Summer ale styles

Victory Summer Love
Troeg's Sunshine Pils (even though a lager, should not be passed over for only ales)
Dogfish Head Festina Peche

 

Pick up the Sierra Nevada summer variety pack. It has pale ale, pilsner, kolsch, and hefeweizen.

 

Blonde, kolsch, gose, and beer made with wheat will be some options (especially the latter).

The two beers recommended by @drtth are great.
Try Smuttynose's Hayseed, a Grisette.

 

SN Nooner , Oskar Blues pilsner , any wheats.

 

Oh, you were quite clear, but what you got were good examples of particular styles based on the assumption you could figure out the general style from the particular example and, of course, my suggestion that with something like Sunshine Pils you might want not to ignore all lagers because that Pils is a summer seasonal only.

 

Personally, my favorite Summer beer is usually a saison or a wit.

 

Cheers to you for trying so many different styles! I've been enjoying lagers more and more recently. Pilsner, Helles lager, Dortmunder lager, and Vienna lager are all great styles for the summertime.

 

Goose Island Summertime was a Kolsch but its been gone for a while and now they have a Summer Ale which is a APA. Brooklyn's Summer is also a Pale Ale. Yeah not a fan of APA's for summer seasonals because to me a APA is a year round style.

 

Yeungling Summer Wheat is a great choice.

 

I don't understand the infatuation with ales on this site. Last Saturday I drove 2 hours each way from Toronto to Buffalo to grab some beer, and I what I got was mostly lager.

 

Agree, there are some great lagers that are perfect for summer drinking

but if you want a summer "ale", the cream or pales would be good in my book (I'm not a fan of wheat)

 

Yuengling Summer Wheat is around in at least some parts of Virginia (I can find it in one store within 6 miles of me, and I'm not around any major cities, so I imagine it'd be easier elsewhere) and that's about as "reasonably priced" as they get (I think I saw it going for $7.35 a six-pack, which is more than most Yuengling beers go for, but still a good $1.50 to $2 less per six-pack around here than any of the other beers mentioned in this post.)

Starr Hill's "The Love" wheat beer is also a hefeweizen if I recall correctly, and they're based in... I want to say Charlottesville? and their beers tend to be readily available in Virginia. Devil's Backbone should be available too; I think they have a canned hefeweizen out now, I think it was called "Trail Angel Weiss" or something along those lines. Also Sierra Nevada's Kellerweiss, only seen it in the summer variety packs so far but I figure there's six-packs too.

So there's definitely some around, albeit not as abundant as other "summery" styles.

 

Bell's Oberon...Its distributed in VA

 

Well there are a few things that might be at play with the "ale phenomenon." First, the big kids are brewing lagers and if one is rejecting daddy's beer and/or mass market beers in general, all lagers could become collateral damage and included in the rejection. Second, for a variety of reasons, at least in the US, more breweries do ales than lagers, so if you don't want mass market lagers, ales are much easier to find.

 

A number of good summer time ales have already been mentioned but below is my list of beers I will be drinking this summer (some lagers added):

Victory Summer Love (Blonde)

Brooklyn Summer Ale (Blonde/Golden Ale)

Sixpoint Jammer Gose

Yuengling Summer Wheat (Hefeweizen)

Troegs Sunshine Pils

Southampton Keller Pils



Cheers!

 

I personally like the summer ale seasonals that a lot of breweries put out, usually blonde ales and they tend to brew them with citrus (orange peels, etc.). And don't be afraid to try a session IPA ...