Top Three Small Breweries (15K bbl or less)
Suarez Family Brewery (Hudson, New York)
Dan Suarez of Hill Farmstead fame recently opened his doors and has been turning out staggeringly well-executed Pilsners, lagers, and saisons. With his emphasis on delicate beers with clean flavor profiles, he is redefining palate expectations in a market saturated with 12°P finishing stouts and 3 pH kettle sours.
Odd Breed Wild Ales (Pompano Beach, Florida)
Florida is the undisputed king of the pastry stouts, but this brewery adds a nuanced feather to the state’s pedigree by offering some of the most interesting farmhouse ales of recent memory. Odd Breed doesn’t leverage a core lineup and instead ages its wildly complex saisons and wild ales for months to produce layered, intensely complex saisons. Their double-barrel wild barleywine, Uppercase Poems, is a testament to their creativity and unmatched ability to craft fascinating ales unlike anything most consumers have experienced.
Floodland Brewing (Seattle, Washington)
This tiny Seattle brewery is often mentioned in the same breath as their neighbor, Holy Mountain Brewing, and for good reason: this upstart is putting out wild ales and cask-driven saisons that have incredible complexity and drinkability. Protection Spells is saison blended with acid beer on pluots, and it demonstrates Adam Paysee’s ability to unite two often-oppositional elements in American wild ales: acidity and drinkability. The result is compelling. Their beers are not easy to locate, but they are certainly worth the hunt.