Top 5 Colorado summer beers

A great summer beer must be light. It must be refreshing. It must also be flavorful and interesting. In Colorado, where the winters are long and cold and the summers are sunny and beautiful, craft breweries have the summer beer dialed in. The five beers pictured above and praised below represent the best Colorado summer beers.

All five represent different styles and separate breweries. Three are ales, two are lagers. Two are from Durango; three are from the Front Range. Two are Belgian-inspired, two are German-inspired and one is Mexican-inspired. Two are strictly summer seasonals, while the other three are light beers brewed year-round.

This isn't a definitive ranking. But it gives you an idea of the quality and breadth of summer beers in Colorado.

1. Great Divide Colette
7.3 percent ABV

It was a pleasant surprise when Great Divide Brewing of Denver started bottling a first-rate saison in six-packs. Before Colette, it was impossible to find a saison locally that wasn't sold in expensive bomber bottles.

The price would be irrelevant if the beer weren't great. Fortunately, Colette, a summer seasonal, is among the best saisons anywhere. This tasty Belgian-inspired farmhouse ale took home a silver medal at the 2010 Great American Beer Festival.

Saisons are wonderful, yeasty beers that manage to be light and refreshing and extraordinarily flavorful. Colette is as good as it gets. (Full review here).

2. Ska Mexican Logger
4.2 percent ABV, 18 IBUs

It's difficult to make low-alcohol beers like Ska's Mexican Logger carry much flavor, because alcohol acts as a sort of wave on which flavor can ride.

While Mexican Logger is light in alcohol, this little beer punches far above its weight. The deliciousness that is Ska's Mexican Logger defies explanation. Just drink it. (Full review here).

3. Left Hand Polestar Pilsner
5.5 percent ABV, 33 IBUs

The folks in Longmont got something right when they brewed their Polestar Pilsner. This lager has a perfect amount of hopping that doesn't get in the way of the funky yeast flavors. Delicous. Refreshing. Not to be missed.

4. Steamworks Colorado Kolsch
4.8 percent ABV, 17 IBUs

Not long ago, I found myself sharing an affordable $8 pitcher of Colorado Kolsch at Steamworks' bar in Durango. It was a hot day, and this ale was everything I needed at that moment in time. This kolsch is another beer that manages to be very flavorful while relatively low in alcohol.

It's also one of Steamworks' signature beers, and one of the cooler cans (or bottles) around, featuring the Colorado flag.

5. Avery White Rascal
5.6 percent ABV, 10 IBUs

A fantastic Belgian-style witbier from the consistently excellent Avery brewery in Boulder. These sorts of Belgian-style wheats are tough to pair with food, but they're great on their own and with some foods.

There's a nice hint of citrus along with ample Belgian yeastiness. This Rascal is worth confining in your refrigerator, until you can let it runneth over the top of your glass.

Please feel free to argue in the comments below. I tasted all five of these with my wife and a friend. My wife would have ranked White Rascal and Polestar Pilsner up top. My friend would have ranked the pilsener lower. Others would have included local favorites Durango Wheat and Carver's Raspberry Wheat. What do you think?

Comparing Colorado pilseners

Thanks to W.J. Doyle Wine & Spirits, a new Durango liquor store that lets customers mix six-packs, I recently had the chance to compare two tasty Colorado pilseners side by side.

Pilseners are light lagers, originally from the Czech Republic and later Germany, with substantial hopping and a crisp finish.

The pilseners both come from northern Colorado breweries with good track records of producing high-quality craft beer: Left Hand Brewing Co. of Longmont and Avery Brewing Co. of Boulder.

Left Hand's Polestar Pilsner comes in at 5.5 percent ABV and 33 IBUs, using Magnum, Mt. Hood and Sterling hops along with Weyerman pilsner and pale two-row malt. It's distributed in 12-ounce bottles.

Avery's Joe's Premium American Pilsner is less boozy but more hoppy, at 4.7 percent ABV and 42 IBUs. It's brewed with Magnum and Hersbrucker hops and unspecified two-row malt, and distributed in 12-ounce cans featuring the image of a gangster-looking dude.

Both beers pour a pale yellow with an off-white head. The pilseners taste differently, though. The Left Hand pils is funkier and yeastier, with moderate hopping. The Avery pils is cleaner but much more aggressively hopped.

Both are good beers. I slightly prefer Left Hand's funky complexity to Avery's big hop taste, but to each their own. You can't go wrong with pilsener, a fantastic style for summer.

The Fourth of July tends to be an industrial lager holiday. I'm sure the liquor stores will sell plenty of Coors and Budweiser. But if you want to keep it craft, and you should, pilsener is an excellent option.

Go Denver!

At least once a year, I make my way to Denver and environs to catch a Rockies game and taste some of the area's fantastic beers. Denver has become one of the best beer cities in the nation, with nearby Boulder and Fort Collins contributing some inspired brewing. I drove up there last weekend.

A necessary stop, always, is Avery Brewing in Boulder. They simply make great beer. They also keep an up-to-date tap list online, so you can plan your attack before descending on the brewery, tucked away, with only small signs to guide you, in an office-parky area of Boulder.

My first priority was trying a version of Avery India Pale Ale that had been dry-hopped with Centennials. Avery IPA is pretty much unimprovable. The dry-hopping just gave the IPA a somewhat harder hop kick than is standard. I liked it fine but feel the IPA is perfect in regular form.

Next, I went for a pint of Avery Fifteen. Fifteen is part of a series of annual releases to mark Avery's anniversary. Avery just released Seventeen, so Fifteen is two years old. Time has done the beer well. It was effervescent, reminding me of Champagne. The flavors are fuller, bossier than ever before. The Brettanomyces yeast has had its way.

When I gave my friends a sip, they recoiled a bit. Fifteen is a very different type of beer, and you should know what you're getting into before you try it. I loved it.

Finally, I happened to be there during a release party for Joe's American Pilsner. I have been enjoying pilsners this summer, as the style makes for a refreshing but flavorful summer beer. Joe's is a well-executed version of the style.

Amusingly, while my friends and I were hanging out on Avery's patio, Adam Avery rolled up on a road bike, his Avery cycling gear sweaty from an apparently tough ride. He sat down on the patio and drank a pilsner. Quality control, you see.

(An aside: The Avery guys are big into bicycling and joined Ska Brewing for a cross-state tour last summer to herald the release of Wheelsucker Wheat Ale. It's on again later this summer, Wheelsucker included, as I understand it).

We also stopped at one of several Breckenridge Brewery outlets in Denver. I have in the past been somewhat critical of certain Breck brews, but they continue to put out better and better beers. A draft-only saison called Vesper that was on tap during my visit was as good as any saison I've had.

There are many, many more breweries in the area, but that's all I had time for on this trip. I did stop by Falling Rock Taphouse, one of the best beer bars in the country, and conveniently situated only about a block from Coors Field.

Falling Rock pulled me an Houblon Chouffe, some sort of Belgian creation that was delicious. Then a cask pull of Left Hand Sawtooth, a hop-forward red ale from the Longmont company.

Durango certainly carries its own craft-beer cred, but it was cool to try some different things. Keep on brewing, Denver.