Disclaimer – this site is rated “booze”, and its content, like its subject matter, is best suited to consumers 21-and-over.

If you’re a true aficionado, counting the calories in your cold one is the farthest thing from your mind. Still, this site is dedicated to beer nerds, and in case you ever wanted to look it up, here’s our growing list of the caloric impact of some of our favorite beers.

Prince of Darkness

Old Rasputin Imperial Stout

When it’s time to deep-hang, only Old Rassy will do the trick. Forget everything you thought you knew about stout, then dry hump what’s left with hops. The result is something between hoppy motor oil and hoppy maple syrup, with a hint of hoppy burnt coffee. (Keep in mind, I love this beer.) All that hoppy goodness will weigh in at around 300 calories.

 Dogfish Head Burton Baton

Not for the faint-of-heart, Burton clocks in at a whopping 10% alcohol, and tastes vaguely as if you added a half pound of sugarcane to a bottle of 90-minute IPA, then left if overnight in the smoker accidentally. Equally heavy-duty, Burton tips the scales at around the 300-mark.

 

Bear Republic Big Bear Black Stout

Similar to Old Rasputin in hoppiness, but with the “middle register” turned down is Big Bear. Bear Republic, headquartered in Sonoma, is appropriately like a vineyard for beer, and makes some of the best and most daring IPAs in the world. When you drink Big Bear (pictured on the right) it’s hard to get the taste of Racer 5 or Hop Rod Rye out of your head, and that’s no mistake. This is life-changing on cask, btw.  Also, picture yourself holed up in a blizzard, in a hunting lodge, feet in an epsom-salts bath, animal heads adorning the walls, a stiff mug of Big Bear in your paw, and ask yourself, “do I really give a @#$% how many calories are in this,” as you wipe off your mountain man beard. Well, just in case you do, it’s 243, at 8.1%ABV.

 

Six Point Diesel

The brash Brooklyn upstart who only uses cans also joins the ever-increasing number of artisinal breweries to release beers seasonally. Diesel is reason enough to look forward to the winter, when those black cans start appearing on bodega shelves. Here’s the ingenious thing about Six Point – it’s relatively cheap, and it’s somehow in every bodega and on every tap. But it’s still good. Better than a lot of the high-priced beer-store-only stuff. Diesel carries Six Point’s distinguishing citrusy aftertaste and sour PH, but with the smoky, hoppy finish of a good dark beer. It’s also the lightest of the dark beers in this section, at only 189 calories and 6.3% ABV.

Noticing a theme yet? Well, before I’m pigeonholed for “go heavy or go home”, some of my lighter favorites…

Refresh

Six Point The Crisp

Is The Crisp really crisp, or is Six Point duping us with power-of-suggestion? Regardless, I have a soft spot for those sexy tall cans at the back of my fridge, and nothing beats the clean, dry palate-feel of a swig of Crisp from a tall pilsner glass on a summer day. Except maybe sloppy sex. (But why choose?) At a modest 5.4% ABV, a crisp will go easy on your wasteline, at only 162 calories.

 Krusovice Dark Lager

No beer-garden hang is complete without a brimming mug of this Czech varietal, which has the backbone of a dark beer but retains the effervescence and translucence of a…well, lager. At only 4.5% ABV and 93 calories, you can have another.

 

Great Divide Samurai Ale

Samurai is a rice ale that tastes great from the bottle, and, like those above, is more “refreshment” than “meal”. It’s crisp, but has a nice round finish and nutty aftertaste. At 5.2% ABV, the Samurai has only 156 calories.

Ayinger Brau Weisse

An unfiltered wheat from Aying, Germany, Brau Weisse is, in my humble opinion, the king of the weisens. Equally great from bottle and glass (I actually prefer bottle), and with lemon or without. Its digestive quality is a little like that of a small loaf of bread or a dinner roll, but a good one. It’s still in the 150-nabe for calories because of its 5%-ish alcohol content.

Slightly Heavier

Aventinus Dopplebock

From the folks who brought you Schneiderweiss, another excellent beer, comes one of the more unique-tasting beers I’ve ever come across. It’s a dark wheat beer, so it’s similar to weisses in affect, but far maltier and fruitier. I was addicted to this for a year straight. (Not that kind of addicted…) As we ratchet up in alcohol content to 8.2, so too do the calories climb, to 246.

 

Green Flash West Coast IPA

This is my desert-island IPA. I sometimes wonder if there’s a periodic table of the elements for hops, and if instability climbs with percentage of hops just as it does with atomic mass. If that’s the case (and I won’t quit my day job for a beer-chemistry PhD just yet), Westie (I just made that up) is surely along the bottom row with Flevorium and all those others that can only exist for microseconds in a super collider. Somehow, though, and unlike lots of its west-coast brethren, The Flash (see what I did there?) holds it together, a masterful balancing act of tartness, saccharinity, and whoopass. (Which might explain why it has a ludicrous 99 out-of-100 on many beer rating sites.) Best yet, for all its raw-hop-conquest brashness, it’s only 7.3% ABV and 219 calories.

Dogfish Head Raison D’etre

If you’ve never tried Dogfish Head, imagine a normal brewery, then add Atlas-sized brass balls. Whereas Green Flash and North Coast keep-it-simple, and just do brilliantly what every other brewery tries to do, the Dogfish guys are like the Ferran Adria or Grant Akatz of beer – deconstructing and reassembling as-they-see-fit. Raison D’etre put them on the map, winning best something-or-other in 2000. (Yea research!) The taste is saccharine, but not syrupy like the IPAs. Rather, it’s a little closer to the cider category, but tough to describe. Suffice-it-to-say the “Rasion” is a play on “raisin”, and the raisin flavor is there, in the background. It’s also deceptively stiff, with 240 calories, and 8% ABV.

 

Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye

I’m bullish on Bear Republic. The hop rod is not quite an IPA, but it’s a close cousin. Get it on cask if you can, but it’s also excellent in a bottle. At 8% ABV, the hop rod clocks in at 240 calories, but who’s counting?