Bell's Oberon returned this week • Photo via Bell's Brewery

Bell’s Oberon returned this week • Photo via Bell’s Brewery

Welcome to Beer Dabbler’s Freshies, our weekly rundown on the newest beers hitting the store shelves and taproom coolers in Minnesota from your favorite local and national breweries. 

From gose to grodziskie, hefeweizen to wit, wheat is a vital and often overlooked core ingredient in many beers. With spring seasonals making their mark, this week emphasizes the variety of styles where wheat plays a role, whether it’s to give refreshing traditional flavors or loaded with fruit for a new experience. Bell’s quintessential American wheat ale, Oberon, returns this week to ring in the spring season.

Check out this week’s listing below and start making that weekend shopping list now, whether you seek fruited goses, hop-forward hazy IPAs, pastry sours and stouts, or malty Irish-inspired recipes still on tap from last week’s St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

 

 

Each week, the Beer Dabbler team highlights five of the most tantalizing new beers that we’re most excited to try.

Bauhaus Wheat Sweats – The seasonal hefeweizen is back, with soft banana-like sweetness and a touch of clove. Available on draft and in 6-packs/12-ounce cans.

Dangerous Man Brewing Company Northeast Champagne – A smoked wheat ale in the Polish grodziskie tradition. Crisp, bubbly, and a low 3.4% ABV.

Day Block Shudder Me Udders – A chocolate milk stout served on nitro. Also with a coffee infusion variant.

Duluth Cider Erickson Orchard Semi-Sweet – Two small-batch ciders debuted last Friday, made with hand-picked apples from Bayfield, Wisconsin. 5.5% ABV.

Lakes & Legends Super Weich – Made with all German malt and hops, this is a German double hazy IPA whose name translates to “Super Soft.” made with Diamant and Grungeist hops, the DIPA offers tropical fruit flavors at 8.1% ABV.

New beers available this week

608 Brewing Company

  • Betaburst – A hazy pale ale with apricot, cantaloupe, and grape flavors from the use of Nelson Sauvin and Strata hops. 6% ABV.
  • Hype Machine: Chocolate Covered Raspberries – Available now, this is a smoothie sour ale with white chocolate, cocoa nibs, and raspberry. 8% ABV.

Angry Inch Brewing Company

  • Love Potion 208 – Made with lemon and ginger and on tap now.
  • Red Clover – Irish red ale

Bauhaus Brew Labs

  • BOLO Sour Berry – A new sour seltzer flavor in a limited release BOLO Sour Pack, which also includes Sour Watermelon, Sour Purple, and Sour Peach and will be in stores until approximately late spring.
  • Wheat Sweats – Top Flight selection.

Beaver Island Brewing Co.

  • Mango Cream Ale – Currently on tap at the brewery and also sold in variety “Throwback Packs.”

Bell’s Brewery   

  • Oberon – Bell’s wheat ale returns.

Bent Brewstillery

  • Gïga Lüpin – Sweet malt interplays with hop-driven notes of lychee, mango, and papaya along with citrus and dank tones in this triple IPA. 10% ABV, 100+ IBU.

Blacklist Beer

  • Hazy Project – The New England-style IPA is back at the Duluth brewery now.

Dangerous Man Brewing Company

  • Northeast Champagne – Top Flight selection.
  • Strawberry Milkshake IPA – A thick and fruity IPA with strawberry puree and lactose. 7% ABV.

Day Block Brewing Company   

  • Berry Manilow – A hard seltzer with blueberry, lemonade, and a touch of sour. 5.0% ABV.
  • Shudder Me Udders – Top Flight selection.
  • Stadium Blonde Ale – A light and refreshing blonde ale that tapped mid-March.

Disgruntled Brewing

  • Pressed – A 6.9% ABV sour ale with Grape Kool-aid mix and blueberries, brewed in collaboration with the band Rot.
  • Purple Shorts And Nowhere To Go – “We used a boatload of pineapple, coconut, spirulina, and soft serve mix in this sour, so you can pretend you’re somewhere tropical no matter where you are,” the brewery says of this staycation-themed sour ale.
  • Excessive Sweating Cherry Cheesecake – A 5.6% ABV pastry sour that is both on tap at the brewery, as of last week, and also sold in Crowlers to-go.
  • Purplest Nurplest Double Fruited Sour – Made with blueberry and raspberry, this is a 5.6% ABV heavily fruited sour.
  • Thoroughbred Hazy DIPA – A double IPA that shows off what a combination of Galaxy and Nelson hops are capable of. 8% ABV.

Duluth Cider

  • Erickson Orchard Semi-Sweet – Top Flight selection.
  • Erickson Orchard Dry – A 6.3% ABV dry companion to the Semi-Sweet above, the two ciders were designed with the intention of side-by-side comparisons.

Fargo Brewing Company

  • Bramble On – “This lightly sweet, slightly tart berrilicious beer is the perfect sessionable sipper for spring!” says the brewery. Available now.

Fat Pants Brewing Co.

  • Half Wit – A wheat beer with a hint of grapefruit.

Fitger’s Brewhouse

  • Split Happens – A banana split pastry stout made with bananas, “straight into the mash,” Fitger’s says. “We also added a banana boatload of lactose, all of which provides us with a base for the classic, rich flavors of the banana split. We conditioned it for weeks on even more bananas, as well as Cholaca, Madagascar vanilla beans, roasted peanuts, and just a kiss of cherry to top it off. Pours a deep jet black with notes of coffee and chocolate are complemented with the dessert-like sweetness of the other ingredients and a super thick and creamy mouthfeel with banana shining through as the star of the show.” 6.8% ABV, 20 IBU.

Fulton Brewery

  • 300 IPA – The popular IPA is now also available in 12-packs of 12-ounce cans.

Great Lakes Brewing Co.

  • Mexican Lager with Lime – A seasonal release, available in cans from the Cleveland-based brewery.

Inbound BrewCo

  • Lemon-Lime Pie – A tart gose base fermented with both lemons and limes, then finished with cinnamon and vanilla. 5.5% ABV, 20 IBU.

Junkyard Brewing

  • Underneath the Mango Tree – “This sweet blonde ale completely captures the whole impression of a mango, with strong mango flavors and aromas. The brewers added sweetness with locally harvested honey, courtesy of Three Bears Honey. The end result is a medium to full body with a silky, smooth mouthfeel,” says the brewery. 5% ABV.
  • Simcoe Single Hopped Double IPA – “This double IPA is hopped with Simcoe, Simcoe, and more Simcoe! This hop variety boasts a medley of tropical fruits, reminiscent of tangerine, orange, mango, and papaya. Pale base malts and a low final gravity give this beer a dry finish,” says the brewery. 8.5% ABV.
  • Play It Cool – “For the first time ever, our brewers used dragon fruit and it’s definitely a flavor combination you’ll want to try! This sour was conditioned on loads of tart pineapple and juicy dragon fruit. Together, these tropical fruits blend to create a smooth, refreshing mouthfeel, with aromas reminiscent of delicious starburst candies,” says the brewery. 6.3% ABV.

Kinney Creek Brewery   

  • Keeping The Lights On
  • Mojito Seltzer

Lake Monster Brewing   

  • Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout – Previously a pilot release, Lake Monster ramped up a full batch of this beer they describe as “A perfect balance between stout-y roasted malts, dark chocolate, and peanut butter…a smooth and drinkable treat.”

Lakes & Legends Brewing Company   

  • Super Weich – Top Flight selection.

Little Thistle Brewing Company

  • Peanut Putter’s Fluff – “A big chocolate milk stout aged on Peanut Butter and Marshmallows! Smooth, sweet, thick and creamy. Named in memory of Terry “Putter” Fettes. Putter was a PA at Mayo Clinic and passed away from pancreatic cancer in December 2019,” says the brewery.

Luce Line Brewing

  • Midtown IPA – On tap now.

Modist Brewing Co.   

  • Just You Wait – “An oak foeder-aged Pilsner with Bravo and Galaxy hops. To tap on Saturday at the brewery.

Pryes Brewing Co.

  • Main Squeeze – A lemon-lime blonde ale, on tap at the brewery and also sold in cans.

Rogues Ales & Spirits   

  • Lemonade Iced Tea Vodka Soda – A new canned cocktail made with vodka, lemonade, and iced tea. Sold in 12-ounce skinny cans. 7.5% ABV.

Rustech Brewing

  • Apeel Me – A blood orange and grapefruit wheat ale. 5.4% ABV, 28 IBU.
  • Pog Patch – Made with passion fruit, orange, and guava, this 5.4% ABV, 15 IBU beer is back now.

Snarky Loon Brewing Co.

  • Morning Haze – A new intensely-flavored, soft-bodied New England-style hazy IPA from Snarky Loon in Jenkins. 5.8% ABV, 58 IBU.

Tin Whiskers Brewing Company

  • Cinnamon Roll Oatmeal Stout – A taproom-only breakfast stout.

Toppling Goliath Brewing Company

  • Barrel-Aged Pecan Coffee Cake – A limited barrel-aged stout on tap in Decorah, Iowa, just south of the border, which was made with roasted pecans and coffee.

Ursa Minor Brewing

  • Enthusiastically Naive – Now available in 750-milliliter bottles.

Venn Brewing Company

  • Dissent SMASH IPA – A Belgian-style IPA infused with lavender. 6.4% ABV.

Waconia Brewing Company   

  • Cyclone Sour Series: Tangerine – “A vibrantly refreshing beer with just enough lactic acid sourness to still make it approachable. 5.2%, 10 IBU. Available on tap and limited supply of Crowlers,” Waconia says.
  • Easter Egg Flashpoint – On tap this Saturday, according to the latest brewery newsletter.

Wild Mind Ales

  • Lizard Spit – A 5.5% ABV tropical beer modeled after a Blue Hawaiian cocktail for flavors of pineapple, orange zest, and coconut.
  • Mauve – A mixed fermentation American wild beer-wine hybrid made with Viognier grapes. 6.0% ABV and sold in bottles.

Wooden Hill Brewing Company

  • Cinnamon Crunch Brown Ale – The spiced brown ale inspired by a breakfast cereal that’s been in the news this week is back for a limited time. 4.9% ABV.

Beers just announced

Burning Brothers Brewing

  • Myth’d Opportunities: Caramel Brown Ale – This limited beer will be sold in bottles on April 3 when the brewery celebrates its seventh anniversary.

Founders Brewing Co.   

  • Más Agave Clásica Lime – Returning in 12-ounce bottles/4-packs this May.
  • Más Agave Clásica Grapefruit – Returning in May.
  • Más Agave Clásica Prickly Pear – New in the Barrel-Aged series and scheduled to ship nationally at the same time as the other Más Agave Barrel-Aged beers, the latest offering is inspired by prickly pear margaritas. It is an imperial gose base, brewed with prickly pear extract that offers tangy tart flavors with notes of berry and melon, the brewery says. 9.7% ABV.

Lake Monster Brewing

  • Black IPA – A pilot batch of black IPA, made with Cascade, Citra, and CTZ hops, was recently brewed — the brewery’s first batch of the once-popular style making a comeback (of sorts).

Rogues Ales & Spirits

  • Bayfront Vodka Party Pack  – Rogue will package four of its canned cocktails together this spring: Cranberry Elderflower Vodka Soda, Grapefruit Vodka Soda, Lemonade Iced Tea Vodka Soda, and Ginger Lime Vodka Mule, hitting stores in 8-packs with two of each flavor this April. 7.5% ABV.

Thousand Lakes Brewing Co.

  • Swamp Buck – A batch of this imperial stout was recently brewed.

Waconia Brewing Company   

  • Maibock – To tap on April 13 at the brewery in Waconia.
  • Mango Kölsch    – To tap next Tuesday, March 30, at the brewery.
  • Women’s Day IPA – Brewed for International Women’s Day earlier this month, this IPA taps on April 6.

Have a new beer we should know about? Send the details to newbeer@beerdabbler.com for inclusion in Freshies.