Everyone has their preferences, and while my profession and temperament have me drinking pretty much everything when it comes to beer styles, I tend to gravitate towards just a few if I’m not on deadline. Pale ales and IPAs with a ton of late hop additions comprise a good bit, with beer like Cellarmaker, Modern Times and Firestone Walker’s Luponic Distortion hitting the spot lately. There is always room in this somewhat reasonably sized belly for hefeweizen, like one of those wizard bags you can store a universe in. And anything even vaguely saison.

If you are a saison and you walk into our house, you get what you deserve.

Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee has been doing some really nice saisons lately, with a Classic Saison that’s true to its name and a Noble Cuvee Dry Hop version that’s essentially a bottled meadow. While a couple recent Prairie beers just didn’t do it for me (Ape Snake: you’re all over the place; Phantasmagoria: you could’ve been someone!), returning to their Standard, a hoppy farmhouse ale with Motueka hops, reinstilled any and all faith. Others to look for in this department: Casey Brewing and Blending (Colorado) has been gaining deserved fanfare. Monkish in SoCal has been dropping numerous mics. Cory King and his Side Project: ditto.

Jopen Koyt is admittedly pretty far up there as far as gruits go. But if you’re looking for non-hoppy options, there are still a bunch of really excellent examples to be found, showcasing as wide a range of herb additions as you may imagine. Locally we’ve got Brian Hunt over at the world-class Moonlight Brewing Company creating a variety of herbs-not-hops beers, such as Working for Tips (brewed with redwood tips for bitterness) and Legal Tender (with yarrow, wild rosemary and redwood branches). Check the local folks for an occasional gruit attempt.

Upright Brewing’s Special Herbs is their Reggae Junkie gruit aged in Old Tom gin casks, and the result is an effervescent, lemon-lime-forward nectar that’s wholly its own thing. One can track it down as an occasional bottled offering, with modest distribution. There’s also a 13th Century Grut Bier that’s making its rounds in the States, made with bay leaves, ginger, anise, caraway, rosemary and gentian. (Zero clue what gentian is.) Most interesting-seeming include Cigar City’s cedar-aged Humidor Series Gruit and a beer named Fleur Desay from De Garde Brewing in Tillamook, OR: sour farmhouse gruit aged in Chardonnay oak barrels, of course.

For the truly gruit grateful, International Gruit Day will be here again on February 1st. Since 2013 it’s been pretty much the best time of year to go gruit gathering. Join in via #GruitDay.

One doesn’t really come across many Belgian-styled black IPAs, let alone imperial ones. It’s not often (given what I do for a living) that I find myself drinking a style, weirdo ingredients aside, where I’m like… I really don’t think I’ve had one of these things before, possibly ever. The individual parts are super familiar: Belgium + Black IPA. The combination, a bit less so. These beers often combine firm hop bitterness with assertive Belgian yeast strains (offering notes like pepper, clove, vanilla and fruit). Occasionally there’s dark chocolate, or caramel.

Aside from the Troubadour Westkust, there aren’t many options of this sort available in the states. Brasserie de la Senne’s Brusseleir Zwet IPA might be most common, and I would be inclined to try anything from the folks who made Zinnebir and Taras Boulba. De Struise in Oostvleteren released a barrel-aged blend along heftier lines: imperial IPA + imperial stout.

Ooh, also: De la Senne does another black IPA called Black in Japan, which I have had now that I’m looking at the thing: a Brussels-born black IPA that’s crisp, toasty, and nicely bitter.

Brussels Beer Project also does a “Belgian Black IPA” called Dark Sister, which is kind of a weird name and it may or may not be available outside of limited parts of Europe and Asia.

As far as options from elsewhere: Sierra Nevada’s Beer Camp series featured a Belgian-style Black IPA a while back, but that one seems pretty much kaput. On a smaller scale, there are at least a few dozen examples of Belgian-style black IPAs brewed in the U.S., so keep an eye out if you dug the Westkust. Also of particular note: Great Lakes Brewing (the Ontario one) has a beer that’s apparently called Only 30: The Only Black Belgian Milk IPA in Existence.

There is also, as you may have guessed, an imperial version.