Don’t Worry by Wormtown and CBC Hopheads Guide to the Galaxy

Welcome to the Boston Better Beer Bureau, our latest incarnation of the trusty suds reporting we’ve done at DigBoston ever since people referred to beer as suds. Really, we remember the days when we’d spend half our checks on fancy German bottles just so that we could review them, whereas these days breweries from all around New England kindly send us samplers and stay in touch. The BBBB is an attempt to return that love, all while sharing more news about the innumerable microbreweries and pubs among us.

Entering the craft beer section these days is like walking through the cereal aisle: pure and unadulterated paradise. Lots of remarkable selections, a few disgusting ones, certainly a ton of mediocre product, and when you’re lucky, picks so delicious that you keep on returning for more. Month after month, year after year. If you have ever tasted Honey Smacks, then you know the song I’m singing.

Beer basically works in the same way. And since it is a jungle out there, with new pun-riffic IPAs and extravagant hoppy variants dropping each week, it helps to have some brands that you can typically rely on. This can take time, patience, and deep investigation; Dorchester Brewing Co., for example, brews some of the finest sips this side of San Francisco, and not always in its own skin. Of course, I don’t always have enough time to read the fine print and see what brewery is co-packing or bottling for whom, and in moments like those I reach for names that I know can trust—standout standbys like Wormtown and Cambridge Brewing Co.

I guess that’s how I came upon Don’t Worry last month. Wormtown’s best-known IPA, Be Hoppy, has become a frequent flyer in my home refrigerator, and so it made sense to finish off the chorus. While Be Hoppy is that perfect mix of clever pun and delicious hop punch, Don’t Worry packs less of a bite than its taller and slightly darker tallboy brother. That’s not a knock for me and it should not be for you either, though; these silver bullets aren’t for the hop-wary. At 5.8% ABV, Don’t Worry is the perfect halfway bitter solution for day-drinking all summer long, a sweet tongue shower longtime fans of Wormtown’s flagship will begin to worship in short time if they haven’t already.

And then there’s CBC’s Hopheads Guide to the Galaxy, a 7% ABV triumph for the serious beer drinker who wants it all. Phil and Will and their brew team in Cambridge have done good this time. Perhaps better than usual if that is even possible. This one’s smooth but rugged, simultaneously simple and complex. There’s citrus bursting out of every sip, but I would go so far as to recommend Guide to the Galaxy to hopheads who are not particularly crazy about juicy treats. There is enough action bouncing around this universe to tickle virtually any palate.

Now here’s the part where I get sentimental. Perhaps it is because I have been ogling the cans for Don’t Worry and Hopheads for a couple weeks now and have come to like having them in close view, but I can definitely see both of these beers having some serious staying power. The latter’s been around for two years strong already; the former has a solid start; both have the flavor and a killer can design that separate them from the average four-pack.