The Best Sweet Beer: 21 Options On This Flavor Spectrum

While you might associate beer with a bitter flavor due to the crucial hops ingredient, there are plenty of beers that fall on the opposite side of the flavor spectrum. Hoppy, bitter beers are great, but if you are looking for something sweet and creamy, you can also find beers that’ll fulfill your cravings.

If you’re a fan of sweet beers, you should be looking for beers with high malt content or fruit-flavored beers. Sweet beers fall under many beer categories, so your best bet is to look for the following types of beers to taste at the pub, liquor store, or beer section of the grocery store:

– Toasty, Nutty, Malty

Doppelbock
Dunkel Lager
English Brown Ale
Eisbock

– Fruity, Toffee and Caramel Flavored Beers

Irish Red Ale
Belgian Pale Ale
Scotch Ale
Barleywine
Biere de Garde

Trying to figure out which brand of beer to buy adds a whole other level of complexity to your choice, so we’ve provided a list of the best sweet beers out there for you to try.

21 Best Sweet Beers

Whether you’re looking for fruity ales or chocolatey stouts, this list of the 21 best sweet beers has something sure to satisfy your sweet tooth.

Southern Tier Crème Brulee

It doesn’t get much sweeter than this jet-black stout. You won’t know whether you’ve popped open a beer or a milkshake as this beer smells like vanilla and burnt sugar the minute you open a bottle, becoming more complex with every sip. You’ll note chocolate, coffee, and even licorice undertones.

Don’t be fooled by the sweetness, though. This is not a milkshake. It’s a beer with 10% alcohol content.

Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock

This malty Doppelbock tastes like a slice of black bread with caramel butter slathered on top. It’s just as filling, too. It is incredibly rich, deep dark red, and well-balanced despite having no hoppy flavor whatsoever.

JW Lees Harvest Ale

Brewed once annually but available year-round, Harvest Ale is a barley wine that is the perfect combination of bitter and sweet. You’ll smell fruity molasses as you raise the glass for a sip and a sweet, rich sherry with toffee undertones as you drink.

Unibroue Quelque Chose

This award-winning Quebecois microbrewery specializes in Belgian-style beers, and this fruity beer offering is a great winter beer. It isn’t carbonated and tastes just as good hot as it does cold. You’ll get an incredibly sweet, almost syrupy mouthfeel with an overwhelming flavor of cherries, spices, and mulled wine.

Kasteel Rouge

Kasteel Rouge is a red nitro ale, and you can tell immediately upon pouring it with its bright ruby red color. Cherries are the main ingredient, and the nitrogen technique pairs perfectly to create a veritable cherry cream soda flavor with a full body.

Lindemans Peche

This refreshing peach lambic from Lindemans is summer in a bottle. You’ll get a sweet peach aroma when you pop open the bottle and a crisp, tangy, and sweet peach flavor with each sip.

If peach isn’t your favorite fruit, Lindemans has a whole line of fruit lambics, including raspberry, strawberry, and apple. They’re all wonderful fruit-flavored beers that fit the sweet beer bill perfectly.

Founders Cerise

Another delicious seasonal beer brewed with tart Michigan cherries; Founders Cerise red ale adds cherries at various stages of the brewing process to infuse cherry flavor that is sweet and sour in equal measures.

This is a light, crisp summer beer that is sure to refresh you.

Lagunitas Brown Shugga

This excellent, highly alcoholic winter ale will stick to your bones, and you won’t be able to stop drinking it. It is a reddish-brown colored beer with a full-bodied and syrupy consistency. True to its name, you’ll get a strong caramel aroma and super sweet caramel and dark fruit flavor. Yum!

3 Floyds Brewing Co. Dark Lord

This Russian imperial stout lives up to its perilous name. It’s a specialty brew offered only once a year, so only the true beer fanatics will get to appreciate this one. It’s made with coffee, Mexican vanilla, and Indian sugar.

With a vibrant flavor and 15% alcohol per bottle, one of these is more than enough.

Samichlaus

Deemed the world’s strongest lager, Samichlaus beer is a Swiss-German beer aged for at least 10 months before bottling so that it has a minimum of 15% alcohol. Originating in Switzerland, this beer has since moved to neighboring Austria.

This beer tastes more like a port with an overwhelming malty sweetness that brings caramel and sherry flavors to the mix. It isn’t very carbonated, but that doesn’t make it syrupy either. Getting its name from the Swiss word for Santa Clause, this beer is a true Christmas treat.

New Glarus Apple Ale

This Wisconsin microbrewery uses local ingredients for the freshest flavors. They use locally sourced apples to brew this brown ale. You might even confuse it for a cider as the fresh apple flavor shines through beautifully. You’ll smell it before you taste it.

St. Louis Framboise

This sweet raspberry fruit lambic from St. Louis Brewing is even raspberry-colored, assuming an almost purplish hue in the pint glass. You’ll smell the raspberries right away, and the flavors are a well-balanced combination of raspberry and lemon. This is a very malty and sweet beer, but the citrus works well to curb the sweetness slightly.

Stone Smoked Porter with Vanilla Bean

Can’t decide between chocolate and vanilla? Have them both in this masterfully brewed porter from Stone Brewing. You’ll get both in equal measures through aroma and taste, with smokey, malty, and coffee flavors rounding out this complex flavor profile.

Two Brothers Cain and Ebel Rye Beer

This Rye beer by Two Brothers Cain and Ebel brewers has a spicy, funky rye flavor characteristic of rye beer that blends perfectly with a creamy palm sugar flavor. It is thick and creamy with a sweet malty finish.

Although it is very hoppy, the bitterness acts as a great compliment to the sugary malt taste.

Samuel Smith’s Organic Strawberry Ale

Samuel Smith is one of our favorite brewers whose age-old brewing techniques never cease to charm our palates. Any beer they make could potentially be your favorite, and this organic strawberry fruit beer is no exception.

They use their classic brown ale as a base, mixing it with fresh organic strawberry juice before bottling it. Therefore, it still has a strong beer flavor and is subtly sweet with a delicate strawberry flavor.

Rogue Chocolate Stout

If you’re looking for a luxuriously creamy, milky chocolate malt, look no further. Rogue’s Chocolate stout’s creamy head even looks like chocolate milk, and the rest of the beer is an opaque dark brown color.

It smells like a chocolate bar, with sweet cocoa and bitter chocolate notes dominating the flavor. It’s a bit syrupy, but overall, incredibly smooth going down.

Eagle Brewery Banana Bread Beer

Beer is essentially liquid bread, so why not model it off your favorite morning treat? That’s what Eagle Brewery’s brewers had in mind with this delightfully sweet malt blend, made with bananas and natural mineral water.

You’ll get an overwhelming banana bread taste and smell, so if banana bread is your favorite treat, try it in liquid form, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Springdale Beer Brig Mocha Stout

This breakfast stout will certainly wake you up! Springdale Brewing Company uses Brazilian coffee, cacao, oats, and milk sugar to make this irresistible mocha-flavored stout. It has everything you want in a breakfast stout: sweet, creamy coffee that gives way to a chocolatey aftertaste.

It is roasted and rich like coffee with a smooth, delectable, sweet finish.

The Best Sweet Beer