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It’s currently 92 degrees in Missoula. That means several things. First, I’m inside trying to stand as close to the air-conditioning vents as possible. Second, the Clark Fork River is flowing by outside my window with little white riffles that make me think of the foam on top of a beer. Third, I’m probably still thinking about beer, especially what kind of beer I’ll want to drink when my face melts as soon as I leave the pleasant 71-degree atmosphere of the newsroom.

Hot-weather beer is not as simple a topic as one might think. Selecting a beer light enough to quench your thirst while maintaining good taste characteristics is tough, what with all those nuclear-hopped IPAs, double IPAs, and Imperial IPAs out there.

A stout or porter just won’t cut the heat, and your traditional hot-weather fallbacks like PBR and anything with a “Light” after the name have as much flavor as that bottle of yellow soap on your kitchen counter.

Last Sunday as I scoured the Web sites of the Missoula Three for an open tasting room, I happened upon UNPilsner. Yes, that’s the UNofficial name according to Bayern Brewing tasting room maven Greta Jernberg.

This unfiltered Pilsner is thanks to the brewers’ fondness for tasting beers right off the barrel, before they are filtered for clarity.

And thanks to those tiny little yeast particles, which give the light-yellow beer its cloudy look, this Pilsner has some nice flavor characteristics.

I like the way it has a nice clean taste with less body than an ale but without sacrificing taste. Besides, the unfiltered beer looks great in a growler.

So when the heat gets to you, unwind and have an UNPilsner at Bayern Brewing.

Does Montana need a beer blog? Well, no more or less than it needs a model train blog or a political blog. So why blog about beer? Because beer meets all the criteria for a great blog. Just like politicians, beer comes in many different styles. Some are more liberal in taste, some more conservative and way too many are middle of the road. While many beer drinkers don’t like to discuss politics when drinking, beer doesn’t discriminate and tends to retain its characteristic taste no matter what the topic of conversation. Beer, like politicians, will go flat if it sits out too long. It’s much better to keep your beer and your politics away from direct sunlight. OK, so beer won’t cheat on you, raise your taxes, kiss your babies or sponsor pork barrel projects, but its rich history is as long and varied as the history of civilization. As long as politicians have been stabbing each other in the back to rise to power, beer has been there in the background, never far from the action.

I drove to PDX with enough time to grab a beer at one of several locations where you can do so in the airport. While I knew Montana would be a recreational paradise, I harbored a deep and resounding fear of the beer. I had only ever been exposed to Big Sky’s Moose Drool and Blackstar, two good, but not overly representative examples. Here I was leaving beertopia, the place where the water is clean and pure, and the hops are like green sausages hanging off the vines with their oils dripping to the ground in an abundance not seen since before prohibition. Deep in the bowels of the airport, where the Horizon flights arrive and depart from, I found a beer vendor and purchased a Boss IPA from the new Laurelwood pub. I sipped it and wondered if it would be the last hoppy, high-alcohol beer I’d get to drink for a while. On board flight 233 from PDX to Missoula, the flight attendant announced the featured beer would be Bear Republic’s Red Racer IPA. I was completely surprised. I watched as she walked up and down the aisle pouring as much as each passenger wanted for the length of the flight. It was midnight in Missoula before I hit the cardboard pillow in my hotel room, so I dreamt of big beers chock-full of yummy centennial hops and with an alcohol content in the 7 to 9 percent range. The interviews went well, and my nervousness faded, even as we walked into the tasting room at the Kettlehouse. But it wasn’t until I took a long pull of Double Haul IPA that I knew everything would be OK. Don’t get the wrong idea. I didn’t take the job up here based only on that first swallow of Missoula beer, but it might have weighted the decision a little.