Name: A Dark Night in Munich
Brewery: Samuel Adams (Longshot Series)
Style: Munich Dunkel
Price: $9.99 per 6-pack
ABV: 5.9
Final Grade: 38
Score: B

I was looking forward to this one.

At 5.9%, it was the most mellow of the bunch. No spices. No tricks to cover up the flaws. Just a straight, dark lager, and a deceptively difficult one to brew.

I’d say Corey Martin did all right with A Dark Night in Munich. The homebrewer who won the rights to have his beer sold as 33.3 percent of the Longshot Series winners six pack produced a toasty, malt-heavy lager.

The alcohol was a bit high for the style and there was a strong cherry flavor that seemed distracting. Otherwise, this was a welcome part of the collection.

The mission was to create a beer for someone with a strong sense of her German heritage and who preferred dark beers.

Dirndls and Lederhosen were printed on T-shirts.

Beer gardens are not just about drinking outside. There is a sense of place about them — inviting, friendly and unthreatening.

Name: The Crisp
Brewery: Sixpoint
Style: Pilsner
Price: $9.49 per 4-pack of 16 oz. cans
ABV: 5.4
IBU: 42
Final Grade: B
Score: 37

This was my first Sixpoint beer, which was admittedly an unusual choice, as “The Crisp” is the only lager that this ale-centric brewery has crafted. Yet it left me with a terrific first impression.

I’ll acknowledge, up front, that I drank it out of a can on that first tasting. It was my first night back in Brooklyn and two old friends showed up with this as one of two Sixpoint four-packs in their hands. Cans are not the ideal tasting vessel, of course. And what came through as big malt developed into more of a cooked corn aroma when I poured it into the glass.

A little cooked corn — caused by dimenthyl sulfide — is common in some lagers. It’s allowed in pilsners and light lagers, but this was a bit much for me. I checked some other beer review websites, and nobody else has mentioned it, so perhaps I got a bad batch or maybe I’m just more sensitive to it than others. Nevertheless, I still liked this beer. It’s highly drinkable. Plus, I love the name.

How dare AB-InBev use this innocent Canadian brewery as its way into the craft beer world?

Name: Patrick Paulick
Title: New England Regional Manager
Affiliation: Brooklyn Brewery

I met Patrick during a beer dinner at The Perfect Pear Cafe in Bradford, Vt. And what a fine dinner companion. He is knowledgeable without being pretentious, classy without being snooty.

During the beer dinner that he was hosting, Patrick displayed a natural ability to talk about the beer and food pairings without becoming overbearing. Why does the East India Pale Ale go well with curried grilled vegetable flatbread with local goat cheese? Patrick can tell you.

He took a few minutes to talk about his reaction to someone who orders a Chocotini during one of the beer dinners, which brewery besides Brooklyn is doing the most innovative stuff now, and how James Earl Jones can explain why beer matters. His answers follow:

One of the things I like about lagers is that they challenge your palette. I often find myself wondering What is that flavor I’m tasting? With the LTD Series 05, the brewers at Full Sail clearly understand this.

Oskar Blues likes to be cute with names. The “Ten Fidy,” “Old Chub,” and “Gubna” Imperial IPA, while outstanding beverages, seem more like punch lines than serious beers.

High noon snuck up on Rik Marley one Saturday in late November. The afternoon had seemed to come a few hours too soon.Marley brightened, however, when the conversation turned to pilsners.