Silver Bluff Brewery

9 Golden Ales Reviewed – Great Golden Ales and American Blondes

American Blonde Ales and Golden Ales

At Silver Bluff Brewing Company, we love Golden Ales.  We love them if they are British, Belgian, American, or from anywhere worldwide.  American Blondes and Goldens pair well with subtle flavors, which is always an important tool to have when planning a meal.

Golden Ales and American Blondes, styles of beer loved for their refreshing qualities and smooth balance between malt and hops, track to the Summer months and outdoors. Silver Bluff Golden Ale associates with the British tradition of light, drinkable pub beers, and our favorite Goldens represent a nuanced part of the American craft beer scene.

In the US, Goldens and Blondes are typically characterized by a light, crisp flavor profile, beautiful Golden color, and under 5.5%. They’ve become gateway beers to the American craft brewing movement offering craft options for a beer during a beach visit or tailgate.

I think of a Golden Ale all as a beer style that reminds me of experiences: sunny days and good company.  By altering the malt profiles and hop bills and adopting a different strain of yeast, American brewers transformed the English Pale Ale into a new beer style – one that would become the American Golden Ale and the American Blonde Ale. The attractiveness of Golden Ales and American Blondes is simplicity. While extreme ingredients and high gravities often dominate the US craft beer shelf, counterpoints, like Goldens, show the skill of the brewer and yield a counterpoint.

Food Pairings with Golden Ale: Lighter Foods Love Blonde Beer

Golden Ale Food Pairings – Simple Advice

Pairing beer with food is a skill that needs to be developed, and flavor combinations aren’t universal.  A typical challenge is the perception that lighter beers and ones without big flavors can ‘go with anything’ and can easily pair well with multiple courses.  

This isn’t the case for Blonde Ales and Golden Ales (Check out some of our reviews here) which are picky pairings that I reserve for lighter meals.

Silver Bluff Golden Ale, with balanced bitterness and subtle floral and spicy aroma, is an excellent example of this style and is the beer reference for these pairings. Just learning about Golden Ales?  Check out our overview of the style.

Note that you can substitute most British Goldens and American Blonde Ales that are not too hoppy with Silver Bluff’s Golden to make your menus.  American Pale Ale with hop bitterness or craft beer with added flavors or fruits would be paired differently than these examples.

Seafood and Fish are Ideal for Golden Ales

Lighter seafood and fish and those with delicate and diverse flavors pair well with American and British Golden Ales. 

The beer’s

The Worldwide Golden Ale Landscape: An Informal Style Guide to Blonde Ale and Golden Variations

The Golden Ale and Blonde Ale Standard?

While style guides are essential tools for both brewers and beer enthusiasts, the market and the makers (drinkers) frequently change the path for a flavor profile.  With Golden Ales and Blonde Ales (our view on the styles), this is the situation.  Without a geographic modifier, ordering a Blonde or a Golden infers you are getting the locational variant of the style that connects to the bar, brewery, or package store you happen to be in at the time.  How ‘standard’ is that?

Styles provide a framework for understanding and categorizing beer styles available, but when a beer style that adapts to a local market can gain popularity and then spin out a newly recognized style, that framework becomes a popularity contest.  Ukrainian Golden and American Blonde/Golden Ale are in different phases of this contest to ‘be recognized.’ At the same time, Australian and New Zealand’s Blondes and Goldens will have a long road to separate their unique classes of beers from the generic Australian Pale Ale and New Zealand Pale Ale designations worldwide. 

The question to ask yourself is what beer will you receive if you ask for a Golden Ale in Wellington, NZ?  Does their colonial history with Britain mean you should expect a beautiful English Summer Ale or a Golden Bitter? Or do you expect an easy-to-drink session beer with a simple hop profile like Raglan Golden Ale?  Is Monteith’s Summer Ale a British Summer?  If they had a Golden Ale, would it confuse patrons that consider Golden Lager a staple?