Alaska sounds like the perfect place for bold beer stories: glaciers, pioneers, and cans that look like they belong in a national park gift shop. So we went back to our Alaskan Brewing Company haul and tasted five more beers from the “40 beers for 40 years” pack, scoring everything and comparing our notes to what the brewery promises on the label and online.

We start with Wilderness, a beer that literally calls itself an “Alaskan Cold Beer,” then move into hop-forward territory with Ascender Pale Ale and Juneau Juice Juicy IPA. Along the way, we keep bumping into the same tension craft beer fans know well: when a brewery lists strawberry candy, lemon peel, pineapple, tangerine, pine, and cedar, what happens when your palate mostly gets “mellow”? We’re not trying to dunk on anyone, but we do get honest about how missing tasting notes affect trust, especially when you’re making a buying decision from the can.

We also take a detour into Alaska taproom rules that blew our minds: a 36-ounce daily limit per customer and a hard close at 9 p.m. Then we give Alaskan Brewing real credit for sustainability, including CO2 recapture and a biomass boiler that turns brewing waste into fuel. We wrap by ranking our favorites across all ten beers from both weeks and teasing what’s coming next with Oktoberfest, and pumpkin beer reviews.

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