Some think of beaches, the sun and sand during the summer. Others, like Mike Natale at Roth Brewing Company, are thinking wheat.

Summer temperatures and the desire for light flavors have drawn beer enthusiasts to relish wheat beers during the summer. According to Natale, director of marketing and sales at the craft brewery, wheat brings a refreshing, dry flavor to the experience.

“Our wheat is a great drink to go with the heat and lighter foods,” Natale said. “We call it the Mi Mei Honey Plum Hefeweizen. Mi Mei means ‘honey plum’ in both Chinese and Japanese, and we use both to flavor the brew.”

Hefeweizen, weissbier, witbier or blanche—whatever you want to call it—peak in the summer, and Eddie Brown, manager of the American Brewmaster Company, a home brewer supplier, said his wheat malt sales peak in the summer.

“The wheat beers are more dry, if you think of them in a sense like wine, but they are also good mediums for adding flavors,” Brown said. “A lot of people we see use citrus or fruit flavors like orange, and we see a lot of berries.”

Popular nationwide fruity wheat beers include Sam Adams’ blackberry wheat and cherry wheat and Blue Moon’s signature orange flavor. According to Brown, many people take inspiration from these larger brands for their own summer seasonal beers.

“We see wheat mostly when it gets hot, but they are still popular throughout the year,” Brown said.

Beer giants Budweiser, Miller and Coors have experienced losses with the downturn of the economy, but according to a report by the Beer Institute, craft breweries around the nation have encountered popular growth among their local fans.

N.C. boasts one of the largest numbers of craft breweries in the U.S., and within a 25-mile radius of N.C. State there are 12 breweries, many of which are taking advantage of the change of seasons to rotate their specialty beers.

Taking a spin off of the typical summer wheat, Joe Zonin of the Carolina Brewing Company said they take a unique approach to the popular summer option.

“At Carolina Brewing Company, we do it a little bit different by making the Carolina Summer Wheat a filtered wheat beer,” Zonin, manager of sales and company partner, said. “Most wheats are cloudy and unfiltered—the yeast is still present—but ours is clear; called a kristallweizen in German.” 

The Carolina Summer Wheat has a golden color and unlike other summer wheats, its flavor comes from the hops—not other flavoring.

“Instead of adding orange or fruit, we think our beer benefits with just the flavors of the hops,” Zonin said. “The hops add a bitter but spicy—or peppery—flavor to the beer, like a crisp pilsner. It goes well with light foods.”

Carolina Brewing Company, the oldest brewery in the Triangle at 14 years old, has four seasonal beers and, according to Zonin, mostly serves the piedmont region.

“We know what works for us, and we know how to make an affordable beer, so we focus on that mostly,” Zonin said. “We don’t have a pub, bar or restaurant. We just try to make good beer to serve the triangle and we don’t really do anything else.”

Deviating from the wheat trend, Big Boss Brewery in downtown Raleigh approaches the summer with two unique beers with little regard for other seasonal beers from competitor breweries.

Dave Rogers, head of marketing at Big Boss, said that the summer conditions have nothing to do with their summer seasonal beers.

“We needed a beer to drink during the late spring, and we needed a beer for July and August, so we came up with the Monkey Bizz-ness Belgian-style ale and our Sack Time amber rye ale,” Rogers said. “We already do a year-round wheat beer.”

The Monkey Bizz-ness brew is a Belgian-style ale, carrying a strong 9 percent alcohol content and flavors of coriander, orange, local honey and black pepper corns.

“It’s a late spring farmhouse ale, and it’s not a light one,” Rogers said. “This would pair well with seafood, salad and pork and cooks well with them too.”

Big Boss’ later summer beer, the Sack Time, uses rye malt over the traditional barley or wheat malts.

“It’s got a lot of flavor from the hops, and it’s hearty,” Rogers said. “I would call this a good backyard barbeque drink.”

Many retailers and vendors abide by the rule “the consumer is always right.”

Mark Doble, owner of the Aviator Brewing Company in Fuquay-Varina, said the general public is not well informed about unique craft brews, and his work is to open their eyes.

“I don’t mean this in any smug way, but we just wanted to serve something different than the usual run-of-the-mill beer,” Doble said.

Aviator’s late spring and summer beers include the Crazy Pils and the BoneHead India brown ale.

According to Doble, the Crazy Pils is a Czech style pilsner, basing off the original pale lager.

“After we do the Crazy Pils, we do the IBA, a brown ale with full aroma and flavor of hops,” Doble said. “Our india pale ale is more of a liquid that can hold up to the hops. The BoneHead is just more full and strong. It will hit you in the face.”

Whether its wheat or not, all the summer seasonals have one thing in common: high alcohol content. According to Rogers from Big Boss, that’s a nice thing.

“You take your time with it and enjoy it. There’s no need to rush.”

And just like the beer, that’s what summer is all about.