Top 10 Beers of the Year
Urban Chestnut Schnickelfritz (St. Louis, Missouri) Chosen because this turned out to be a year when you want to settle in with beers you call old friends. Perhaps ordering a glass when we were in St. Louis in February was a mistake, because then I missed Schnickelfritz through the long, hot, crazy summer. Fluffy and spicy, hold the banana.
Russian River Temptation (Santa Rosa, California) Hard to believe that 20 years after Vinnie Cilurzo first released what most would call a perfect beer, he is still tinkering with it. But now he’s integrated the brewery’s custom-made coolship into the process. Layers of orchard-fruit and grape flavors, artfully balanced by acidity.
Orpheus Everything Lasts Forever (Atlanta, Georgia) A blend of one-, two-, three- and four-year-old spontaneously fermented beers made with Georgia wheat and Atlanta microbes, using a coolship that looks like no other. Despite its complexity—something new with each whiff or sip, such as berries, hay, citrus, grape skins, funk—and expected acidity, there are no rough edges.