Michigan golfers: Local Bell's Oberon Summer Ale is your 19th hole beer of choice

Visiting Michigan during the summertime and not golfing is painful for me. It’s like going to Vail and not checking out the slopes. Like passing up an afternoon siesta in Spain.

So over the weekend I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan’s second largest town with some seriously good golf, like Pilgrim’s Run, Thousand Oaks and the municipal - and really well conditioned - L.E. Kaufman Golf Course. One of the newest courses, The Mines, is a very unique course built by up-and-coming designer Mike DeVries. Unlike most of Michigan, Grand Rapids is booming, thanks to it becoming the Midwest’s new center for medical research.

I didn’t get to golf though, as a full wedding schedule kept me off the course. But I did get to drink…

A guilty pleasure of mine, and just about everyone I know who lives or has been to Michigan in the summer months, is to order up a Bell’s Oberon Ale at just about every stop. I’m willing to bet some cash that Michael Phelps has enjoyed his share of Oberons during his days in Ann Arbor.

I am seriously hooked on Oberon. It’s a wheat ale with a tasty combination of spice and fruit. It’s usually served with a slice of orange. It’s cloudy and unfiltered and probably too thick to binge drink. It’s strong too, with a 5.8% ABV. I can never have more than three before having to kick it over to something lighter, or just go straight to the hard stuff. It tastes a little like Sam Adams Summer Ale but way better. Outside on a sunny day, Oberon is the only way to go in Michigan.

Though a local brewery from Kalamazoo, Bell’s ships nearly everywhere in the state and chances are if the golf club you’re playing doesn’t have it, the closest bar does. Their distribution is pretty solid in the Midwest. They’ve also just returned to Illinois after a two year absence due to some strange legal reasons.

Summers in Michigan means great golf and plenty of Oberon (and when I can’t have one or the other I pout like that damn baby sitting across from me on my plane ride home, that little bastard). Last summer when I road tripped to Michigan, I threw a couple pony kegs in my trunk before I drove back to South Carolina, so I had Oberon for the next month.

Oberon is on the shelves through October. I’ll be in Michigan again in September, and I guarantee at every bar I’ll be checking the tap out for this stuff…