Whether you’re hosting a football bash or backyard barbecue, these easy, beer-infused appetizers are the quickest, simplest way to elevate your party.

Check out the recipes below and use them to plan your next shindig.

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HopTown Pizza

Unleashed on dishes from pizza to cheese, hops deliver aromatics, flavor and sometimes, bitterness. Here’s how to chow down.

Buddha Teas Hop Tea
Certified organic Cascade hop flowers from Clearlake, California, grower Hops-Meister flavor this caffeine-free tea. Steep it as you would any herbal tea for a grapefruity, floral cup. $7.99 for a box of 18 tea bags, buddhateas.com

B-Hoppy Hop Candy
What started as a crossover between homebrewing and confectionary-making has become a niche business for hop candy creator Bob Bero. Choose from a bag of varietal-specific candies (Saaz, Cascade, Motueka and more) or find your favorite among the mixed selections in the variety pack. $4.95 for a 4-ounce bag, hop-head-farms.myshopify.com

Hop Pop Soda
All the flavor you love, without the alcohol. That’s the promise of Hop Pops, a caffeine-free, carbonated soda flavored and bittered with Galaxy and Citra hops. Drink it on its own or use it as a cocktail mixer; you’ll find recipes for vodka-, gin-, whiskey- and rum-based concoctions on the website. $12 for a 4-pack of bottles, drinkhoppop.com

Corvus Cold-Brew Hopped Coffee
Finally, someone’s found a way to justify hops at the breakfast table: Whole-cone Cascade hops add a floral and citrusy layer to this bright Rwandan cold-brew coffee. Find the coffee on draft as well as in bottles at Whole Foods and specialty markets in the Denver area. $4, corvuscoffee.com/pages/cold-brew-coffees

Charles Martell & Sons Hereford Hop Cheese
This full-fat, cow’s milk hard cheese is coated with a layer of toasted Hallertau Hersbrucker hops from Herefordshire, an English county near the cheese maker’s farm. Charles Martell & Sons has produced this distinctly citrusy-buttery cheese since 1990; find it stateside at specialty cheese shops. Prices vary, charlesmartell.com

Dillon’s Hops Bitters

Dillon’s Hops Bitters
Alpha Aroma, Cascade and Mount Hood hops make these small-batch cocktail bitters, well, bitter, but also add a touch of spice and citrus. The Ontario-based distillery recommends trying them in pineapple- or orange-juice based warm-weather cocktails. $14.95 for a 100mL bottle, dillons.ca

Hoptown Pizza
Yakima, Washington-area food truck-turned-brick-and-mortar Hoptown Pizza sprinkles its pies with a dash of Cascade hops after they emerge from a 900-degree wood-fired oven for a whiff of locally grown herbaceousness. Pie flavors include Pep Pep Peroni pesto-and-pepperoni; Angry Za hot sauce-and four-cheese; HopTown Harvest veggie and more. Locations at hoptownpizza.com/where

Living The Dream Brewing Co.’s Hop Oil
Carrie Knose, owner of Denver-based Living The Dream brewery, tinkers with hop-flavored oil for home cooking; she says hops can add a savory quality to salad dressings and dipping oils. Recreate her basic dressing recipe by whisking together hop-steeped canola oil (she’s used Chinook and Cascade varieties), minced garlic, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, salt and pepper, adjusting to your flavor preferences.

Want to DIY?

Recipe developer and author Marie Porter has published an entire cookbook devoted to cooking with hops called “Hedonistic Hops.” Inside, find instructions for whipping up everything from Hoppy Citrus IPA-Glazed Wings to Honey Hop Dipping Sauce. $19.99, celebrationgeneration.com

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Coffee Beans
Unroasted, green coffee beans are “volatile” in coffee parlance, meaning they pick up aromas and flavors easily. Just a few weeks inside a used bourbon barrel will infuse the beans with notes of whiskey and oak that remain even after roasting. While Annapolis, Maryland-based Ceremony Coffee Roasters are generally credited with pioneering the process, many other roasters also barrel-age their beans, including Death Wish Coffee in Round Lake, New York; Oskar Blues-connected Hotbox Roasters in Longmont, Colorado; San Diego’s Modern Times Brewery, which uses the beans in special releases of its City of the Dead export stout; Whiskey Barrel Coffee in Commerce City, Colorado; and Dark Matter Coffee in Chicago.

Maple Syrup
Instead of shipping all of its used barrels to parts unknown, Woodinville Whiskey Co. in Woodinville, Washington, repurposes some as maple syrup aging vessels. Vanilla, caramel, coconut and woody spice can all be found in the dark amber maple syrup that eventually pours out; this is recycling at its finest.

Vanilla Extract
Columbus, Indiana-based 240Sweet makes its Bourbon Barrel Aged Vanilla Extract by combining whole and chopped Tahitian vanilla beans with grain alcohol and aging the mixture inside bourbon barrels for six months. The extract absorbs flavors perfectly to give treats like 240Sweet’s Kentucky Bourbon marshmallows a warm whiskey kick.

Tea
The Rare Tea Cellar’s inventory of, well, rare teas includes a Chinese pu-erh, mellowed three years in oak barrels, and Gingerbread Dream Rooibos, a South African tea with ginger, Madagascar vanilla and a secret spice blend aged 13 months in wet, 30-year-old rum casks.

Hot Sauce, Soy Sauce, Fish Sauce, Sherry Vinegar
BLiS Gourmet (it stands for Because Life is Short) employs used barrels to season a veritable kitchen cabinet full of food products. The Michigan-based company’s fish sauce, soy sauce and sherry vinegar all spend time in bourbon casks that previously held BLiS maple syrup. Its Blast Hot Pepper Sauce ages in the same barrels its Grand Rapids neighbor, Founders Brewing Co., once used for its popular Canadian Breakfast Stout.

Cigars
Cigar makers approach barrel-aging from several angles. The Arturo Fuente Anejo smokes pictured, for instance, are wrapped in a Connecticut maduro leaf aged inside Cognac barrels. Other cigar producers choose to age the filler: Partagas’ 1845 Extra Oscuro is made with a blend of tobaccos aged in rum barrels. Cigar maker Asylum even tosses whole, finished cigars inside barrels that once held New Holland Brewing’s bourbon-aged stout, Dragon’s Milk.

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A Brewed Food tasting event at Base Camp Brewery | Photo by Casey Campbell Photography

As a journalist obsessed with inbox zero, I delete an email onslaught daily. But, every now and then, a ray of sunshine illuminates Gmail’s abyss, like last summer’s invite to experience Denver chef Jensen Cummings’ sensory tasting panel at Brooklyn Brewery.

Cummings is the mind behind Brewed Food, founded in 2014 as a call to arms to blow beer’s relationship with grub to smithereens. He utilizes beer’s building blocks (yeast, malt, hops) and brewing processes to fashion thrilling foodstuffs that blur the line between ales and edibles. Working with a revolving cast of chefs and brewing collaborators like New Belgium and Jester King, the chef ferments yogurt with brewing yeast, adds crystal malt to sauerkraut, creates hop vinegar and makes beef jerky with malt extract. It’s both a scientific and gastronomic endeavor to connect cooking and brewing.

“Our lens is looking at brewing techniques and ingredients as culinary ingredients,” Cummings says. “Yeast is the center of that conversation. We want to say that yeast is a culinary ingredient.”

A massive part of Brewed Food’s mission is to reboot the beer dinner, by now a cliche. (Begin with an invigorating gose, align Berliner weisse with oysters, pair steaks with schwarzbiers and conclude with an imperial stout and chocolate cake. Bon appétit! The multicourse dog-and-pony show will leave all sated. Elated? Not always.) In a world where breweries break flavorful new ground at a breakneck pace, beer dinners seem stuck in neutral. The invite to this event, however, touted food that read like a beer-drenched fever dream. The feast would feature spent grain-cured egg yolks, wild yeast-fermented kimchi and bacon rimmed in hop ash. Hop ash?

I popped over to Brooklyn Brewery, where I also sampled Cummings’ miso—made with malt syrup—and cherry sriracha fermented with brewing yeast. Each plate was partnered with two polar-opposite beers, meaning it was up to me, not some Cicerone or know-it-all server, to decide which pairing worked best.

“You’re not allowed to say anything,” Cummings instructed the crowd, Zen-like in contemplation. He wore a goatee, apron and the kind of confident grin of true believers preaching to potential converts. “We’re not going to do barelywine with some cheese course. We love those things. All of those things have a place,” Cummings told me later. “Right now, our conversation should be driven by what else is possible.”

“When you have dinner with Jensen, you think, ‘I don’t always know what I’m eating but it tastes great,’” says Black Project Spontaneous & Wild Ales co-founder James Howat, who supplies Cummings with sour cultures for his sauerkraut and beets.

Ground zero for Brewed Food is Cummings’ Denver test kitchen. There’s a large whiteboard where he and his cooking cohorts scribble fermentation fantasies, such as turning classic pairings like strawberries with black pepper into beer. “We’ll do a beer aged on strawberries with no black pepper. We want to coax out those pepper notes with a mixed culture or maybe some saison yeast,” he says.

Jensen Cummings at a Brookly Brewery dinner at Jimmy’s No. 43 | Photo by The Beer Trekker

Cummings and company will take any conceivable sugar source (honey, agave syrup, etc.) and ferment it with upward of 50 yeast strains to see which functions best. This technical work, done in conjunction with local yeast lab Inland Island, is Brewed Food’s biggest undertaking. There are books aplenty on brewing with yeast, but, as he explains, “We’re fermenting solid mediums, not liquid.”

He quickly learned the specific challenges during early attempts to convert cabbage into kimchi. “The plant matter just disintegrated,” Cummings says. “It tasted great, if you want a bowl of gruel. Many of our fermentations were epic failures of not understanding that sugar isn’t sugar and what fermentation activity would do to plant matter.”

Cummings’ fix is multiphase fermentation. The first couple weeks, while souring lactobacillus bacteria does the heavy lifting, Cummings ferments yeast in sugar water. “We call that our MSG. It’s pure flavor,” he says. He then pours the mixture onto kimchi and adds additional yeast. “It’s like mounting a sauce with butter.”

But continual triumphs are not the point. “If we don’t fail 50 percent of the time, we’re not pushing the envelope hard enough,” he says. “It is our job to be a force in this movement. Failure is good for us.”

The chef wasn’t always so crazy about beer. Cummings was the kind of guy who crushed “dirty thirties” of Milwaukee’s Best. Cooking, though, is coded into his DNA. His family has been in the restaurant business for five generations. In Little Falls, Minnesota, his greatgreat grandfather ran La Fond House (“It looked like someplace where Wyatt Earp shot somebody out front, a straight-up corner saloon,” he says), and his great-grandfather and grandfather operated restaurants and bars in San Francisco. While Cumming’s dad “can’t boil an egg,” his father’s three younger brothers own restaurants in Ames, Iowa.

After barely graduating high school in San Diego, he learned the kitchen ropes at his uncle’s Ames sports bar and, in time, attended Des Moines Culinary Institute. His beverage teacher doubled as a general manager for the local Rock Bottom Restuarant and Brewery, which the students toured.

“I remember two things: How many students scoffed at the brewer [there], and also how eloquently and respectfully the teacher spoke of that man,” Cummings says, adding, “I had no concept there was a human being creating something with their hands.”

He began educating his palate on global beers, falling in love with both New Belgium Fat Tire and his now-wife, Betsy. While Betsy finished college, Cummings moved to Kansas City to work at the influential 40 Sardines (since shuttered). At a Boulevard Brewing Co. beer dinner, he sampled an early version of Tank 7, a peppery exultation of farmhouse perfection. “I was like, ‘This is what it needs to be about,’ creating something new, something interesting, something exciting that I’d never seen,” he says.

The brewery-drenched Denver scene was the couple’s next move, where Cummings secured his Cicerone certification, worked as a restaurant group’s beer buyer and brewed collaborative beers with Bull & Bush, “trying any way I could to scratch and claw into a position where I could have a serious conversation about beer and food,” he says.

He sought the connections between brewing and cooking: His revelation was spent grain. That waste product could be repurposed as food, a link between cooks of a different type. Cummings’ epiphany is at the core of Brewed Food. “The brewer is a chef and the brew house is a kitchen,” he says.

In addition to raising two young sons, he takes Brewed Food on the road to restaurants and breweries such as Cincinnati’s Rhinegeist and Seattle’s Fremont. He and his wife run the Heroes Like Us nonprofit, raising funds for needy children, and Cummings is also a restaurant consultant. This year, he’s launching the Good Bugs brand, an outlet for collaborative beer and fermentation projects. Nonetheless, he’s never too busy for a new opportunity to experiment.

During last year’s Great American Beer Festival, TRVE and Jester King breweries collaborated on a beer featuring Texas blueberries. A couple cases had gone off, destined for the dumpster. “Someone said, ‘We should call Jensen. That guy will do just about anything with anything,’” Cummings recalls.

Now his garage fridge (the same one that birthed many Brewed Food products) contains blueberry sriracha, blueberry miso, Korean BBQ sauce with blueberries—blueberry everything. “My wife won’t look in the fridge,” he says. “She’s still convinced that I’m Dexter and there are body parts in there.”

Fermentation’s serial thrills fuel Cummings’ trials as he forges new pathways for integrating beer and cuisine. “Brewed Food was built on the belief that beer and food—and, more importantly, brewing and cooking—can and should be the pinnacle of culinary experience,” he says. “That’s the sentence I look at and say, ‘Am I doing everything that I can to drive that home?’”

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Hog’s Apothecary | Photo by Treve Johnson

Oakland, California // HOG’S APOTHECARY
375 40th St., hogsapothecary.com

In-house butchery and a serious commitment to Northern California brewers and farmers make up the twin pillars of this convivial Bay Area spot, where communal tables and concrete floors impart a modern vibe in a new style of American beer halls. Most of the bar’s 26 constantly rotating drafts are sourced directly from breweries; expect a well-rounded beer list, including Belgian- and German-style ales, hoppy IPAs and lagers. A changing menu ranges from the refined Kasekreiner (a smoked pork sausage with Emmentaler cheese) to the refreshingly un-fancified (good ol’ corn dogs).

Miami // THE MIGHTY
2224 Coral Way, themightymiami.com

A scratch-made ethos extends beyond the kitchen at this laidback Coral Way charmer; owner Ryan Brooks built the tables and even the pub’s charcuterie boards from reclaimed lumber. Twelve handles rotate frequently, so keep your eyes peeled for the latest offerings from homegrown outfits like Wynwood, M.I.A. and The Tank. Feast on the funky Free Range Rabbit sausage, served over fried leeks and finished with a morel mushroom demi-glace.

Milwaukee // VANGUARD
2659 S. Kinnickinnik Ave., vanguardbar.com

A clean aesthetic (think subway tiles and wood) and a touch of quirk set the tone at hip Bay View’s favorite encased meats emporium. TVs, described by co-owner Chris Schulist as “moving art pieces,” screen oddball VHS videos sure to spark interesting conversation. Sip approachable local brews that play well with food, like Riverwest Stein, a sweet, malty amber ale from Lakefront Brewery. Go full Milwaukee-style with a cheese curd-topped brat, or try Soy Meets World, a vegan Italian sausage topped with vegan chili, mustard and onions.

Jersey City, New Jersey //WÜRSTBAR
516 Jersey Ave., wurstbarjc.com

An impressive sausage display case and vintage photos of mustachioed butchers lend an Old World feel to this newcomer. For a unique insight into co-owner and Certified Cicerone Aaron Kahn’s beer program, check out the bar’s occasional beer-andcheese- pairing classes. Four of 17 taps are usually dedicated to a rotating lineup of sours, like those from Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project. Try the inventive Moroccan Nights: lamb sausage topped with Meyer lemon relish and cooling mint cream.

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From black limes to beets, breweries are using food ingredients to create a bounty of new beers. Here are some of DRAFT’s favorite food-styled Instagram posts from the past year. Like what you see? Follow us @draftmag.

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Rotisserie Cauliflower dish at Branch Line in Boston | Photo by Fawn Deviney

Cauliflower, like other veggies in the cruciferous family, packs a solid dose of potassium, fiber, vitamin C and folic acid—but it needn’t be eaten as health food. Here are some ways broccoli’s cousin has become the new, hot bar snack.

Buffalo Cauliflower
at Founders Ale House, Los Angeles
Florets are dredged in rice milk, then tossed in flour and corn meal and double deep-fried to create a texture similar to a crisp-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside French fry. Choose from several housemade sauces: vegan ranch, buffalo, black garlic, Caribbean jerk or barbecue.

Rotisserie Cauliflower
at Branch Line, Boston
A staple since the restaurant’s opening in October 2015, the whole, spit-cooked head of cauliflower is a tender and hearty main course, jazzed up with seasonal vegetable or cheese sauces. Pair it with one of the bar’s 20 local-heavy drafts.

Kung Pao Cauliflower
at INC. Restaurant, New Brunswick, New Jersey
This is a best-selling riff on a beloved takeout dish with rice-flour-dusted cauliflower tossed in a sweet-and-sour sauce; it’s garnished with sesame seeds, peanuts, basil and a zing of jalapeno. Three dozen beers in cans and bottles await to cool you down.

Fried Cauliflower
at Almanac Taproom and Beer Garden, San Francisco
Crispy parsley, sage and capers, combined with a spritz of lemon juice, perk up this fresh (and vegan-friendly) spin on fried cauliflower that debuted at the taproom this past winter.

Caramelized Cauliflower
at Bramling Cross, Seattle
Dukkah spice puts an Egyptian spin on these pan-roasted florets served over a Sultana raisin puree with a dollop of Greek yogurt to temper the spice. The gastropub’s bar offers plenty of local drafts, including beers from Reuben’s Brews, Lucky Envelope and Holy Mountain, to quench your thirst.

Cauliflower Bites
at The Winchester, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Share an order of these panko-crusted, golden-fried spheres and compare notes on which of the dipping sauces—honey mustard, blue cheese vinaigrette or buffalo—reigns supreme.

Fried Cauliflower
at Warehouse, Charleston, South Carolina
Black pepper aioli accompanies buttery, crunchy beer-battered and fried florets coated with lemon butter bread crumbs and parsley. They’re a perfect nosh during the pre-dinner happy hour when pints are just $5.

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torchedhopbrewing.com

Torched Hop Brewing Co.
Atlanta, Georgia
This new brewpub in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood is gorgeous, from the exposed brick with cool-as-hell murals and the second-floor dining area with unobstructed views of the shiny brewhouse to the dark woodwork surrounding the indoor bocce court. Beauty isn’t just skin-deep: House beers like the citrusy and slightly dank Hops-de-Leon IPA or Yammit, Bobby!, a saison brewed with sweet potatoes, are as interesting as they are clean, and the burger- and pizza-focused menu offers intriguing surprises like the Okonomiyaki Fries, topped with Bonito flakes, Kewpie mayo and eel sauce. If you’re not feeling so adventurous, head in on Monday and you can get the pub’s smoked mayo-topped Classic Double burger, fries and a pint of house beer for just $10.

The Craftsman
Edwards, Colorado
Skiers and snowboarders, rejoice! Edwards, Colorado—just outside the snowy destination of Vail—has a new spot that should be base camp for any beer-lover. Here’s why: Owners and industry vets Chris and Janelle Schmidt are so dedicated to ensuring their 16-handle taplist is unlike any other in the area that they regularly drive down to Denver to grab kegs from breweries that are sought-after but may not distribute. (Popular CO breweries WeldWerks, Odd13, Cerebral and Casey have all made appearances in the weeks since the restaurant’s opening.) The food menu’s equally thoughtful, with gourmet sandwiches like the fried chicken banh mi with chicken liver pate and the BLT with smoked pork belly and avocado aioli making up its bulk; a selection of elevated eats like cornmeal fried oysters and sweet pea toast is available for skiers not in the mood for sammies.

Brother Barrel
Seattle, Washington
The newest brewpub from of 20-year-old Seattle institution Elliott Bay Brewing Co. is nothing like the other three; Brother Barrel, as the name suggests, is all about sour and barrel-aged beers. Nearly all 18 taps feature funky and spirit-spiked house and guest brews—including, usually, some barrel-aged ciders—available in two-, four-, eight- and 16-ounce pours, though there are usually a few options that haven’t touched oak. Clever beer cocktails like the Mash Paddle (made with black rum, St. George Raspberry, lemon and EBCC’s Berliner weisse) headline a well-curated spirits list, and the menu filled with small plates, house-made bread and charcuterie platters offers endless pairing opportunities.

Bowls & Tacos
Dallas, Texas
You want a poke bowl, she wants tacos, and you both could use a beer; there’s a place for that. The brains behind Dallas’ Braindead Brewing opened this eclectic taco-stand-slash-poke-emporium inside an old gas station down the street from their Deep Ellum brewery in May, providing a bevy of bowls topped with ahi tuna, salmon, shrimp and SPAM, titillating tacos from classic al pastor and barbacoa to nopal (pickled cactus) and lengua (cow tongue), and of course plenty of BrainDead beer to wash it all down.

Port Orleans Brewing Co. / Stokehold
New Orleans, Louisiana
A stokehold, for the non-nautical, is the name for a furnace of a ship—an appropriate moniker for the fuel-providing restaurant inside months-old NOLA brewery Port Orleans. Beer-pairing is a focus here, and the printed menu makes that clear: Each dish is strategically placed right next to its recommended partner brew. Interested in the roasted bone marrow with fig vinaigrette? Get he caramel-laced, fruity Session Ale. Want the Wagyu beef taco? Set your sights on the clean, gently hoppy Zwickelbier. And don’t worry about the beer supply running low; a big 30-barrel system, helmed by former Mother’s Brewing Co. brewer Brian Allen, keeps the ales and lagers coming.

La Barbecue at Quickie Pickie
Austin, Texas
Though beloved by Austinites, La Barbecue and its selection of spectacular sausage, ribs and brisket couldn’t stay put; the meat trailer’s bounced between four different locations since opening in 2012. Its newest home, inside the Cesar Chavez Street location of iconic beer bar-slash-corner market Quickie Pickie, makes five, but we’re not complaining: With the two businesses sharing a kitchen and outdoor seating, we’ll be able to pair La Barbecue’s world-class smoked meats with anything from Quickie Pickie’s 24 draft lines and extensive bottle and can selection.

Hitachino Beer & Wagyu
San Francisco, California
Now that the opening hype has died down somewhat, you might finally be able to get a reservation for the intimate dining room at this beer- and beef-focused spot from Japan’s Kiuchi Brewery. If you do get in, an eight-course tasting menu, for which chef Noriyuki Sugie molds wagyu into forms from ramen to tongue skewers to sushi, awaits. If not, no worries; the industrial-chic kappobar in the front affords easy access to 10 draft lines pouring Hitachino beer and sake as well as a menu of bar snacks—served in sake cups, of course.

Brewery Bhavana | Photo by Julia Wade

Brewery Bhavana
Raleigh, North Carolina
Co-owners Vansana Nolintha and Patrick Woodson admit that their combination brewery, dim sum restaurant, flower shop and bookstore was a slightly risky concept, but since opening in March, it’s been embraced by both locals and the national food media. “It’s exciting that we don’t have to stick with the traditional equation, that beer lovers and beer drinkers are ready to be inspired and challenged,” says Nolintha. If that means green cardamom saison with a basket of shumai, count us in.

Franklin Hall
Washington, D.C.
This 5,600-square-foot newcomer isn’t your Opa’s beer hall, though tenets of the classic setup remain: namely, good food and big beers. A list of nationally representative beers is available mostly by the pint or liter (except for the high-octane stuff), which can be properly paired with grilled sausages such as spicy chorizo, Thai pork and kielbasa, available “naked” or “dressed.” Pro tip: The weekend breakfast tacos are worth getting out of bed for.

Continental Beer Garden
Washington, D.C.
Virginia and Germany are well represented on the draft and can list at this new beer garden from the team behind the Continental Pool Lounge, so take your pick of a Blue Mountain Kolsch 151, Blue Mountain Full Nelson or Weihenstephaner Original, to name a few. Ample picnic tables and a something-for-everyone menu of salads, sandwiches and shareable snacks make this the spot to collect all your friends (and friends’ friends) for an afternoon of sessionable sipping.

Smokin Q’s BBQ and Beer House
Mayfield, Ohio
Restaurants are upping the ante on smoked meats—and the beers to wash them down. Smokin’ Q’s puts a spin on tradition, serving meats the old-fashioned way, or “El Jefe style” on a tortilla with hot salsa and guacamole. The beer list offers a solid overview of the fresh crop of Cleveland-area breweries, including Sibling Revelry, Market Garden and Platform. Keep the local theme going with Ohio-raised beef short ribs … until they’re sold out.

Circa Brewing | Photo by Alex Welsh

Circa Brewing Co.
Brooklyn, New York
Custom Mugnaini wood-burning ovens are the powerhouses behind the brand-new brewery’s Neapolitan-style pizza, which are made with grain imported from Lombardi, Italy, and undergo a two-day fermentation process before baking. Serious stuff. Twelve beer taps come courtesy of Sixpoint Brewery veteran Danny Bruckert, but we’re also intrigued by the Spent Grain Old Fashioned, featuring rye whiskey, spent grain tincture, bitters and citrus zest.

Centennial Crafted Beer + Eatery
Chicago, Illinois
Good beer is slowly seeping into more Chicago neighborhoods, including relatively beer-dry and tourist trap-y River North. Centennial’s a godsend for thirsty office workers and shoppers in that area, resisting the urge to pour a thousand mediocre drafts and instead highlighting what’s new and local, including recent special tappings from Whiner and Off Color. A new weekend brunch makes it a worthy contender even on days you’re not drawn there by your 9-to-5.

BeerStyles Taproom & Gastropub
Des Moines, Iowa
Generic name aside (the tavern is owned by the folks behind the WineStyles chain), there’s plenty to love at this new spot inside a West Glen shopping district, primarily the 100-plus draft list and intriguing pub food including a raw bar, housemade boursin cheese and nine types of poutine. If there’s another shopping center where Iowans can wash down snow crab legs with Gueuze Tilquin or Prairie Barrel-Aged Bomb!, please alert us to its existence.

Cafe du Pays
Boston, Massachusetts
This new Cambridge bistro may seem French on first glance, but it’s actually French-Canadian, meaning you’ll find both a foie gras torchon and poutine (it’s on the menu as “Yes, we have poutine”). While you could be sipping a fine cognac or eau de vie with your meal, the beer list is an exuberantly weird mix of high-brow—Thiriez Extra, Dieu du Ciel Peche Mortel, Cantillion Gueuze, Eden Imperial 11° Rosé Cider—and charmingly low-brow bottles of Molson Canadian and Moosehead radler.

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Photo by Ed Rudolph

Set out these easy-to-assemble appetizers and stock your cooler with corresponding beers for a foolproof backyard party.

Watermelon, Feta and Mint & Witbier
A Belgian wit lends soft, fresh lemon and light coriander spice to the cool watermelon, salty feta and herbal mint without overpowering any of the food’s flavors.

Apple and Brie & Pilsner
A bready pilsner bolsters the buttery notes of subtly flavored brie cheese, giving it some extra vim alongside the tart apple.

Melon and Mint & Berliner Weisse
This simple treat connects mild, sweet melon with refreshing mint; a well-constructed Berliner weisse brings bright acidity to the mix.

Tomato and Basil & Flanders Red
Go light on the balsamic and try your tomato and mozzarella with a Flanders red; the tart, acidic snap will give the fresh duo some depth.

Asparagus and Prosciutto & Irish Red Ale
A smooth Irish red’s malt-charged caramel and bready flavors are perfect for underscoring savory prosciutto and earthy asparagus.

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