Uncommon Saint Patrick's Day 

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• Mike Riedel

For this Saint Patrick's Day edition of Beer Nerd, I thought I'd throw at you a novelty beer and a non-traditional option. Both will help you achieve your festive goals, while keeping it local and making your tongue happy.

Kiitos - Glitter Green Ale: This beer is mostly about the visuals. The first thing you'll notice is that it's emerald green. That's not too unusual this time of year; you'll find dozens of green beers at pubs today. But not many are green using natural ingredients. The green in this beer comes from Spirulina, a blue-green algae that has been added to food or eaten by itself for centuries. It gives the beer a natural green look, which is then shattered by the hypnotic storm of edible glitter that swirls throughout the liquid as it's poured. You'll spend as much time taking photos of it as you will drinking it. Once you've pulled yourselves away from the disco in your glass, you get stone fruit on the nose, along with citrusy orange peel and lime zest, all of it undergirded with crackery, bready pale malt sweetness.

Clean cereal grains, crackery pale barley malts and light honeyed sweetness are immediately apparent on the tongue, with the Northwest hops soon jumping in, providing characteristic hints of stone fruit, orange and passion fruit. The hop bitterness is very much minimized throughout, with only a touch of pithiness towards the finish—and even this is thereafter overcome by the pale malts and residual fruitiness of the hops. The aftertaste is soft and dry, the body light, with middling carbonation that softens over time, giving this brew a smooth mouthfeel and pleasant texture. Nothing to write home about, but a properly-constructed blonde ale nonetheless.

Overall: Glitter Green Ale is a respectable mainline offering, albeit a fairly conventional one. The hops are used rather conservatively, but in the end, that only makes it more approachable (to non-beer nerds) and more session-able (to all beer drinkers).

Uinta - Birthday Suit: This series of sour beers is brewed annually to celebrate Uinta's anniversary. This version celebrates 29 years of brewing beer in Utah, and features apricot as this year's flavor.

This sour ale has a glowing orange appearance, with a head that dissipates fairly quickly. The nose has a nice blend of tannic, lactic and some citric acid for a nice, balanced mix. Out of the glass, it elicits pleasant minerally and tannic tones that bring a bit of crabapple. The mellow, melon-like sweetness of apricot flesh comes out a bit more, while a clean, zingy lactic aroma balances it out.

Very mellow lactic, citric sourness is accompanied by a nice balance of apricot flavor that actually comes up sweet against the acids that are present. It's smooth, mellow, and contains that slightly creamy sweetness of stone fruit. The apricot really does come though brilliantly, though, and its rich sweetness happily counters all of the acid-producing bacteria in this beer's production. I'm really into this, to be honest.

Overall: This is a well-crafted sour, in my mind. It's got a good, balanced structure with firm and nuanced acidity, while incorporating the fruit character in a way that it both blends in in key areas but sticks out in others. It's not too sour, not too sweet, not too dry, and not too fizzy or anything else. In my mind, it exudes a high level of craftsmanship, and while it doesn't blow my mind in any particular way, it's either very good or excellent in every regard. I'm really happy to have tried it.

No matter if you're drinking these on Saint Patrick's Day, or days after, you're going to find an ocean of locally made beers that fit Irish tradition, or play heavily on the theme. Keep your wits about you and as always, sláinte!