My latest article to appear in The Bulletin debuted Sunday, and this time around I wrote about Worthy Brewing Company‘s latest limited-release beer: Worthy & Wise coffee cream ale worth a try.

(Reminder: I don’t write the headlines, and the online ones are sometimes different than what appears in print. This headline does seem… unenthusiastic.)

The newest limited-release beer from Worthy Brewing Company is a collaboration brew that will have you craving coffee and cream — though not quite literally.

Worthy & Wise is a coffee cream ale, the latest specialty beer to be released in cans as part of Worthy’s Hopstar limited series. The brewery partnered with Portland-based coffee roaster Dapper & Wise to brew up the collaboration. The beer blends Dapper & Wise’s Ethiopian Shantawene Natural bean with a base style of American cream ale.

With Worthy & Wise, the style was selected based on the coffee itself. Head brewer Dustin Kellner explained the process via email.

“In my experience with coffee beers, you tend to get the best characteristics from the coffee by adding cold brew to finished beer. In the cupping with Dapper and Wise, we tasted a hot and cold version of each variety to get the best idea of what it would translate like in the finished beer and chose the beer style based on the variety of bean. The result is all of the flavor with little to none of the bitterness.”

I first had the beer on draft last month, and ran into head brewer Kellner at that time and chatted a bit about the beer. It’s quite nice and balances the coffee with the cream ale really well; I’d recommend picking up a six-pack to accompany your holiday meals.

(Credit on the image to Worthy’s Facebook post; apparently I didn’t take my own picture of the beer when I was there!)