Let's get into the worst beer I've had this summer.

Can you believe it's finally Christmas in July? 2020's been a whirlwind of a ton of different stuff but at least it's all going by super quickly. Today, though, is a day for me to slow down. I'm celebrating the day with a beer. Tonight, I'll be watching a Christmas movie, listening to some Christmas records, and breaking into one more Christmas brew. If you want to see what that second beer is, you'll have to follow along on my Untappd.


But, I can get into a bit about today's first Christmas beer now. In fact, I'll give you a whole post about it. Sure, the temperature might be pushing 90° right now, but I'm happy to be out on the porch with a beer I remembered to grab in February before it was all sold out. That beer, by the way, is Illuminated Beer Works' War on Xmas, a spiced holiday stout. Again, it's nearly 90°.

Bell's' Oberon is a summer constant. I have some when the air turns hot each year. Usually, I pick up a sixer or two and a mini-keg (I plow through the latter over the course of a week). Sure, it drops in March but I don't want an Oberon until it's hella hot out. The world needs the heat to make the beer special.

No Lottie today--she's busy sleeping off a big weekend.

Well, now we have today. It's 95° and, until moments ago, sunny. An Oberon would be especially nice today, sure, but I'm doing one better. See, on July 6th, Bell's announced that a mango variant of their ultra-popular summertime wheat ale was being bottled. To my utter delight, I found it stocked at a local grocery store last week. I'm happy to pop into it amid today's rumbling thunder and break it down for you.

This is a special, un-announced post because, well, I wasn't sure I'd be able to find this beer. We'll get into Black is Beautiful in a bit, but it's a big collaboration effort spanning breweries the world over. I wasn't sure what the distribution footprint of any one variant would be, so I was super excited when I found a four-pack of Streetside's on store shelves yesterday. I'm hoping I run into other breweries' spins on it in the wild, too.


Also, this is my first ever Streetside beer! What a beer to introduce them to both me and the blog. Let's see how it's drinking.