Happy Mother’s Day, Beer Drinkers!

Each year on Mother’s Day, the ordinary son shows love and appreciation toward his mother through a nice greeting card, a box of chocolates, and some flowers from the grocery store. But you are no ordinary son. You love your mama more than any other son out there, and dammit, this year you are going to prove it! What better gift is there to celebrate your mother than the gift that keeps giving; beer.

Below are five beers we recommend to replace the old cliche gifts of flowers and candy, and will show your mother just how much you really care about her!

Beers to Replace Chocolate

1. Atwater Brewing Company – Decadent Dark Chocolate Ale

Atwater, out of Detroit, Michigan is home to some fantastic beers. Decadent Dark Chocolate Ale is a perfectly crafted beer that uses three different chocolates, all with varying depths and ranges of flavors to create a sweet, lighter-than-a-stout brew that is sure to satisfy any sweet tooth your mother may have this Mother’s Day!

2. Southern Tier Brewing Company – Choklat Stout

Southern Tier is known for their interestingly flavored beers such as Creme Brulee, Pumpking, and Choklat Stout. This beer, sure to satisfy even the most hardcore of chocolate lovers out there is brewed with fine Belgian chocolates, has aroma notes such as sweet caramel, rich vanilla, and obviously rich chocolate. This beer will have flavors such as deep, rich cherries and butterscotch. Who could resist this desert-like brew?

3. North Peak Brewing Company – Dubious Chocolate Stout

Shameless plug for North Peak (my personal favorite brewery) and their Dubious Chocolate Stout. If you would like to see an in-depth review of this brew, check it out here!

What you can expect in this beer is rich, bold flavors of chocolate and smokey-roasty flavors. This is less sweet and chocolatey than the previous two, yet I think it is an interesting, and most importantly, delicious take on the chocolate stout. A perfect beer to celebrate Mother’s Day.

4. Bell’s Cherry Stout

Bell’s Cherry Stout is a perfect blend of fruit and chocolate inside of a glass bottle. This beer, which may be in my top-5 favorite beers of all time is full of tart cherry flavor derived from cherries from the Traverse City region of Michigan. Rather than being overpowered by the delicious cherry flavor, Bell’s Cherry Stout intertwines those cherry notes with rich chocolate flavors. The relationship between tart cherry and dark chocolate is beautiful and complex, and is sure to delight your mom on Mother’s Day.

Beers to Replace Fruit/Fruit Bouquets

4. Harpoon’s UFO Raspberry Hefeweizen

Harpoon combined their raspberry Framboise with their UFO Hefeweizen to create this fruity, tart, delicious wheat beer. This beer is unfiltered and cloudy, which lends itself to that classic wheat-beer Hefe flavor profile and soft mouth feel. The natural raspberry flavors add a subtle, yet sweet flavor that finishes semi-dry and is absolutely refreshing. Rather than give your mother a fruit basket, why not delight her with this fusion of fruit and traditional hefeweizen?

6. Lindemans Framboise

Long before hops were used to flavor beer, brewers used fruits and vegetables to season their beers, producing styles that were sweet, delicious and appealing to the masses. These beers; lambics, framboises, krieks and more are fruity, sweet, and most importantly, delectable. These styles of beers are especially appealing to women, many of which may typically prefer wine over beer. Lindeman’s Framboise is a widely available classic representation of the style and is extremely approachable in both flavor and price-point.

Fruity on both the nose and tongue, the light, almost champagne-like raspberry flavor will leave your mother craving more than one glass this Mother’s Day!

7. Goose Island Brewing Company – Four Sisters Farmhouse Ale Series

Goose Island, though recently bought-out by Big Beer interests, still produces some of the most highly regarded and highest quality craft beer in the entire United States, if not the entire world. One project that will appeal to all beer lovers and mothers alike is the Four Sister program; a series of farmhouse style saison beers. We have reviewed Gillian and Halia, both of which got two-thumbs up from my fiance’ who typically despises craft beer. If she enjoys it, your mother is sure to love it! These beers use thousands of pounds of fruit in the brewing process which results in amazingly complex and beautifully delicious beers with juicy, vibrant fruit flavors. Each beer has it’s own flavor profile, ranging from strawberries to raspberries, peaches to blackberries – there is a beer in this series that your mom is sure to love. Pick one up for her this Mother’s Day.

Odds and Ends

Beer Flavored Candy

The fine folks over at BeerCandy Inc are inventors of “The first candy for beer lovers.” These delicious treats are caramel candies covered in chocolate and produced with actual craft beer. The candies have four varieties.

The first candy is a caramel that is flavored with an IPA and covered in white chocolate. Playing on one of my suggestions above is the second candy; flavored with a Belgium Raspberry Lambic and smothered in rich, dark chocolate. Beercandy has even developed a candy that is a Boston style Lager (Sam Adams, anyone?) candy covered in milk chocolate. Finally, the company offers a Stout flavored caramel surrounded by dark chocolate.

Obviously, if you absolutely MUST get your mother a box of chocolates, why not choose this box? I can almost promise your mother will be the only one at the office with a box of beer candies, and you can bet these would pair masterfully with my suggestions above!

So, now I ask you; what other beers would you recommend for your mother on Mother’s Day? More lambics? More stouts? An IPA? You tell me! I look forward to hearing your suggestions! Have a safe and happy Mother’s Day, and give your mom a hug and kiss, and tell her how much you love and appreciate her on her special day!