Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

The Best Beers to Enjoy on a Rainy Day

Lee Heidel
By

Beer is a drink often associated with the joys of the outdoors. A long hike, a pickup football game, or even a day spent mowing the lawn is best capped with a refreshing lager or hoppy pale ale. While a rainy spell means that these outside activities may be cut short, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a good beer or three. These are our picks for the best rainy day beers, crafted for savoring indoors with long, mindful sips.

Bo & Luke by Against the Grain
bo and luke against the grain
Against the Grain Brewery/Facebook

As kids, a stormy day used to mean sitting in front of the television staring at reruns. Take that wasted youth spent watching Dukes of Hazzard to a new level with this expensive, highly sought after, and worth-every-second-of-the-search American imperial stout.

Recommended Videos

Everything you need to know about this beer comes from the bottle’s text: “We took the ingredients in bourbon whiskey (barley, rye, corn) and then smoked them with cherry wood and brewed a huge imperial stout with them. Then, to top it off, we aged it in Pappy VanWinkle Bourbon Barrels.”

And yes, that’s exactly what it tastes like.

Related
Barrel-Aged Blot Out the Sun by 3 Floyds
blot out the sun three floyds
3 Floyds Brewing/Instagram

3 Floyds always brings the darkness with their beers and Blot Out the Sun is no exception. The barrel-aged edition introduces the beer to cognac barrels for an impressive 18 months. The end product is a big beer that transmits tastes of dark chocolate, coffee, biscuit, nuts, and roasted malts. It’s not entirely a sugar bomb as the strong caramel and molasses flavors are complemented with floral notes and sharp, earthy hops. The respectable 10 percent alcohol by volume will keep you warm, if not dry, while you’re taking shelter from the storm.

Chocolate Rain by The Bruery
chocolate rain the bruery
The Bruery

Not to be confused with the 2007 viral video with the same name, this beer is an absolute dream. Chocolate Rain begins its journey as several different batches of imperial stout aging separately in barrels. Those beers are then blended together and combined with freshly sliced vanilla beans and cocoa nibs. The final result is one of the most decadent beers on the market.

Chocolate Rain has a creamy composition with a full mouthfeel. The aroma is sweet candy and the taste expertly mingles bourbon, dark fruits, chocolate, and vanilla for an overwhelmingly complex and intensely dessert-like sensory experience. This is a big sipper meant for sharing, so grab a special someone and two glasses.

As the saying goes, “April’s showers bring May flowers.” Take that optimism to heart this spring and enjoy a “glass half full” beer tasting the next time a thunderstorm cancels your outdoor plans.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Lee Heidel
Lee Heidel
Lee Heidel is the managing editor of Brew/Drink/Run, a website and podcast that promotes brewing your own beer, consuming the…
These Homebrewing Appliances And Kits Are the Easiest Way to Make Your Own Beer
picobrew zymatic

Learning to brew your own beer doesn’t have to be hard. For a basic brew, I liken it to making boxed macaroni and cheese. If you can measure ingredients, add in items at specific times, and maintain a relatively steady temperature, you can make beer. However, it can be expensive to buy (and inevitably to upgrade) the equipment and homebrewing is a large time investment. An all-grain brew day can easily take up an entire Saturday — and that’s not including all the clean-up.

For those with small spaces, limited time, and some cash to spend, counter-top appliances and straightforward, beginner craft brew kits are all the rage. These homebrewing kits fit right in beside toasters and microwaves but promise to make brewing beer as simple brewing as a pot of coffee. Or maybe even microwavable mac n’ cheese.
Pico
Zymatic. Image used with permission by copyright holder

Read more
Super Bowl of Beers: The Best Brews from San Francisco and Kansas City
2020 super bowl beers best of san francisco kansas city fieldwork feature

While the highly anticipated ads may tell you otherwise, what you drink this Super Bowl Sunday doesn’t have to be generic suds. In fact, you can drink some great stuff from in and around the two cities represented in this year’s matchup.

As the Kansas City Chiefs get set to take on the San Francisco 49ers, another rivalry comes to life — that of craft beer from the two American cities. We’ve picked three of our favorites from the Bay Area and the city that sits in two states to suit up and fetch a W in the name of beer excellence.

Read more
2 New Whiskey-Beer Collaborations to Drink Now
brooklyn four roses

Wintertime is the season for dark beers like stout and porter, and beer that has been aged in a whiskey barrel offers a particularly warming sensation with added notes of oak, vanilla, and spice. There are two new barrel-aged beers available just in time for the holidays, both from craft breweries that have collaborated with some top-tier whiskey distilleries.

First up is the brand-new Barrel-Aged Baltic Porter from Harpoon Brewery, which has locations in Boston and Vermont. Not too far from the Vermont facility is the WhistlePig distillery, so it made perfect sense for the two companies to work together on this new beer. They decided to take the brewery's already successful Baltic Porter and age it in WhistlePig rye whiskey barrels for a period of time. The resulting beer is sweet and malty, with hints of vanilla, baking spice, and dried fruit that pop throughout each sip. According to Dan Kenary, CEO and co-founder of Harpoon, the plan was to reintroduce this beer with what he calls a special edge. “We thought, what better way to foster innovation than to partner with our neighbors at WhistlePig," he said in a press release, "bringing our brewers and their talented distillers together for a meaningful and delicious collaboration.”

Read more