After two days of judging for our Best 20 Beers in 2024, the team sat down to discuss their own most enjoyable beers and experiences of the past year—along the way identifying some trends that may offer hope for the next chapter of craft beer’s story.
Our Bangkok-based executive editor selects top-of-mind picks and thoughts based on his travels in the past year.
Hear the stories behind the stories, as Jamie and Joe share your Readers’ Choice picks for favorites of the year, and as they reveal and discuss Craft Beer & Brewing’s Best 20 Beers in 2024.
A year of focused tasting panels plus two full days of blind judging and lively discussion among our editorial panel—including Kate Bernot and Stan Hieronymus—culminates in this: the roll of honor. Here are the 20 beers that awed, delighted, and inspired us the most, representing the pinnacle of the craft today.
From our Love Handles files on the world’s great beer bars: In Kyoto, the atmospheric Bungalow eschews burgers and wings while catering to local tastes and pouring fresh beers from smaller Japanese independents.
Before there was hazy or even a defined West Coast style, there was an IPA that emerged as a brashly hopped counterpoint to British ale. It never went away—but it evolved. And today’s brewers are making it better than ever.
It’s sweet, it’s purple, it’s trendy, and many folks from the Philippines will be delighted when you make some beer with it.
Perhaps the oldest way of preparing grain for brewing, drying malt in the open air was traditional for lambics, white beers, and various rustic ales scattered around Europe, Africa, and beyond. Today, brewers and maltsters interested in history, terroir, and old-fashioned methods are taking their malt back out into the sun.
Dipping in to put the crispy in crispy bois, this is nacho usual adjunct. (Sorry, was that corny?)
From our Love Handles files on the world’s best places to drink great beer: Steadily approaching four decades in operation, this influential bar continues to combine unpretentious atmosphere with a powerhouse selection of independently brewed beers.