London Fog Review: Atypical Brewery’s Earl Grey and Vanilla Cream Ale

At a Glance

I got hooked on this one for a dumb reason: the name promised weather, and the glass delivered something closer to a warm afternoon. London Fog is Atypical Brewery & Barrelworks’ cream ale brewed with Earl Grey tea and vanilla, and it is the kind of beer that sounds like a novelty until you actually taste it. It is not. It is a genuinely well-built easy-drinker that happens to smell like a good cup of tea. I have gone through a lot of tea-and-vanilla beers chasing that London Fog latte flavor since I first tried the drink itself on a coffee-shop counter years ago, and this is one of the few that gets the balance right instead of turning into liquid potpourri.

Who Makes It: Atypical Brewery & Barrelworks

Atypical Brewery & Barrelworks is a small craft brewery in downtown Minot, North Dakota, built by four partners, Eric Johnson, Nick Holwegner, Dylan Davis and Brady Dixon, inside a restored 1929 Westland Oil filling station that had sat empty for decades before they got their hands on it. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, and the crew spent roughly a year restoring the cottage-style A-frame structure before pouring their first pints for the Minot public in 2018 and formally opening their taste room in June 2019. The brewery leans hard into barrel-aged sours and other unusual styles, which is honestly the right personality for a brewery willing to put Earl Grey tea in a cream ale and call it London Fog.

I have not made it to Minot myself, but I have leaned on a stack of check-ins, retailer listings and local press coverage to build out the details here, and I will flag anywhere a number is a third-party estimate rather than an official brewery spec. That matters more with a beer like this one, since small regional breweries rarely publish a full nutrition panel the way the big national names do.

ABV, IBU and What Is Actually in the Glass

London Fog is built on a cream ale base, which is the same light, corn-and-barley-forward American style that made Genesee Cream Ale a household name, then dosed with real Earl Grey tea leaves and vanilla. Retailer listings put it at 5.2% ABV, though the beer’s own tracker page rounds that down to 5%, so treat anything between those two numbers as accurate depending on the batch. The IBU sits at 30, which is on the lower end for anything hop-forward (if you want the full breakdown of what that number even measures, I wrote a whole guide to what IBU means for exactly this kind of question), but a cream ale is not trying to be bitter in the first place. The bitterness here is mostly a backstop against the sweetness from the vanilla and lactose-adjacent malt bill, not a flavor on its own.

Calories are the trickiest number here. I have seen a retailer estimate of roughly 160 calories per 12oz serving, which lines up with where a 5.2% ABV cream ale should land, but that is a third-party calculation, not a figure Atypical has published themselves. If you are counting calories strictly, treat that number as a reasonable ballpark rather than gospel.

Tasting Notes

Appearance: Pours a clean pale gold, close to straw-colored, with a thin white head that settles fast. Nothing hazy about it, which makes sense for a cream ale base; the tea and vanilla are additions, not a fundamental change to the beer’s body.

Aroma: The Earl Grey hits first, that soapy-citrus bergamot smell that Earl Grey always has, backed by a rounder vanilla sweetness underneath. It smells closer to a dessert than a session beer, in a good way.

Taste: The tea carries through on the palate more than I expected, with the bergamot note staying present rather than fading into general maltiness. Vanilla shows up mid-sip and rounds out the edges, and the cream ale base keeps the whole thing light instead of letting it turn into a dessert beer. Drinkers who have had it describe it as creamy and smooth with a clean vanilla finish, which tracks with what the tea-and-vanilla combination should produce on a light ale base.

Mouthfeel and finish: Medium-light body, moderate carbonation, and a finish that is more clean than lingering. This is built to be a full pint beer, not a four-ounce sipper, and at 5.2% ABV it drinks that way.

Food Pairing

A tea-and-vanilla cream ale is not a beer I would reach for with a heavy plate of ribs, but it earns a spot at brunch or dessert. I would put it next to lemon bars, a simple pound cake, or a cheese board built around something mild like brie, where the vanilla can play nice instead of getting steamrolled. If you want a proper smoked-meat pairing session, I broke down what actually works with brisket, ribs and pulled pork in my beer and BBQ pairing guide, but London Fog is not the beer for that table. Save it for the lighter half of the menu, or just drink it on its own the way most people at the taproom clearly do.

How It Compares to Other Beers I Have Reviewed

London Fog sits in an odd little corner of the beer world: flavored, dessert-adjacent, but still light-bodied rather than a full stout. If you want the sweeter, heavier version of that same “beer as dessert” idea, my guide to milk stouts explains why a stout carries lactose sweetness so differently, and I would point you toward my Oreo Speedwagon review of Lake Time Brewery’s milk stout for a full-bodied comparison, or my Pinche Guey review if you want vanilla pushed to its most decadent extreme in a barrel-aged Mexican chocolate imperial stout (worth reading my imperial stout explainer first if that style is new to you). For something closer in body and drinkability to London Fog, my review of Old Wye Wit covers a Belgian-style wheat ale that shares the same light, sessionable footprint, just without the tea.

If hop-forward beers are more your speed and you are wondering why London Fog does not chase that lane at all, my hazy IPA explainer covers the New England style at the opposite end of the flavor spectrum, and my Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing review is a good next stop if you want a widely available hazy IPA to put next to this one at a tasting. For fruited sours instead of tea-flavored ales, my Crimson Briar review covers Counter Weight Brewing’s raspberry sour, another example of a brewery using a non-hop ingredient to define the beer’s whole identity, the same trick Atypical is pulling here with Earl Grey.

Where to Buy It

Atypical Brewery & Barrelworks is a small regional operation out of Minot, North Dakota, and London Fog has not shown up in national distribution or on Saucey the last time I checked. Your best bet for the real thing is the taproom itself or a bottle shop within driving distance of Minot. If you cannot get there, here are five real, currently available alternatives that hit similar notes, whether that is the tea-and-vanilla flavor profile or the classic cream ale base it is built on.

Final Verdict

London Fog earns its spot on my list of beers worth tracking down if you are ever in North Dakota, or worth flagging to a friend who is. It is a genuinely well-executed flavored cream ale from a brewery that clearly does not take the easy route, restoring a historic gas station into a taproom and then filling it with barrel-aged sours and tea-infused ales instead of just another rotating IPA lineup.

FAQs

What does London Fog by Atypical Brewery taste like?

It tastes like a cream ale base carrying real Earl Grey tea and vanilla flavor, with a bergamot-citrus note up front and a smooth vanilla finish. Drinkers commonly describe it as creamy and smooth rather than bitter or hop-forward.

What is the ABV of London Fog?

Most retailer listings put London Fog at 5.2% ABV. The beer’s own tracker page lists it slightly lower at 5%, so treat the true figure as somewhere in that narrow range depending on the batch.

What is the IBU of London Fog?

30 IBU, which is a moderate-low bitterness level appropriate for a cream ale where the flavor comes from tea and vanilla rather than hops.

Where can I buy Atypical Brewery’s London Fog?

It is primarily available at Atypical Brewery & Barrelworks’ taproom in Minot, North Dakota, and at a limited number of retailers in that region. It is not currently in national distribution or listed on Saucey; the alternatives in this review are widely available substitutes with a similar flavor profile.

Is London Fog a cream ale or a tea-flavored beer?

Both. The base style is a cream ale, the same light American style behind beers like Genesee Cream Ale, and Atypical builds London Fog by brewing that base with real Earl Grey tea leaves and vanilla.

How many calories does London Fog have?

Roughly 160 calories per 12oz serving according to third-party retailer estimates. Atypical Brewery has not published an official calorie count, so treat that figure as an estimate rather than a confirmed spec.