Sometimes you just gravitate to a particular tipple. Maybe it’s a change in seasons, maybe it’s the location, maybe it’s a particular food or meal. And sometimes that drink is a beer. At The New Wine Review, we obviously love wine and spirits, but we’re not single-minded: like the majority of Americans who consume alcoholic beverages, we love a good beer, too.

It’s the first few days of autumn, with football season and Oktoberfest in full swing, and we asked each of our wine-loving editorial staff and our whiskey editor to tell us what their go-to brew is and why. The results are an interesting mix of domestic macros, classic imported beers, and limited edition craft brews, and they come with an unexpected throughline of nostalgia. Grab a pretzel and some mixed nuts and read on to find out what the wine and spirits nerds are chugging.

Beers for Wine Lovers 

Brooklyn Brewery “The Shallows” 

Choosing this is, tbh, a total dickhead move. This is a limited-edition low-alcohol pilsner that’s been off the market for years. It was created in 2015 by Garrett Oliver, a friend who’s the brewmaster at this brewery, for the opening of Brooklyn’s Four Horsemen, a restaurant owned by other friends, that—worse—my wife and I invested in. But, well, sorry, too bad. This snappy and utterly refreshing lower-alcohol beer—around 3.5 percent ABV—is exactly the kind of beer I want to drink. It’s very far from the most ambitious beer that Brooklyn has ever produced. It is also absolutely perfect at what it does. Every now and again I try to wind Garrett up by telling him that the only kind of beer I want is a slightly better Budweiser. While this is not a lager, it’s more than close enough to make me very happy. God, I wish Brooklyn would produce this again. PS: If I’m forced to pick a beer that is actually available, put me down for any good small-run wheat beer, weissbier, or gose. - Jon Fine

Dogfish Head Brewery Punkin Ale 

When I say I had a “beer era” in my 20s, I mean it in the sense of beer classes in Bruges, giggling with my friends as the monks loaded our precious allocation of Westy 12 into the back of a rented Renault, and at one point selecting an apartment in Washington, D.C., based in part on it being just two blocks from Greg Engert’s ambitious beer bar ChurchKey. 

Now in my 30s, the cabinet space I once filled with an assortment of logo-emblazoned tulips and tekus has mostly been turned over to wine glasses and I so rarely reach for a beer that I find myself out of the loop on the scene. Homage is doing neat things including some interesting collabs with winemakers; The Bruery is always coming out with something novel, and while some of the experiments don’t quite hit for me, when they do, they’re inarguably fun to drink; Allagash Curieux is sold absolutely everywhere and will never disappoint.
     
But I have decided to use this space to defend something I feel is unfairly maligned: pumpkin beer. Specifically, the correct pumpkin beer, Punkin Ale by Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware. This seasonal, marking its 30th anniversary release this year, is based on a classic, round brown ale, hit during the brewing process with brown sugar, warming nutmeg and cinnamon, and literal, actual pumpkin. Fall in a glass. Before you say one word to me about how putting those cozy spices and flavorings into beer is somehow wrong or non-traditional, I want you to tell me what you think a saison is. I also want you to think about why you hate fun. - Brittany Martin

Mexican Beer

I don’t care what you think. There is nothing better or more refreshing than an ice-cold Mexican beer on a hot afternoon, sipped straight from the bottle or can, with a lime. Corona, Tecate, Pacifico, Sol, Modelo Especial, Dos Equis: these are the beers I started drinking when I came of age in the early 1990s, and so I will always be just fine with the taste (or lack thereof). Two companies own almost every brand of beer imported from Mexico into the United States, so can we even call "Mexican beer" a category? Again: I don’t care.

Just two things: a Mexican beer needs to be served ice cold. And never—ever—in a glass. Years ago, when I wrote a beer column, I tried to do an organized tasting of Mexican beers. I had numbered place mats, tasting sheets, the whole thing. But I made a key error by insisting on tasting our Mexican beer from real glassware, with no limes. Within 15 minutes, the tasting panel abandoned this strategy and started drinking the beers straight from the can or bottle, with lime. - Jason Wilson

Miller High Life 

I admit it was the Errol Morris ad campaign that first turned me on to Miller High Life. I remembered those spots (so different from any other beer commercial I had ever seen) when I was 22 years old, newly arrived in New York and experiencing the frisson of delight that came with paying for a grown-up beer in a grown-up bar with money from my first real job. The dive on the same corner as my apartment sold Miller High Life by the 12 oz glass bottle, and it's been my beer of choice ever since. A decade after that first High Life, part of me was drawn to Champagne—my gateway drug to the wider world of wine—because I was already a devotee of the Champagne of Beers (which only comes from Miller Valley in Milwaukee; otherwise, of course, it's just the Sparkling Wine of Beers). I like that it's clean tasting, flavorful but not overly so, and has that fine, refreshing bead. I'm also a sucker for the classic packaging, which feels special but not pretentious. And Miller High Life is cheap—improbably, even more so than Miller Lite. There are few things as consistently satisfying to me as the first sip from a bottle that's been sitting in the freezer for a few minutes to get it teeth-clenchingly cold. As far as I know, you only get one life. I’ll make mine a High Life.  - Sarah Parker Jang

Pilsner Urquell 

In my broke early 20s, I lived a few blocks from one of America’s oldest beer gardens, the Bohemian Hall in Astoria, Queens. It had about a dozen taps, but since it was founded by Czech immigrants, the house beer was Pilsner Urquell, and pitchers cost about $17. Even a broke 20-something could afford that. I squeezed into the crowded picnic tables on many a summer weekend, but as autumn rolled around and the vast yard emptied, I found myself drawn even more to the beer garden and the steady reliability of those pitchers. Pilsner Urquell is unwavering in its balance of refreshment and flavor; a beer that quietly overdelivers without anyone really noticing. Although its crisp bite is well-matched to the heat of summer, it just as easily embraces the solitude and chill of the changing season. I live far from the beer garden nowadays, but as the nights draw in fast and cool, I’m still drinking Pilsner Urquell. - Susannah Skiver Barton

Trillium Congress Street IPA

After three years in New York, I spent this past summer living in South Boston in my sister’s apartment, working at a wine bar on East Broadway. In the three months I called “Southie” home, I learned two things that aided my survival in the city’s frattiest enclave: that a walk around the shore in the morning is always wonderfully quiet and that beer remains the city’s highest form of social currency ever since it was established as one by the Puritans. (It should be no surprise that the wine bar where I worked was at an intersection occupied on every other corner by a pub or a packie.)

Beer in Boston today, in what seems to be its inevitable third wave, has fallen into the hands of microbreweries. Massachusetts boasts over 130 craft breweries, many in the center of its capital city. One of my favorite, Trillium, started in Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood in 2013 and has opened tap houses around the city, reminiscent of the ones I frequented in college. We had Trillium’s Congress Street IPA on draft at the wine bar and it quickly became my end-of-shift drink of choice. It was a perfect beer for the transition between summer and fall, with notes of peach and pineapple, rounded out by a slight bitterness, hints of pine and malt, and subdued hops. It’s a lovely homage to the city where it’s made. - Sara Keene