**Aroma:** “Orange peel, clove, citrus, and fruitcake with a slight earthy grassiness and mild malt biscuit-like sweetness. Some grapefruit, some mango, and pineapple. A little lemon and a little orange are present on the nose with a slight herbal note.” **Flavor:** “Spicy rye-like character with hops-driven flavors of orange, mango, and peach. Solid malt structure with substantial body and residual sweetness to keep bitterness in check. Excellent creamy mouthfeel. Big sweetness up front with almost a low caramel note. On the second sip, the sweetness faded, and the malt balanced perfectly with the fruity hops and slight bitterness.” **Overall:** “A nicely integrated IPA—the beer delivers a unifying impression of fruit and malt. Rich and juicy hops flavors of grapefruit, pineapple, and lemon notes with a bitterness that rounds out the taste. Everything is well-balanced.”

Packing IPA flavor into a svelte, highly sessionable, lower-calorie frame is no easy trick. To inspire your home attempts, here is the small-scale recipe for Bell’s Brewery’s highest-profile release in years.

Andy Farrell, brewing innovation manager at Bell’s Brewery, talks about the tinkering and process behind developing Light Hearted Ale, the company’s highest-profile new release in years.

Brewed since 1988, Bell's founder Larry Bell has called Cherry Stout the complex “pinot noir” of his brewery’s range. Its origins, however, are far simpler: It all started at homebrew club meetings in Kalamazoo.

For Ben Edmunds of Breakside Brewery in Portland, Oregon, those early beer infatuations were strong and malty. For his dream six-pack, Edmunds reaches back into fond memories to select the ones that broadened his idea of what beer could be.

**Aroma:** “Light malt with subtle sulfur notes. Moderate German hops aroma. Some fruity esters, sweetness, and yeast aroma. A bit of corn-like, wheaty sweetness. Citrusy notes of lemon and orange.” **Flavor:** “Smooth malt offset by light hop bitterness. Sweet, corn-like, and wheaty. Spicy hops slide right into the finishing bitterness. Very fruity, but light alcohol flavor. Yeasty, yet clean profile. Light carbonic bite.” **Overall:** “Crisp and refreshing, a great beer to take to a cookout. Neither a pils nor a Vienna lager, just an easy-drinking beer. Finish is cleaner than an ale, yet not quite lager-like. If someone brought this to a summer barbecue, everyone would be happy.”

For our Best in Beer 2019 issue, we asked you to tell us your favorite beers—that's it. No qualifications, no multiple choice. Here's how you voted.

The longtime Bell’s brewer dives into the minutiae that make this evolving style of highly hopped, low-calorie beer so compelling, and discusses the particulars behind one of their biggest releases in recent history—Light Hearted Ale.

“Not your typical hoppy aroma—notes of jasmine, bubblegum, cantaloupe, then sweet tangerine and herbal tea. Sweet biscuit notes with a moderately sweet finish.”

John Mallett, VP of operations for Bell's, is one of the most respected technical brewers in the industry. Here, he discusses everything from sourcing and evaluating ingredients to maintaining haze in beer and engineering a brewhouse workflow.

Larry Bell the founder and namesake of Bell's Brewery sits down with senior editor John Holl. They discuss brewery succession plans, baseball, what it means to be independent, and the original Two Hearted Ale.

**Aroma:** Medium malt sweetness and a bit of roastiness and toast. Some spicy noble hops and light fruit esters. Not a strong nose. Lacks complexity. **Flavor:** Upfront malt flavor is sweeter than the aroma promises. Malt is rich, lightly toasted, and slightly nutty. Tasty, if a bit simplistic. Medium hop bitterness is balancing. Alcohol is a touch hot but dries the finish. A little sticky. **Overall:** Enjoyable and well made, the flavor delivers more than the aroma. The alcohol could be better integrated into the overall flavor profile: It burns a little. Very well executed and a bit safe. Good body and a very rich malt profile.

John Mallett of Bell’s concocted this recipe at the Craft Beer & Brewing Brewers Retreat a few years ago. It’s different from Bell’s Cherry Stout, but he says it shares many of the same themes—including a rich, varied malt profile.

Want to change up your wheat-beer game? Here's John Mallett, director of brewing operations at Bell’s in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on forging a deeper relationship with this versatile ingredient—and how it can improve your next recipe.

From our Love Handles files on the world’s great beer bars: Just south of the Twin Cities, Ansari’s offers some of the country’s finest craft beers with Mediterranean food, pull-tabs, hookahs, and other diversions.

The results are in! We asked our readers to pick their best beers of 2018. From new and hazy IPAs to classic saisons and stouts read on to see if your favorite made the list.

Almost vinous dark fruit in the nose; semisweet. Coffee in forefront, chocolate peeks through. Sweet and round: layers of chocolate-covered cherries atop vanilla-laden malt, underlying toffee sweetness, and spicy, luscious finish.

Dubbed a “pumpernickel stout” by Atlas Brew Works in Washington, D.C., this 2023 World Beer Cup gold medal winner gets a portion of rye malt and the flavorful addition of blackstrap molasses.

If you’ve ever tried packaging in bottles of different shapes and sizes, though, you may have found that the standard-issue capper doesn’t always get the job done.