A few beer and wine recommendations for your lazy summer nights

When the sun shines bright and temperatures really rise, the shade of the porch swing or a picnic table under a big leaf maple and a cold glass of water is just the thing to refresh. Another great thirst quencher is lemonade with a few frozen berries added. While these are essential hydrating beverages, other cool drink options could include cider, beer and, of course, wine.

A cold, crisp cider could quench your thirst on a warm summer’s evening. Recently, my friend Marti embarked on a road trip to Vashon’s Dragon’s Head Cider. This cidery has been around since 2010 and, as a bonus, offers tasting flights of their many diverse ciders.

At Dragon’s Head, they make their cider by using a variety of cider apples mainly from their own orchards and supplemented by orchards from around Washington and Oregon. Their approach is more traditional than the norm. Rather than adding other fruits for color, sweetness or flavor complexity, the cider is blended with a variety of different combinations of cider apples – categorized as bittersharp, bittersweet, sharp and sweet.

As a result of the blends, Dragon’s Head offers a cool, crisp line up of ciders that include Sparkling Newtown Pippin, Kingston Black, Wild Fermented, Russet, Dabinett Reserve Cider, to name just a few.

Marti’s favorite was their Columbia Crabapple Cider, almost clear compared to other ciders. A bit of sweetness is countered by the tartness of the crabapple. Much like traditional bittersweet or bittersharp cider apples, crabapples add extra tannins and body to ciders. Crabapples, I learned, (thank you Wikipedia) were brought over by European colonists sometime in the early 1600s and used primarily for hard cider.

The 2022 Pét Nat Cider is a blend of French and English cider apples with a light effervescence. Pet Nat is short for the French “pétillant naturel.” Developed in the 16th century, this fermentation method is a single, continuous fermentation that results in a semi-sparkling, refreshing drink with sediment.

Another delight is their Pommeau, also of French origin. Pommeau is a fortified tipple traditionally made in northwestern France by blending apple juice or wine with apple brandy. Calvados from Normandy is the most well-known Pommeau.

At Dragon’s Head, Pommeau is created by blending their apple brandy with apple must or young cider. A new batch of Pommeau is blended each year and then matured in neutral French oak barrels for two years before bottling.

Beer also dates back to colonial times. Early American brewers took malted barley and cracked it by hand. They would then steep, or soak, the grains in boiling water. They called the process mashing. Mashing allowed the brewer to extract the sugars from the barley. And they supplemented this with pumpkins, peas and corn stalks and flavored with spruce tips!

Today, beer is manufactured by more than 7,000 breweries that range in size from industry giants to brew pubs and microbreweries. Many make pumpkin beer, and spruce tip beer is very popular today.

Remember the song "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” that dates back somewhere around the mid-20th century? Popular in the U.S. and Canada, this counting song was a fun activity to entertain the young’uns on long summer road trips. Smart phones were still a ways down the road. But technology has progressed and now phones and ear buds are now our constant companions.

Around the time we were singing together in the back seat, our favorite drinks came in glass bottles. Fast forward a few decades and now beer and other beverages such as pop, milk, water and even hard alcohol come in plastic bottles or aluminum cans.

Taste-wise, glass bottles deliver a fresher taste because it’s impermeable. Today, glass bottles are being phased out. Production, freight, distribution and storage costs are higher for glass bottles. They cost more because they weigh more and bottling machines are expensive. And glass breaks easily and is a mess to clean up. I know. I dropped a bottle of wine the other day and the only good thing was it wasn’t red.

For beer, there are also concerns because of light penetrating the glass. Beer that becomes light-struck causes a chemical reaction in the beer, commonly called skunk. Many craft brewers are shifting from bottles to cans because light can’t penetrate cans. That’s why you’re more likely to see 99 cans of beer on the wall.

Also on the plus side for aluminum cans – they chill much faster. But cans also have a slight impact on the finished product. Aluminum cans are lined with a polymer that can absorb small amounts of flavor and may alter the way your tasty beverage tastes.

A beverage in glass bottles will gracefully develop without external influences that could harm it. Filling up your glass growlers or squealers is a better and less expensive alternative. So is getting a tasty brew on tap at your local brewery.

For a summer quencher, I would highly recommend Silverdale’s Moment Brewing’s Pineapple Peach Sour, a kind of sweet, tart beer that is crisp and clean. Or how about the Lawn Mowing Time Cream Ale, which features a light bodied brew with a crisp finish? Perfect for mowing lawns, a porch swing, or any time you crave easy drinking session beer.

Another easy drinking summer beer is their Blonde Wheat, an American pale wheat style with light orange and floral hop aromas and a slight sweet finish. Perfect with spicy shrimp.

One last summer watering hole to meet friends and grab a brew at is the Tracyton Public House. Their beer tap list is long and also includes ABV and IBUs of each of the beers listed. The list also includes local ciders.

A few summer sippers to try would be Elysian Brewing’s Chair 6 Blond Ale, Rainy Daze Brewing’s Goat Boater, an American IPA, Crucible Brewing’s Pink Drink Raspberry Sour, Echoes Brewing Monk’s Indiscretion, a Belgian Strong and Schilling Cider’s Moon Berries. All good candidates for a good old-fashioned porch swing.

Mary Earl has been educating Kitsap wine lovers for a couple of decades, is a longtime member of the West Sound Brew Club and can pair a beer or wine dinner in a flash. She volunteers for the Clear Creek Trail and is a longtime supporter of Silverdale.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Wine, cider and beer recommendations to stay cool on summer nights