11 great American craft beers to drink during the Super Bowl

In the early 1980s, televised sport certainly wasn’t the 24/7 visual smorgasbord that it is today. There was some half decent snooker, Badminton horse trials (none were found guilty…arf arf), 40-over county cricket filmed with just one camera…from just one end, Dickie Davies on one side, David Coleman on the other. Ski Sunday. Oh, and Junior Kickstart. That was about it.

But then Channel Four came along and threw a shiny, brightly-coloured helmet into the UK’s televisual ring by beaming live American Football into the nation’s living rooms and warming cold winter Sunday nights up with colourful coverage of vast strapping men in skin-tight pants, grunting and grappling with each other to a theme tune of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding out for a Hero” and “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

To the untrained eye, American Football just seemed like a stop-starty version of British Bulldog. Which it is. No-one seemed to know the rules or the players but, despite all that, it was far more exciting than watching a trio of coffin-dodging Yorkshiremen sliding down a hill in a bath. Again.

When compared to the muddy-socked amateurism of British footy and rugby, it was incredibly glamourous, it was exotic, absurdly over-the-top and escapist. It felt futuristic too, looking like a scene from Tron, which had been released just months earlier.

Looking back, it couldn’t have been more unashamedly Eighties had all its players sported mullets, smeared their faces with Adam Ant make-up and worn enormous great shoulder pads. Which they all did.

Gridiron’s staccato rhythm not only lent itself perfectly to advertising, which was no bad thing for a budding new TV station like Channel Four, but made it ideally designed for viewing whilst drinking beer – allowing, as it does, viewers ample opportunity to get to the fridge and back repeatedly without missing any of the action.

However, unlike now, 1982 was not a great time to be drinking American beer. Having been home to more than 2,700 craft breweries in the late 19th century, America’s beer had become a homogenous ball of ‘meh’ by the early Eighties.

Back then, the American brewing landscape was a desolate, dystopian desert. Around half a dozen Orwellian ‘Big Brother’ brewers numbed the nation’s palates with tasteless liquid tumbleweed, and commanded a staggering, and somewhat stagnant, 92 per cent of beer production.

But then something rather important happened. Tax on US air travel was cut. It became affordable to get to Europe for Americans who, bereft of decent domestic beer, encountered the flavoursome ales and characterful lagers of Belgium, Germany, the UK and beyond.

This merely fanned the flames of disenchantment back home and it wasn’t long before a backlash against bland beer began. Buoyed by the legalisation of home-brewing and brewpubs, both of which had been banned as part of a hangover from Prohibition, a small band of microbrewers, mostly mushrooming in more enlightened areas of America, and inspired by European styles, began to sow the seeds of a remarkable American craft brewing revolution.

By the late 1980s, craft beer was no longer a kooky pastime, it was a bona-fide business idea. Over the next five years or so, sales soared and, inspired by the likes of Ken Grossman at Sierra Nevada, Fritz Maytag at Anchor Brewing and Jim Koch of Samuel Adams, so did the number of craft breweries.

By 1994, California laid claim to 84 microbreweries and brewpubs – one more than there’d been in all of the US a decade before. Between early 1993 and late 1994, nearly two hundred small breweries flung open their doors and a year later, the number of micros surpassed 500.

More than 20 years later, America is now home to more than 3,200 breweries and craft beer has spread across every single state – even as far as the abstemious Utah, where you can now pop open a bottle of Polygamy Porter, its label adorned with the question “Why have just one?”

Recently, sales of American craft beer reached 16m US barrels and, in doing so, eclipsed sales of Budweiser, the so-called “King of Beers” and the archetypal embodiment of mainstream American beer.

Owner Anheuser-Busch has retaliated by gobbling up some craft breweries including Goose Island in Chicago, Ten Barrels in Oregon and, just last week, the iconic Elysian Brewing based in Seattle.

European brewers may have provided instruction and inspiration to the early craft brewing pioneers in America but, now, the tail is wagging the dog. In an ironic twist of history and geography, European brewers are now replicating American interpretations of their own traditional beer styles.

Nearly everything currently happening in the craft beer scenes of Europe, from the hipster beards to the abundant use of hops, has been motivated by US micros. In terms of diversity of styles, flavours and innovation, the contemporary American craft brewing scene really has no rivals.

The good news is that an increasing number of American craft brewers are now exporting their wonderful wares across the Pond – from major players like Sierra Nevada, Samuel Adams and Brooklyn to lesser known outfits like the Uncommon Brewers and Pine St Brewery.

So when Superbowl XLIX kicks off between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots on Sunday, we suggest you fill your fridge with a few of the following.

1. Sierra Nevada “Celebration” 6.8%, £2.69 for 350ml, beersofeurope.co.uk

Cockle-warming winter ale with one foot in the IPA family. Comforting, hoppy and earthy chocolate notes mingle with lots of lemon and lychee hop flavours. Best drunk in the glow of a roaring fire or surrounded by other festive clichés.

2. Goose Island “Honkers Ale”, 4.3%, £1.89 for 355ml, beersofeurope.co.uk

In 1988, when few other Chicago micros were flying the flag for flavour, Goose Island provided a breath of fresh air for the Windy City’s beer drinkers. Inspired by England yet within an American twist, Honkers is a balanced British bitter and makes a lovely session beer.

3. Rogue “Old Crustacean Barleywine”, 11.4%, 18.99 for 750ml, beersofeurope.co.uk

A pioneer of the beer scene in Portland, Oregon, Rogue specialise in unpasteurised, small-batch, heavily hopped and highly irreverent ales packaged in tall, screen-printed 650ml bottles and marketed across America and beyond with a mischievous glint in their eye. The strongest is a beast of a Barleywine. Unfiltered and unfined, it’s intense, immense, malty and dark. Great with cheese.

4. Anchor Brewing “Steam Beer”, 4/9%, £2.09 for 355ml, beersofeurope.co.uk

An all-American historic beer – amber hue, smooth, citrusy and a superb session beer. Steam Beer, one of very few indigenous American beer styles, was born following the Gold Rush in the mid-1800s. Also known as “Californian Common", Steam was especially popular in San Francisco where steam rising from Anchor’s rooftop fermenters, into the cool city air, supposedly earned the beer its name.

5. Lagunitas IPA, 6.2%, £2.19 for 355ml, beersofeurope.co.uk

In Northern California, a land where locals where locals like "listening to reggae", it’s no surprise that Lagunitas has built its rightly-revered reputation on the humble hop, a close relation to cannabis. This excellent IPA is a resinous drop, full of pine needles and eucalyptus with a backbone of marmalade and maple sweetness.

6. Ruhstallers 1881 California Red Ale, 5.6%, £4.09 for 355ml, beersofeurope.co.uk

A remarkably decent, dark red ale sourced from a farmhouse brewery in Sacramento. Boasts a caramelly (is that a word? It is now) core spruced up with aromatic Californian Cascade, Columbus and Chinook hops and comes in a sexy looking silver can too.

7. Samuel Adams Stony Brook Red, 9%, £16 for 750ml, bottle-shop.co.uk

The Boston Beer Company may be most famous for its iconic Samuel Adams Boston Lager, a pioneer in its day and now one of the biggest beers in America, but its Barrel Room Collection, a series of small-batch, often barrel-aged beers, is worth keeping a very close eye on - especially this dark, sexy softly-spoken sour beer inspired by the famously tart Flemish reds from Belgium. Brewed and aged in Boston, home to the New England Patriots.

8. Pine Street “Menagerie Saison”, 5%, £3.60 for 12 fl oz, hoptimism.co.uk

Kept in a cool looking 33cl can, this funky farmhouse ale is from one of the newer brewers in San Francisco. It’s like a golden ale but with a bit more going on. Goes down easier than a Jacksonville Jaguar quarterback.

9. Uncommon Brewers “Bacon Brown”, 6.8%, leftcoast.co.uk

Correct. A beer brewed with pork, no less. While others create a cured meat effect with smoked malt, Uncommon brewmaster Alec Stefansky goes the whole hog and chucks actual chunks of applewood-cured bacon into the boil of a nut brown ale, bolstered with buckwheat. The swine presence is subtle, savoury with a smooth smokiness that shifts to the back on the finish.

10. Brooklyn Brewery Brooklyn Local 2, 9%, £10.99 for 750ml, beersofeurope.co.uk

Brewmaster Garrett Oliver’s cork-and-caged collection of bottle-conditioned 75cl beers, rather cleverly called ‘Big Bottles’, are ripe for exploration and ageing. While the single hop Saison, Sorachi Ace, is a prime porch sipper, this beguiling Belgian brunette, brewed with wildflower honey made from Big Apple bees and dark sugar from the Lowlands, is happier after a little hibernation.

11. Alesmith “Wee Heavy”, 9.5%, £16.49 for 750ml, beersofeurope.co.uk

A classic from a superb stalwart of the beer scene in San Diego. Anything but wee, this big, brawny and beautifully balanced Scotch ale will put some bellow in your bagpipes and will age gracefully when cellared.

The Thinking Drinkers' new book Thinking Drinkers: An Enlightened Imbiber’s Guide to Alcohol is out now. They are performing their new show, The Thinking Drinkers’ Guide to the Legends of Liquor, at the Soho Theatre, London in January, and across the UK in 2015. For tickets visit thinkingdrinkers.com