Top 10 Beers of the Year
Westbound & Down Bourbon-Barrel Louie 2023 (Idaho Springs, Colorado) This brewery’s proficiency with rich beers is remarkable. The barrel suffuses itself through the entirety of this English-style barleywine, yet it cedes gently to other dance partners—raisin, pecan, and milk chocolate evoke British desserts I’ve never even tasted; toffee, panettone, and a whiskey kick flood in at the swallow. Despite the force of these flavors, not a hair is out of place.
Grand Fir Slug Life (Portland, Oregon) I was on the struggle bus for my entire visit to Portland in February as a massive ice storm shut down the city for days. This IPA almost single-handedly redeemed the trip. Classic Pacific Northwest pine notes meet new-school mango, strawberry stem, and the brighter side of orange, with the malts only necessary to platform those hop flavors. It’s familiar like an old friend—but with a great new haircut.
Cinderlands Lil’ Cinder Lime (Pittsburgh) You can’t deny a perfectly executed, subtly lime-flecked light lager on a hot summer camping trip—it’s not possible. Cinderlands doesn’t cut corners with its fruit flavors, and it shows here. This beer layers lime puree with two types of lime flavoring to achieve a just-right note of tart lime zest and citrus sweetness. Exuberant but not-harsh carbonation is the icing on the cake.
Burnt Tree Kingfisher Spruce Tip Kölsch (Ennis, Montana) I could live the rest of my life without another spruce-tip beer, I told brewer Dave McAdoo. He insisted I try this one anyway. Thank goodness he did. A former natural-resources specialist, he foraged the spruce himself, seemingly selecting the most delicate, least PineSol-reminiscent tips a tree has ever produced. The underlying kölsch contributes a faint pear sweetness; the whole package sings.
The Referend Berliner Messe Blend No. 5 (Kutztown, Pennsylvania) I want to curl up with this beer’s aroma like a broken-in quilt: Smarties candy, sourdough bread, vinho verde, wet limestone. There’s so much flavor and texture crammed into this 3.5 percent ABV, oak-aged, spontaneously fermented ale despite a sense of complete effortlessness. Drinking it messed with my sense of time—how can something taste so fresh and yet so primeval?
Draught Works Clothing Optional (Missoula, Montana) This summer, I not-accidentally scheduled every Friday afternoon meeting on Draught Works’ patio just to drink this hazy pale ale. Despite a doughy-soft texture, the sip is structured and progresses evenly from Peach Rings and nectarine lushness to a bitterness reminiscent of citrus-fruit tannins. You’d swear this beer contains vitamin C.
Pure Project Back to the Phuture 1 (San Diego) This “murky” IPA collaboration with fellow Cali IPA vanguards North Park and Harland is a testament to new hop technology, deftly applied. Phantasm’s presence is undeniable—the IPA smells like Nerds, kiwi, and the color purple—but there’s enough hop layering to bring it down to earth. Honeysuckle and pineapple-core flavors are an intriguing foil, making Phantasm a layer, not a club to the head.
Sacred Waters Snow Dust (Kalispell, Montana) Unequivocally, this was Montana’s year of rice lagers. Taprooms in every corner of the state put them on draft, but none I tried did it better than Sacred Waters. Every glass of this made me better appreciate the perfect segue from delicate jasmine-rice sweetness to the bright (not perfumey) whisper of Montana-grown Hallertauer Mittelfrüh. Another, please.
New Glarus Watermelon Splash (New Glarus, Wisconsin) Some people likely hate what this beer malt beverage represents. I love it. An old dog can still learn new tricks and execute them in ways that reflect a core competency. Here, New Glarus applies its mastery of fruit flavors to a 4 percent ABV nonbeer drink that smells and tastes like watermelon Jolly Ranchers. It’s not complex, and it’s certainly not beer, but I’d challenge the haters to find something better engineered for a river, lake, or hammock.
Creature Comforts LA Albatross (Los Angeles) This New Zealand pils collab with San Diego’s GOAL brings an onslaught of tropical fruit, just skirting the edges of sauvignon blanc grapes rather than setting up camp there. The aroma implies a ton of fructose—gummi worms, dried mango skin, overripe orange, even cotton candy—and while the flavor delivers Jamba Juice levels of tropical fruit, it finishes clean and not cloying. All the sweetness is in the aroma, a gorgeous little sleight-of-hand.
Most Memorable Beer Experience of the Past Year
Judging the first-ever Montana Beer Awards. Inspired by the Oregon Beer Awards, the Montana Brewers Association organized its own statewide competition this year. I was blown away by the quality of the entries, judges, and logistics. I’ve long known there is great beer being made in my state, but to systematically taste the breadth and depth of brewing talent in the Treasure State exceeded my expectations. I can’t wait for next year’s edition.
In 2024, I Unexpectedly Found Myself Drinking More...
Hazy IPA. (I’m as surprised as you are.) I still wouldn’t count this style among my top three favorites, but this year I found myself impressed by where brewers have taken it. Roughly a decade after hazies entered the national consciousness, their best practitioners have refined the rougher edges and adeptly applied new hop products and techniques. The result is hazies that are precise, refreshing, and increasingly in my fridge.
Experience that Gives Me Hope for the Future of Beer
The National Black Brewers Association (NB2A) Tap Takeover at Beer Zombies during Craft Brewers Conference. For me, there was no more vibrant, fun, and holy-crap-you-had-to-be-there event of 2024. The bar was packed, kegs were kicking left and right, people in the beer line were nearly throwing cash at bartenders trying to get a pint—it was energy I hadn’t felt at a beer event in years. The NB2A’s future is bright.
Let’s Bring Back …
Bottle shares (but not so serious this time). After hearing local brewers lament the lack of occasions to open 750s and cellared bottles, I hosted a dozen or so Missoula beer folks for an early-spring bonfire and kick-it-like-it’s-2014 bottle share. The difference between then and now is that, for us, the beer wasn’t the focus of the party, just the soundtrack.