Today is the first official day of summer, and though this year’s weather has not exactly gone according to schedule (it’s been particularly chilly and damp here all this spring) I still decided I’d commemorate the start of the season by having Summer Beer Week here at The Brew Site.

Summer beer is simple: it’s crisp, it’s light, it’s flavorful. It doesn’t need much more than that—other than somebody to drink it. Fortunately each year there are more and more choices as many breweries are releasing summer-specific seasonals. Style? There is no style, other than the loose guidelines I laid out above. Summer beers are more… laid back. Casual. Easily the kind of beers you could fill a bucket or cooler with to enjoy while you’re grilling, or playing on the slip-n-slide, or mowing the lawn.

Go find a bucket of beers and follow along this week.