer”—a dry, bitter, quenching pale ale packed with Belgian-grown hops and accentuated by careful yeast expression.

Taking cues from modern Belgian pale ales such as Taras Boulba and XX Bitter, Sanguine is a balanced expression of ample hops and yeast character. “We chased this beer for four years, trying to find the flavor profile,” says Halfway Crooks cofounder Shawn Cooper. “This is where we ended up.”

An oft-overlooked branch on the farmhouse-inspired, mixed-culture family tree, bière de mars represents a chance to brew something tart, funky, and refreshing.

From dextrose to brewer’s crystals, River North founder Matt Hess covers some of the key things to consider when choosing and adding sugars to boost the gravities of very strong beers.

From recipe design and ingredient choices to barrel-aging, blending, and packaging, River North founder Matt Hess and head brewer Matt Malloy share the methods and philosophy behind their unusually robust and flavorful award-winning beers.

Technically, this cold-fermented showcase of expressive Czech aroma hops—brewed by the folks at Sacred Profane in Biddeford, Maine—is a lager. But it drinks like an IPA, so that’s what they call it.

Over the years, this recipe has gotten a bit darker and a bit lighter in body, but the goal is the same: to shape an IPA that is distinct from stylistic “neighbors” such as American brown ale.