Top 10 Beers of the Year
Scratch 131 (Ava, Illinois) Fresh flower petals, dried petals. Fresh herbs, dried herbs. Fresh roots, toasted roots. Inhale to recall a fall hike through the woods surrounding the brewery, exhale for memories of a similar spring ramble. One-thirty-one—a reference to the number of ingredients included in the recipe—is a beer of all seasons and an advertisement for retronasal pleasure.
Other Half Mexican Lager (Brooklyn, New York) Perhaps this is the power of suggestion at work: Before I had a taste, I noticed the beer was spiced with Zumo hops, a newly named cultivar that, on its own, smells of lime zest. I asked my drinking companion, who I’ve seen stuff a lime in the neck of a bottle of Corona, if he tasted lime. He shook his head no. But there it was for me, zesty indeed.
Pinthouse Cryogenic Electric Jellyfish (Austin) Made for Electric Jellyfish day, and one of several riffs on the brewery’s flagship IPA. Pinthouse brewed it with six different cultivars, added at multiple times in the brewing process and delivered in multiple forms. These included thoroughly modern Simcoe DynaBoost in the whirlpool and old-fashioned Chinook whole cones in the hopback. All those components could have resulted in something that tasted like HopMud™. Instead, it was the right kind of intense, with the aroma of a freshly set kiln.
Liquid Mechanics West Coast Cartel: Bagby (Lafayette, Colorado) The seventh of 10 West Coast collaborations leading up to the brewery’s 10th anniversary—this one with Jeff Bagby—was a showcase for the citrus, pine, and bitter character that was celebrated in beer when double IPA became an official style in the aughts. It was also a reminder of the opportunity that brewers who’ve forgotten about Chinook are missing.
Otherlands Songs of Courtship (Bellingham, Washington) The only thing that might have made this fourth-anniversary festbier better would have been seeing the ceremonial burning of Zozobra that was part of the celebration. Were this combination of lightly toasted bread and floral hops to exist as a wood-carved version of Zozobra, it would be one crafted from a single piece of wood.
Creature Comforts Nelson Romance (Athens, Georgia) As an aside—although I drank this on draft and went back for more two days later—this lively, foeder-aged saison that once would have been sold in 750 ml bottles is now packaged in cans. I approve of this trend. Complex if you want it to be—go ahead and make a list of tropical flavors, lingering on what the foeder adds, but that’s not required.
Good Word A Young and Youthful Todd (Duluth, Georgia) As the name suggests, this is an unfiltered (keller) version of the mainstay Die Todd Die pilsner. Despite what the name might suggest, Young and Youthful is properly mature, perhaps a bit grainier, with a touch more matchstick.
Dovetail Hefeweizen (Chicago) The perfect post-Paxlovid-mouth and it-is-August-in-Chicago pour. Process and raw-material tweaks to the recipe make the palate a touch fuller these days, accenting “wheaty” character, pear as well as banana flavors, and a peppery spiciness.
Northbound Doppelbock (Minneapolis) A beer I would have liked to have lingered over, had I not hopped off an airport-bound train with a need to hop on another soon. Rich but focused, with pure malt flavors (plural), bready texture, and hints of dark fruit. A solid punch of alcohol without being cloying. Worth the hop off/hop on.
White Hag Benandonner 2024 (Ballymote, Ireland) This is not the “best beer” we drank in Ireland, but it was the most pleasantly intriguing, enhancing our memories of the legendary and spectacular Giant’s Causeway. Labeled a “Brett TIPA,” it clearly changed over time in a barrel, and it probably changed again when they packaged it in green bottles. Tropical fruit became more tropical, and funk was joined by skunk in a 9.9 percent ABV liquid cake.
Most Memorable Beer Experiences of the Past Year
The first: By chance, we were in Seattle in June, hours before Brouwer’s Café—one of the premier beer-focused bars in the country—closed for good. As outsiders, from the balcony above, we watched bartenders open large bottle after bottle, fill a dozen small glasses at once, and hand them out to longtime regulars. Friends posed for group photos. The beer menu that day was even more special than usual, but that’s not why drinkers were there.
The second: Early on a Sunday afternoon in September, we scored stools right at the rather short main bar in Foxy John’s pub and hardware store in Dingle, Ireland. It’s a tourist stop in a town that is a tourist destination, but before plenty of Americans showed up to fill stools on the hardware side or spots in the spacious adjoining rooms, it was us and locals and the barkeep. They busted on each other; they chatted us up. Like the regulars at Brouwer’s, they were there for beer, but also for something else.
Industry Topic I Wish Would Get More Ink/Pixels
Equity. Full credit to Teo Hunter at Crown & Hops for making this clear during a panel discussion at the Crafted for Action Conference: “You can usher diversity and inclusion. Equity is an investment. It is one of the most underdeveloped aspects of DEI. Actually, in my opinion, it should be called ‘E-D-I’ because without equity, people will not see themselves in these roles, in these positions in these companies, and [in] the ownership of these companies.”
In 2024, I Unexpectedly Found Myself Drinking More...
Nonalcoholic beer is not a style, but a category, and it’s one that too many drinkers continue to associate with a single style: industrial lager. I appreciate how exasperatingly difficult it is to make drink-me-again beer across many styles without the flavor that alcohol itself contributes and often without the compounds that result from the fermentation process. So, it fascinates me to taste how crafters of beer are approaching this challenge.