The Ten Best Summer Beers
Make a toast to summer with our selection of seasonal beers
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Your support makes all the difference.Adnams East Green - £1.79
Drink beer and save the planet! Adnams's new Suffolk beer uses East Anglian barley and low-pesticide Boadicea hops, brewed in an energy-efficient brewery with re-cycled CO2. It has an appealing gold colour with a tangy citrus-fruit and grassy aroma and palate.
www.tesco.com; 0845 722 5533
Fuller’s Organic Honey Dew - £1.60
Organic honey is imported from South America to give a smooth, creamy note to this beer, but generous hop rates balance the sweetness. Served well chilled, it's rich and wonderfully quenching.
www.onlyfinebeer.co.uk; 01245 362 950
Meantime IPA - £3.59
A brilliant recreation of a real 19th-century India Pale Ale that refreshed the Raj. It is big and full-bodied, with a massive attack of peppery hops, citrus fruit and juicy malt, and is bottled with live yeast so it can be laid down to mature.
www.beersofeurope.co.uk; 01553 812 000
Shepherd Neame Whitstable Bay - £1.69
Organic Gem and Hallertau hops are imported from New Zealand to blend with English organic malted barley in England's oldest brewery. The result is a zesty, deeply refreshing beer with sappy malt, floral, resinous hops, and tart citrus fruit.
www.waitrose.com; 0800 188 884
Budweiser Budvar - £1.55
Sorry, Carlsberg, this is the greatest lager in the world, cellared (lagered) for 90 days. Brewed with Moravian malt, floral Saaz hops and pure spring water, it has ripe malt and vanilla on the aroma and palate, with a gentle, resinous, hop bitterness.
www.morrisons.co.uk; 0845 611 6111
Duvel - £18.96 for 12
A classic golden Belgian beer: Duvel ("doo-vul") is the Flemish for devil, and it lives up to the name. Three fermentations - two in the brewery, and one in bottle - produce a massive Poire William nose, with juicy malt and tangy hops in the mouth and finish.
www.majestic.co.uk
St Austell Clouded Yellow - £18 for12
A Cornish interpretation of a German wheat beer, with the addition of vanilla pods, cloves and coriander, this is crisp and quenching, with powerful hints of banana (from the house yeast) and vanilla on aroma and palate. It's the perfect companion for a curry.
www.staustellbrewery.co.uk; 0172 674 444
Young’s Kew Gold - £1.75
Hops from Kew Gardens are blended with Styrian Goldings to give a superb, spicy, and herbal note to a hybrid: an ale made with lager malt. For every bottle sold, Young's makes a donation to the Royal Botanic Gardens.
www.beersofeurope.co.uk; 01553 812 000
Brakspear Oxford Gold - £1.50
This is bottle-fermented beer with a tart and tangy hop character from the English Goldings and Target varieties: complex and refreshing with hints of blood oranges and butterscotch, the latter from Brakspear's unique "double drop" fermentation system.
www.asda.co.uk; 0845 300 1111
Goose Island IPA - £45.60 for 24
One of the world's greatest beers, from Chicago. American craft-brewers are mad about hops, and this is one of the bitterest beers on the planet. But the hops are balanced by orange fruit and a cracker-biscuit maltiness, with a quinine-like bitter finish: superb.
www.beerritz.co.uk; 01423 359 371
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