We have once again made it to the best time of year: Fall, when the temperature in the South finally starts to drop below 90 degrees, college football is on the television and seasonal beers really hit their stride. Spring and summer have their own seasonals, but they aren’t as exciting as fall and winter seasonals.

I was lying in bed last Saturday night trying to fall asleep and basking in the glow of a near perfect performance by the Crimson Tide in their victory over San Jose State when it occurred to me that this week’s column should focus on the combination of great beer and our state’s official pastime.

For the last few hundred years, Germans brewed mostly lagers, the English brewed mostly low-alcohol ales and stouts with understated hops, and Belgians brewed higher alcohol ales fermented with spicy yeasts. These were the major brewing cultures, and there was minimal cross-pollination between them.

Lenny’s R.I.P.A. is the brainchild of Jeremy Cowan, founder of Schmaltz Brewing Company. Schmaltz does not have its own brewery. It owns recipes that are produced under contract by brewing facilities owned by other companies.

The science is a bit complex, but the important point about malting is that it develops enzymes that allow the grain’s starches to eventually be converted to fermentable sugars, and that’s where the alcohol in beer comes from. The base grain for all beer is barley, but wheat, rye and oats are all very common in craft beer, as they enhance the flavor and body of certain beer styles. Rice and corn are very common in mass-produced lagers, as they lighten both the flavor and body of beer.

When writing this column, it is my habit to focus on beers you can buy in Birmingham. Once in a while I deviate from that practice when there’s an interesting story involved. The story surrounding the recent release of BrewDog’s The End of History, a beer with 55% alcohol by volume, definitely merits a mention in Hopped Up.

This column is titled “Hopped Up,” a play on words involving one of the main ingredients in beer. I consider myself a “hop head”, someone who loves intensely hoppy beers above all others. But it occurs to me that not everyone reading this understands exactly what hops are, or what they do for beer.

The 1990s were a good decade for craft beer. After early pioneers like Anchor and Sierra Nevada blazed a difficult trail in the 70s and 80s and proved small American brewers could thrive in a market dominated by giant corporations, a large wave of homebrewers decided to go pro in the 90’s.

As we suffer through the sweltering, humid summertime here in the Southeast, it’s time to think about lighter, thirst-quenching brews. An intense stout may be a nice companion on a cold winter evening but it’s less appealing when the temperature is 95° and sweat is dripping from your brow.

Consider this quote from 2006: “Gallup has asked Americans about their drinking habits since 1939, and over the course of those 60 plus years, an average of 63% of Americans have said they drink alcohol.” That’s a solid majority. Sadly, some in our midst have not learned any lessons from the failure of Prohibition. History is clear that during the Noble Experiment, alcohol consumption did not decrease; its main effect was to increase disdain for the law as otherwise law-abiding and productive members of society were forced to obtain illicit alcohol through illegal channels. It was Prohibition that imprinted the image of gangsters with Tommy guns in the popular consciousness. While any student of history understands why and how Prohibition failed to achieve a single goal sought by its proponents, Prohibition’s ideological descendants do not.