American brewers who dabble in wheat must feel some days like William Murray.

Who?

William Murray – a mostly forgettable character from 17th-century England who had the somewhat bad luck of being the boyhood pal of Charles I. It was Charles’ father, King James I, who devised the philosophy of the “divine right of kings.”

“The state of monarchy,” James wrote, “is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself are called gods.”

Which is all well and good until it comes time to give the king’s obnoxious son a well-deserved spanking. No one would dare lay a hand on the son of a god, right?

Instead, it was his friend, the unfortunate William Murray, who felt the lash. Charles won’t eat his veggies, William gets a beating.

Thus was born the entirely odious concept of the whipping boy.

Which only makes me wonder: Who made German hefeweizen the prince of beers?

For there can be no other explanation for the state of affairs that has left its erstwhile friend, American pale wheat beer, the whipping boy of beer styles.

No style gets flogged by beer freaks as often as American pale wheat (except, perhaps, American light lager, which really has it coming). Beer drinkers (including myself) routinely shrug it off because it doesn’t come close to the aromatic vibrancy of classic hefeweizen.

Pour a glass of Magic Hat Circus Boy and compare it to, say, Ayinger Bräu Weisse, and you’ll be left wondering: Where’s that telltale banana aroma? The clove?

A spokesman for Indiana’s Three Floyds Brewery once told me that his company began brewing Gumballhead because “Nick Floyd [the founder] felt most American wheat beers basically sucked.”

And Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver once told the New York Times that Widmer Hefeweizen – one of the top-selling wheat beers made in America – was “trading on the good name of an actual, established style to sell something that’s different.”

The difference is primarily in the yeast. Early American craft brewers like Widmer, hesitant to introduce a second strain into their brewhouse, often made wheat beer with the same house yeast they used for pale ale or other styles. The ale might look like a hefeweizen, but – without the telltale esters and phenols produced by classic German weizen yeast – it would smell and taste like something else.

Which is exactly the reason American pale wheat evolved into a style of its own.

Gordon Strong, president of the Beer Judge Certification Program, put it bluntly in Stan Hieronymus’s authoritative Brewing with Wheat (Brewers Publications, 2010): “Most people should know that you use a neutral American yeast in this style, but some people still get it wrong. Don’t use a German weizen yeast.”

Or, as the BJCP style guidelines stress, “The clove and banana aromas common to German hefeweizens are inappropriate.”

While that difference may have prompted handwringing among some critics, it also led to a veritable explosion of American innovation. Unbound by German tradition, American wheat ales have evolved with a playful, varied spirit, from the immensely popular Samuel Adams Summer Ale (spiced with Grains of Paradise) to the aforementioned Gumballhead (spiked with ample Amarillo hops). They may be refreshing (Bell’s Oberon Ale) or sweet (Ithaca Excelsior! White Gold) or bracing (Southern Tier HopSun ).

Rightly or wrongly, American wheat ale is the whipping boy for Bavarian hefeweizen… but it turns out that’s not such a bad thing. After all, William Murray’s suffering and loyalty eventually earned him a royal title and the deed to London’s palatial Ham House.

And Charles I? Convicted of treason and beheaded before a mob.

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“I will make it felony to drink small beer.” – Henry IV, Part 2.

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If he had his way, Shakespeare – or at least his memorable character, Jack Cade, who declared his contempt for weak beer (and lawyers) – would be filing criminal charges on the first-ever Session Beer Day this Saturday.

The day is intended as a nationwide effort to encourage bars to serve flavorful yet easy-drinking, low-alcohol ales and lagers that can be enjoyed for extended hours, or a session. Think British-style mild, Czech pilsner, German hefeweizen or Irish stout.

(You can follow it on Twitter, with the hashtag #sessionday.)

The date of the event, April 7 (this Saturday), was selected to coincide with the anniversary of a 1933 amendment to the Volstead Act that paved the way for the repeal of Prohibition. Its passage legalized the sale of so-called 3.2 beer, containing 3.2 percent alcohol by weight (or about 4 percent by volume).

Alcohol content is a keystone in a burgeoning backlash against the hype surrounding strong beer.

For the past 10 years or so, small American brewers have sought attention by producing increasingly stronger specialties, like double India pale ale and imperial stout. In one recent analysis, beer blogger Ken Weaver (HopPress.com) determined the average alcohol by volume of new American releases is now above 7 percent. By comparison, new foreign beer releases average about 5.5 percent ABV.

The surge of strength is understandable because that’s what gets the attention from the industry’s most avid enthusiasts. Bloggers rave about “big” beers and Facebook users brag about their collection of potent bottles. At the BeerAdvocate.com rating site, for example, brands with more than 10 percent alcohol account for about half of the world’s 100 top-scoring beers.

The problem is, you can enjoy only a couple glasses of these gems before falling off the bar stool. Yes, there are plenty of low-alcohol beers available in America, but they tend to be factory-made light beers with little or no distinctive character.

That’s what prompted beer writer Lew Bryson to launch his Session Beer Project in 2007. “I wanted to encourage brewers to make more low-alcohol beers because there are people out here who will drink them,” said Bryson, who stresses he is not opposed to high-alcohol beer. He defines session beer as:

• under 4.5 percent alcohol by volume;
• flavorful enough to be interesting – no light beers, please;
• balanced enough for multiple pints;
• conducive to conversation, and
• reasonably priced.

That 4.5 percent alcohol limit might seem fascistic to some because it summarily excludes brands that many regard as perfectly “sessionable,” including the likes of Allagash White (5.2 percent abv), Stoudt’s Pils (5.5) and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (5.6). It even rules out Founders Brewing’s new All Day IPA, whose label describes it as a “session ale,” though its alcohol content is 4.7 percent by volume. (Ironically, some session beer proponents denounce 4.5 percent abv as too high, insisting it should be 4.0 percent)

Bryson acknowledged the weakness of dictating an alcohol limit but said he proposed it because Americans are fixated by numbers. He said he preferred a more subjective definition: “Session beer is beer you can drink while you’re playing cards without worrying about gambling away your house.”

It’s an admirable goal, even if it ignores the obvious (if distasteful) alternative: Drink fewer beers.

Which points to session beer’s more troublesome challenge.

Craft beer’s success is at least partly due to its potency. Small brewers differentiated themselves from macro-brew conglomerates by offering full-flavored ales and lagers whose higher prices were justified because you didn’t have to drink as much to feel the buzz.

Consumers may rightly feel they’re not getting their money’s worth if the alcohol content is lower, especially since the new wave of session beers are not substantially cheaper than higher-alcohol varieties.

And that, friends, is why Jack Cade declared small beer a felony

A session sixpack

Care to risk the wrath of Shakespearean characters? Here are six great pints to enjoy on Session Beer Day on Saturday:

1. Philadelphia Brewing Kenzinger: Possibly Philly’s go-to session beer. (4.5 percent abv)
2. Yards Philadelphia Pale Ale: Plenty of aromatic hops. (4.3)
3. Sly Fox O’Reilly’s Stout: An Irish-style stout that gives Guinness a run for its money. (3.7)
4. Dupont Avril: A Belgian table beer. (3.5)
5. Stone Levitation Ale: An all-night hop monster. (4.4)
6. Stillwater Bri-Witter Weisse: A tart Berliner Weisse infused with hibiscus. Look for it on tap Saturday at Alla Spina (1410 Mount Vernon St., just off North Broad). (3.3)

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Kristall weiss: A filtered version of hefeweizen.

IF THAT DEFINITION doesn’t just make your skin crawl, well, you are a cold, heartless turtle. Why would anyone intentionally take one of the world’s most-treasured beer styles – a variety whose unique beauty is in its murky, unfiltered body – and intentionally “cleanse” it?

It’s as if a brewery imagined that it could improve a Czech pilsner recipe by removing the hops and adding corn or rice. Uhhh . . . on second thought, never mind. What one man (me) defines as “castration,” the advertising department spins into “Great Taste! Less Filling!”

The good news is that, even without all that cloudy yeast and wheat sediment, crystal-clear kristall weiss still offers much of the signature aroma and flavor of a German wheat beer. It’s the inevitable product of wondrous yeast activity that, at high fermentation temperatures, produces fruity esters and that famously clovelike phenol, 4-vinyl guaiacol. Banana, bubble gum, citrus – it all rises in a plume above the beer’s billowing white head of foam.

Plant your nose into a glass of Bavarian-made Weihenstephaner, one of the more widely available kristallweizen in America, and you’ll come out with the springlike aroma of grapes and vanilla.

It’s in the body where you’ll notice the big difference between hefeweizen and a kristallweizen. Where the former boasts the healthy, creamy texture of wheat, the latter is crisply carbonated in a lager kind of way. The flavor is full and – with low hops – the finish is juicy, not dry. It’s exceptionally clean and refreshing, like a blue-collar lawn mower beer with upper-crust DNA.

Most of the difference in body is a product of its infamous filtering. Further, without all those suspended yeast nutrients, kristallweizen – unlike its unfiltered big brother – cannot be bottle-conditioned. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you I can detect the difference in mouthfeel between natural and artificial bubbles. But I will say that the clear beer seems to lose its head – its most appealing characteristic – a lot more quickly than my beloved hefe.

Deflated, a 10-minute-old kristall weiss looks like an ex at your 20th high school reunion. It leaves you wondering: What did you ever see in that loser?

Which brings us to the infamous lemon.

Having caponized their hefeweizen, Germans – at least the Wolfgangs from the north – will actually plunk a slice into kristallweizen. Perhaps it’s penance, or a feeble attempt to replace some of the lost character. Either way, the fruit has the unfortunate side effect of speeding along the foam’s demise.

The cure, according to numerous sources, is to drop a few grains of rice into kristallweizen, to supposedly provide a nucleation surface for the formation of more CO-2 bubbles. Dubious, I tried the trick once.

The rice fell to the bottom, then floated up, then back down. Through close examination I can authoritatively report it was directly responsible for the magical creation of precisely seven bubbles. Then, having forgotten the experiment, I continued drinking, till . . .

Well, let’s just say this is where adulteration of a perfectly good wheat beer gets you. First they filter it, then you add rice, and then you’re writhing on the floor with something stuck in your throat, vowing revenge on an entirely innocent kristall weiss.

Outside of Weihenstephaner’s excellent Kristallweissbier, only a handful of varieties can be found on beer shelves. Look for Tucher Kristall Weizen, Erdinger Weissbier Kristallklar and Hacker-Pschorr Kristall Weisse.

Even fewer American brewers have tackled the style. New Glarus Laughing Fox (available only in Wisconsin) might come the closest. While not exactly a kristall weiss, crisp and lightly sweet Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss is a refreshing alternative.

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WHERE WOULD lovers of the world’s strongest, darkest beers be without a thin, pale German teenager named Sophia Augusta Frederica?

One of the great chapters of brewing history might not exist. There’d be no stouts named Old Rasputin or The Czar or Ivan the Terrible.

On the upside, the tiresome debate over whether to call it “double” or “imperial” IPA would never have started.

Indeed, no fewer than a third of BeerAdvocate.com’s top 100 beers would be classified as something pedestrian (Estonian Extra Porter, maybe?) if sickly, 16-year-old Sophia hadn’t been dragged off to St. Petersburg in 1745 by her throne-chasing mother to marry her second cousin and become, as your 10th-grade history teacher surely taught you, Catherine II, the Empress of all the Russias.

Catherine the Great (according to the oft-repeated legend) had a passion for the brownest, strongest porter from London’s great Anchor brewery. It was this ale that would eventually evolve into possibly the grandest of all beer styles, the darling of extreme beer aficionados, the prototype for some of the world’s most treasured brands: Russian Imperial Stout.

There’s no definitive source on how the empress discovered the dark ale. Perhaps it was during a visit to England, or maybe as she enjoyed its restorative powers during a spell with pneumonia. I have another theory:

The monarch’s chamberlain, or chief of staff, was a brilliant Russian count named Andrei Shuvalov.

It was Shuvalov who likely wrote most of Catherine’s letters, and it was Shuvalov who spread many of those nasty rumors about her notorious sexual peccadilloes (you’ve heard the one about the horse). The count was also a good friend of the famous British diarist James Boswell, the friend and biographer of one Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Johnson was close friends with the owner of the Anchor Brewery, a member of Parliament named Henry Thrale; in fact, Johnson lived on and off in a room at the brewery along the bank of the Thames at Southwark. At the time, Anchor was well-known for its exceptionally strong version of porter, which had been exported to the Balkans.

It’s not a hard stretch to imagine that Catherine the Great learned of this beer from her chamberlain, who might have been introduced to it by Boswell. In any case, we do know that the empress’ royal court ordered enough shipments of the strong porter that it would become known as Imperial Brown Stout. Legend says it was brewed extra strong to prevent it from freezing during its voyage through the Baltic Sea.

When Thrale died in 1781, it was Johnson who, as estate executioner, uttered one the beer world’s most enduring quotes: “We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” His prediction came true as the new owners, John Perkins and David Barclay, would turn Anchor into the largest brewery in the world before it was acquired by John Courage.

It is the version of Russian Imperial Stout brewed by Courage that old-timers still talk about.

Roasty, aromatic, almost fruity and strong (10 percent alcohol by volume), this stout surely warmed more than a few Russian souls over the centuries.

The stout was brewed into the 1990s, then disappeared after Courage’s brands were sold.

The good news, though, is that it was resurrected late last year by its new owner, Britain’s Wells & Young. This is an iconic beer, worthy of Catherine’s royal court, and surely worthy of your finest snifter.

Sip it now or cellar the bottle; the brewery suggests it’ll mature for as many as 13 years.

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BLACK IPAs are so 2011.

Last year’s hot new style, which exploded in popularity before beer gurus could even settle on a proper name (Cascadian Dark Ale? American Black Ale?), is already getting shoved to the side by a new crop of India pale ales.

Would you believe white IPA?

OK, you saw that one coming – so, how about Baltic IPA?

Those are two of the new styles that found their way into my fridge before I even turned the first calendar page of 2012. And I won’t be surprised if there are more newfangled IPAs to come.

That India pale ale – a strongly hopped, 200-year-old British style named for its colonial exportation to India – has become the darling of small brewers in the United States is remarkable enough. Thirty years ago, you could count the number of American-made IPAs on one paw. Today, it is the single most popular judging category at the annual Great American Beer Festival.

Maybe there’s one or two out there among America’s nearly 2,000 microbreweries, but I can’t think of a single one that doesn’t make an IPA.

What’s fascinating is how these brewers – inspired by either creativity or sheer boredom – have been tweaking this fairly conventional beer style.

First came American-style IPAs, in which Northwestern-grown hops stepped forward. Then there were imperial or double IPAs, super strong ales with even more distinctively aromatic hops.

Then came the single-hop IPAs, fresh-hop IPAs and Belgian-style IPAs with fruity yeast strains.

We’ve seen honey IPAs and oak-aged IPAs and brown IPAs and, in a collaboration between the Stone, Ninkasi and Alchemist breweries, More Brown Than Black IPA.

What a mouthful!

Recipe adaptations are hardly new in brewing. Over the centuries, brewers have added fruit and spices and herbs to create all manner of new styles. Yet traditionalists cringe when rule-breaking brewers fool with IPA’s fairly well-defined and historic recipe. Don’t call it an India pale ale, they gripe, if it’s sour or sweet or black.

Which brings us to the inevitable white IPA. And, no, that’s not a joke.

F.X. Matt of New York just released Saranac White IPA, and Boston Beer stuck bottles of Whitewater IPA into its Brewer’s Choice Variety 12-pack. Both are hybrids of traditional IPA and Belgian witbier, made with wheat malt and oats, coriander and orange, and then hopped out the wazoo.

They’re hazy and white and aromatic and very refreshing. Think Hoegaarden crossed with Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA.

It’s a cool idea and I can see the style getting some traction when spring arrives.

But white IPA is hardly a radical idea. Heck, five years ago, the tradition-bound brewers at G. Schneider & Sohn collaborated with Brooklyn Brewing to produce an exceptionally hoppy wheat beer called Hopfen-Weisse.

No, for a truly revolutionary IPA shake-up, you need to track down a bottle of Samuel Adams Dark Depths.

The label describes it as a Baltic India pale ale, which would be completely accurate, except it has nothing to do with India, it’s not pale, and it’s not an ale.

Instead, it’s a nod to an iconoclastic variety developed by brewers in Poland, Finland and other Baltic countries during the 18th century. The style, known as Baltic porter, is strong, like English dark ale, but brewed with lager yeast.

Dark Depths was made with roasted malts, like an English stout, bittered with Saaz hops, like a Czech pilsner, and fermented with a lager yeast, like a German dunkel.

The result is an offbeat bottle that is dark and snappy, yet smooth and mellow. It reminds me of an imperial stout on quaaludes. So, “Baltic IPA” makes as much sense as anything else, I suppose.

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“MINIMAL TASTE profile, minimal hopping, lacking in hop bouquet and threshold hop levels . . . ” – Fred Eckhardt, The Essentials of Beer Style, 1989, describing style characteristics of malt liquor

“Get your girl in the mood quicker, get your jimmy thicker, with St. Ides malt liquor.” – Ice Cube, Mix Tape, 1994, describing style characteristics of malt liquor

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And there you have it: the grand dichotomy of beer. To some it’s all about the flavor, to others it’s nothing more than . . . um, a stiff drink.

No other style manifests the distinction better than malt liquor.

Outside of a few curiosities produced by craft brewers, not a single malt liquor earns better than a low-average grade from reviewers at BeerAdvocate.com. Most are tagged with epithets worthy of terrorist baby-killers. Even those who are fond of the stuff offer little praise for any quality beyond its cheap facility for denting one’s cerebral cortex.

Notably, even those who decry the neo-Prohibitionists of the Nanny State rarely raise a peep when Bible-thumpers lobby for laws to prevent the sale of “liquid crack” in inner-city neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, no beer style is so crassly adored as malt liquor.

The Irish might’ve written odes to their beloved black stout, and Germany has made lager a religion. But in America, malt liquor – even as it is inevitably packaged in a brown paper bag – is an instantly identifiable cultural icon.

Back in the ’80s, kids mimicked Billy Dee Williams’ smooth Colt 45 slogan: ” . . . works every time!” The Ramones joined in with a one-chord ode (“Gimme, gimme, gimme my Steel Reserve“) and Sublime followed with its debut album, “40oz. to Freedom.”

Comics have leaned on it as a punch line in everything from “The Simpsons” to the Wayans brothers’ parody “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.” A while back, Conan O’Brien mocked up spoof bottles of SpongeBob SquarePants Malt Liquor.

More recently, have you noticed that some hipsters have given up their beloved Pabst Blue Ribbon in favor of 40-ounce bottles of Mickey’s?

Curiously, and despite its dismissal as a serious beer, malt liquor is judged every year at the Great American Beer Festival in a category euphemistically called “American-style specialty lager.” Yes, the same awards ceremony that has honored something so delicately esoteric as Hennepin Farmhouse Saison has also handed out medals to the chug-a-lug likes of Hurricane, Red Bull and OE 800.

Presumably, the winners received high marks under the style’s bogus criteria for their “sweet-fruity esters and complex alcohols.”

Craft beer, this is not.

The mash is a science-lab wonder of barley malt, corn grits and dextrose (corn sugar) or fructose (corn syrup), spiked with an enzyme called alpha amylase to fully convert the corn into fermentable sugar, then boosted with a special yeast to maximize the alcohol.

It is the very definition of a cheap buzz.

Yet, there is a certain fascination with malt liquor among some craft brewers.

Delaware’s Dogfish Head notoriously packages its bottle-conditioned Liquor de Malt in a hand-stamped brown paper bag. (To underscore the joke, the brewery’s founder recorded a rap-video tribute.) Elysian Brewing in Seattle told the Wall Street Journal that its top-selling T-shirt is for AK-47, a malt liquor. And Rogue Ales knows what guys really want on Father’s Day, offering a seasonal release of Dad’s Little Helper Malt Liquor.

There’s a fun, healthy sense of irony at work here. But it misses its target because the small brewers’ versions of malt liquor actually taste good and, I’m obliged to report, won’t make your jimmy any thicker.

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YOU KNOW those Belgian lambics that are all the rage these days? Beer fans rhapsodize about their complex character, their funky aroma, their tart flavor produced through the vagaries of spontaneous fermentation. The brewers who make them are worshipped as artisans, and bottles valued at $30 or more are collected and traded.

It’s worth noting, though, that lambic wasn’t always so beloved.

As recently as 25 years ago, Belgian lambic was largely regarded as beer gone bad. The French, in particular, often raised their Gallic noses in disdain at the barrels from the north, complaining about their unusual flavor. The strange beer was evidence – along with the grim architecture of Brussels, the harsh climate of the North Sea and the eel-centric cuisine of Antwerp – of Belgium’s inferiority.

Even the Belgians themselves acknowledge that lambic takes some getting used to. They blend vintages to soften the edges. They add fruit – cherries, raspberries, raisins – to mask the weird flavors. And when all else fails, they dump pounds of sugar into the barrel to create a variety known as Faro.

It is a low-alcohol “small” beer made from secondary runnings from the mash tun, a process akin to reusing the grounds in your Mr. Coffee. The grain bill is typically about a third unmalted wheat, and aged hops are added for preservation, not bitterness. Like any lambic, it is fermented in an open vat then allowed to turn sour in the barrel. After some months, it is blended with fresh beer and dark sugar, perhaps some herbs. Then more water is added to further weaken the blend to 3 percent alcohol or so.

In its heyday, Faro was the go-to drink of Belgium.

Belgians would spend hours in the cafe, rattling the dice throughout their beloved games of mort subite (sudden death), draining glass upon glass of cheap Faro. Almost certainly some of the pitchers in those classic old peasant paintings by Pieter Bruegel were filled with Faro.

It was light and refreshing and, French snobs notwithstanding, a pleasant respite. It was a drink that a child could handle without risk of falling over in a stupor. (Even today, it is not uncommon to watch a 10-year-old in Brussels’ family-friendly cafes, happily stirring sugar into a glass of Faro as if it were iced tea.)

Yet, despite the renewed interest in artisanal Belgian styles, Faro is a rarity in America. Only a handful of breweries produce the variety, and few of them ship it across the Atlantic.

Some versions, like De Troch Chapeau, are exceptionally sweet and reminiscent of Mott’s Apple Juice. Others, like Lindemans Faro Lambic, balance that sweetness with the tartness produced by those wild yeast strains. Boon Faro is a traditional blend with the extremely weak third-runnings of the mash, called Meerts.

Drie Fonteinen Straffe Winter is stronger than most (8 percent alcohol) and quite funky. After a glass, adjectives like “goaty” come to mind.

Which, 150 years ago, was not exactly high praise.

The poet Charles Baudelaire held a special contempt for Faro in the mid-19th century. In a letter to his mother during a stay in Brussels, he complained of “three months of continual diarrhea, broken occasionally by unbearable constipation,” all of which he attributed to “the climate and the use of Faro.”

In a pamphlet he titled, Pauvre Belgique (Poor Belgium), Baudelaire railed, “The Faro comes from that great big latrine, the Senne – a beverage extracted from the city’s carefully sorted excrement. Thus it is that, for centuries, the city has drunk its own urine.”

Which only underscores a basic truth of drinking: One man’s pee is another man’s pleasure.

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THE HARVEST season typically brings beer lovers classic German-style Oktoberfestbier, newfangled American pumpkin brews and ale made with freshly picked hops. In one small corner of the world, though, harvest time means etrog beer.

Or, as David Cohen, owner of Tel Aviv’s Dancing Camel Brewing Co. and inventor of this unusual style, says, “When you’re done shaking ’em, we start baking ’em.”

Maybe you need to know a little about Jewish tradition to understand the humor, so here goes:

The etrog is a fragrant, yellow, thick-skinned citrus fruit grown mainly in Israel, Italy, Yemen and Morocco. It looks like a lemon and tastes more bitter, though it is rarely eaten. Some believe an etrog, not an apple, was the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eve.

That partly explains how it became a unique symbol of the Jewish autumn holiday of Sukkot, which this year begins sundown Oct. 12. It’s most notably used in an intricate blessing, during which it is held (along with a bundle of palm fronds and willow branches, known as a lulav) and shaken toward the north, south, east, west, up and down to symbolize the belief that God is everywhere.

Some Jews will spend days in search of the finest etrog, traipsing through markets with a magnifying glass in hand, inspecting them for symmetrical shape, color, texture and, above all, the presence of a pittam, or stem. A perfect etrog may cost $25 or more.

But after the seven days of Sukkot, there’s not much demand for the fruit. Which means that, in the markets of Israel, all those never-selected “imperfect” etrogs simply go to waste.

“They’re literally worthless,” said Cohen. That’s how he got the idea to brew a beer with etrogs.

A former accountant from New Jersey, Cohen opened his brewpub, one of the few in Israel, in 2006 with the goal of making beer with ingredients unique to that part of the world. He brews a stout with carob from North Africa and an ale with pomegranate, a symbol of Rosh Hashanah. In December, he brews a cherry vanilla stout that tastes like sufganiyot, those jelly doughnuts enjoyed during Hanukkah.

From that perspective, etrog beer is a natural.

He asks his friends to donate theirs after the holidays, and he collects still more from a local farmer. “I told him I’d take them off his hands,” said Cohen. “And he said, ‘Only if you promise me a few bottles.’ So we had a deal.”

The etrogs are peeled and their rinds baked dry. Cohen uses about 150 per batch. Because the fruit is so bitter and aromatic, it couldn’t be added to just any beer. “There’s no way you’d throw it into a stout. It would ruin the beer,” he said. “It would have to go into a beer that is lighter and naturally fruity.”

His choice: a Belgian-style witbier, a style that is commonly made with dried orange peels. “It produces a beer that is dramatically different in terms of aroma,” he said. “It’s very floral.”

Sounds strange, but all beer styles are a product of cultural tradition and necessity.

Those beers of Oktoberfest, for example, were originally brewed strong and malty as a celebration of the annual harvest. Pumpkin beer was the product of Yankee ingenuity, with gourds replacing British malt that was in short supply in Colonial days.

Cohen proudly calls his creation ‘Trog Wit and says, “It’s Sukkot in a glass.”

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YO, POT HEADS, this bud’s for you!

That’s right, I’m talking about marijuana beer. Stoner suds. Ganja brew. Miller Really High Life.

It’s commercially unavailable, obviously, due to federal drug and alcohol laws. But now that several states have OK’d the sale and use of marijuana for medical purposes, it’s cropping up in private circles.

There have been reports of California dispensaries selling behind-the-counter homemade pot beer at 20 bucks a bottle. And there’s a growing discussion about home-brew recipes online.

The emergence of marijuana in liquid form shouldn’t be surprising. Before its possession was criminalized in the 1930s, marijuana was commonly ingested via liquid tincture alcohol. Today, tinctures – sometimes made instead with glycerin – are increasingly popular in legal marijuana dispensaries.

Still, California marijuana activist Ed Rosenthal doubts that even as weed laws are relaxed nationwide, we’ll ever see legal pot brew.

“It’s not going to happen because commercialization would get into the realm of alcohol regulations,” said Rosenthal, who in 1984 authored and self-published Marijuana Beer: How to Make Your Own Hi-Brew Beer.

Now out of print, a single copy costs more than $100 on Amazon.com. I asked Rosenthal if he would share some tips.

Most recipes, he said, make use of the leaves, not the more potent buds. More industrious homebrewers use kief, the resinous, THC-packed cannabis glands that can be painstakingly sifted from the plant.

The two biggest challenges, Rosenthal said, are off flavors and contamination. If the marijuana is added during the initial wort boil, its water-soluble tars and chlorophyll will be extracted, giving the beer a nasty, plantlike flavor. Added after the boil, it can introduce bacteria and sour the beer.

Rosenthal said the easiest solution is soaking the weed for a couple of hours in cold water, without stirring, to remove those foul-tasting ingredients. The marijuana (about one ounce per gallon) is then added during the initial wort boil.

What’s it taste like?

Not long ago, I got my hands on a bottle of homebrewed hemp hooch. Purely in the spirit of journalistic curiosity, you understand.

Dark and murky, it looked like an unfiltered brown ale. It smelled like a resinous dry-hopped ale, but it tasted like a freshly cut lawn. I’d tell you more about it, but I seem to be experiencing a bout of short-term memory loss.

While it seemed a bit of a waste of expensive herb, it’s not hard to understand the urge to pair the two intoxicants. After all, one of the vital ingredients of beer – those bitter hop flowers known as humulus lupulus – is a species in the same family that includes cannabis.

Indeed, several commercial brewers make beer with hemp seeds. They’re completely legal, because the seeds contain no THC, marijuana’s psychoactive component. The feds nonetheless prohibit drug references and images of those familiar spiked leaves on labels.

Typically, the seeds are toasted and add a nutty flavor to the beer’s finish.

The best I’ve tasted so far is the wittily named Metacool Maltuwanna from Wynkoop Brewing Co. Because it’s not packaged, the beer didn’t have to go through federal label review. That means the only place to score some is at the company’s brewpub in Denver, America’s so-called “mile-high medical marijuana capital.”

It’s an imperial amber ale that’s exceptionally smooth and malty but not overly sweet. There’s no grassy flavor, and the only buzz I caught was from its 7.8 percent alcohol content.

Can’t find a dealer? I recommend one of these other hemp beers: Nectar Ales Hemp Ale (California); Uinta Dubhe Imperial Black IPA (Utah); O’Fallon Hemp Hop Rye amber ale (Missouri).

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GOURD HELP US, it’s pumpkin beer season again.

That means brewers aren’t just raiding the spice cabinet, they’re reaching for their Rogets Thesaurus, too. No other beer style inspires more puns than the Great Pumpkin.

Pumking, River Horse Hipp-O-Lantern, JackAle Lantern, Gourd of the Rings, Mashing Pumpkin, Pumpkin Up the Volume – well, you get the idea.

“Coming up with the names is half of the fun,” says Dick Cantwell, co-owner and brew master of Seattle’s Elysian Brewing.

He should know: No one in America makes more varieties of pumpkin beer than Cantwell.

His most popular, Elysian Night Owl, is distributed throughout the Northwest and Mid-Atlantic on draft and in 22-ounce bombers. It’s made with more than seven pounds per barrel, with chopped-up and pureed pumpkin added during the mash, boil and fermentation, along with roasted pumpkin seeds, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice.

That would be enough for any other brewery. But this year, Cantwell will make about a dozen other types in preparation for his brewery’s annual Great Pumpkin Beer Fest, the nation’s largest devoted to what is essentially a worthless orange squash.

He brews pumpkin stout, pumpkin pilsner, pumpkin hefeweizen and even a pumpkin malt liquor. He’s begun collaborating with some of the nation’s top brewers to make even more imaginative styles.

And next month during the Great American Beer Festival, he’s throwing down the gauntlet by pouring 10 different pumpkins at Denver’s celebrated Falling Rock Taphouse. With the saloon serving as the central meeting place during the world’s most prestigious beer-judging event, Cantwell’s boldness is the beer-making equivalent of playing the banjo during a Beethoven concert.

Indeed, many brewers and sober-minded beer geeks sniff that pumpkin ale is a gimmick whose spicy flavor is dependent not on traditional ingredients, but on whatever jars of McCormick’s are handy. So, it’s reasonable to wonder: How did a brewer known as one of the industry’s deep thinkers get hooked into pumpkins?

Cantwell acknowledges that, until recently, he didn’t think much of pumpkin beer, either. It wasn’t until he started brewing a variety of styles that he realized that using the veggie was a challenge that required some serious planning.

For one thing, pumpkin contains a lot of water, so it’s difficult to reach the proper gravity (or sugar content) in the beer’s original wort. Secondly, it’s like brewing with mashed potatoes; the mash can be thick and extremely difficult to separate the liquid from the solids.

Then, there’s that green, slippery, squash-like mouth feel.

“You want sort of a swampy taste,” Cantwell said, “but you’ve got to make a good beer around it, so it tastes interesting, Some brewers just throw diced pumpkin into a finished beer, and all they do is ruin perfectly good beer. You have to take it seriously, not something you’re ashamed of…

“I still don’t take it super seriously – it’s a lark. But in the end, we’re just making beer. It’s not life and death.”

Maybe not, but each year beer lovers anticipate the arrival of their favorites like Linus in the pumpkin patch.

At Elysian’s festival, that moment comes when they tap the Great Pumpkin, a giant, 200-pounder that contains still-fermenting beer. This year, the festival will stretch over two days, Oct. 8-9, and will feature pumpkin ales from the likes of Russian River, Allagash, Norway’s Nøgne Ø, Rogue, Anderson Valley and the Philadelphia area’s Iron Hill and Stewart’s brewpubs.

Today, Cantwell laughs at how the phenomenon has grown and says, “It’s just one of those things that got away from us… We were joking the other night that if this trend keeps up, we’ll need another brewery just to brew pumpkin beer.”

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