What’s the Best Brewery?

What’s the best brewery? It’s a question that I’m sure has thousands of answers. Location and access to beers, a person’s style preferences, and pricepoint can all lead to different answers. Plus, there’s the question of what it means to be the best brewery.

Is the best brewery the one that produces the best single beer or the one that produces the most high-quality beers? Because there is certainly a difference. I want to take a shot at answering this question.

My Beer Preferences

I turned 21 during one of the peak craft beer time periods: the 2010s. I was in college from 2010 to 2014, when the number of craft breweries and the amount of craft beer drank exploded. Some numbers to back it up, all from the Brewers Association:

Number of barrels produced:

2010	2014
Regional Breweries – 8,034,796 Microbreweries – 1,141,118 Brewpubs – 727,427	Regional Breweries – 17,412,333 Microbreweries – 3,161,365 Brewpubs – 1,167,164

Number of breweries:

2010	2014
1,813	4,014

Number of craft breweries:

2010	2014
Brewpubs – 1,057 Microbreweries – 620 Regional Breweries – 81	Brewpubs – 1,717 Microbreweries – 2,116 Regional Breweries – 135

Some quick definitions to help with the above numbers:

• Microbrewery – Produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year and sells at least 75% of its beer off-site.
• Brewpub – Restaurant/brewery that sells at least 25% of its beer on-site and operates a significant food service.
• Regional Brewery – Annual beer production between 15,000 and 6,000,000 barrels.

These stats help convey the environment that existed when I started drinking beer. Whereas most college students typically drink low-cost domestics in kegs or cases, my friends and I usually went to a great local bar that had a massive list of craft beers. Granted, this decision was probably aided by the fact that our college was a dry campus, so buying cases or kegs of beer would have been pointless. And sure, I would still split a pitcher of Yuengling if we went to another bar, but my preference quickly became craft beers that were full of flavor and complexity.

Another aspect of the time period was the rise of India Pale Ales (IPAs). Although IPAs have been around for more than 150 years, they didn’t start to really take off in the United States until the latter half of the 20th century, and by the 2010s, American IPAs were everywhere. Essentially, every craft brewery was producing at least one IPA, with some of the most popular ones being Russian River’s Pliney the Elder, Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale, and Dogfish Head’s 60-Minute and 90-Minute IPAs.

In fact, I was such a fan of Dogfish Head and its founder, Sam Calagione, that my first beer was a 60-Minute IPA. It’s a weird first beer to purchase, but I was so enamored with Dogfish’s approach to brewing that I wanted to participate in it. I loved it, and it kicked off my love of craft beer and trying as many different beers as possible.

The bar I first mentioned used to allow its patrons to keep beer lists, which I participated in. I think the list had 100 or so craft beers on it, and you would keep track of what beers you drank. I don’t remember if you got something for completing the list, but I do remember some of the beers on the list. Some notables included Magic Hat #9, Wells Banana Bread, Founders Breakfast Stout, and Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch. There were so many beers on that list that I still think about (RIP #9).

I have a pretty broad and eclectic beer taste as a result of trying all these beers. I love fruit beers like Ellicotville’s Blueberry Wheat, high-ABV IPAs like 90-Minute, dark imperial stouts like Sierra Nevada’s Narwhal, pumpkin beers, and Belgian and German imports. Like I said, it’s all over the place. These preferences will certainly influence my decisions as I attempt to find the best brewery.

What Do I Mean by ‘Best Brewery?’

Back to the question I reference at the beginning: what does it mean to be the best brewery? I’m going to take a page from Top Gear’s playbook when they attempted to find the carmaker that has produced the greatest number of excellent cars. So for me in this context, it means the brewery that has produced (and hopefully still produces) the greatest number of excellent beers. A brewery can produce the best beer in the world, but if the rest of the beers it brews are mediocre, I think it lowers the overall quality of the brewery. Similarly, a brewery can produce a single excellent beer and nothing else. To me, that still doesn’t compare to a brewery that produces a dozen elite beers even if no single one is the very best.

So, I am looking for a brewery that has a very high average instead of sharp peaks and valleys. Although I don’t know all of the breweries I’m going to consider, I can safely say that some of the ones I will consider include Dogfish Head, Ellicotville Brewing Company, Erie Brewing Company, New Belgium, Southern Tier, Troegs, and Sierra Nevada. My goal is to try as many beers from as many different breweries as I can, so this is certainly going to be a long-term project. I think as we buy beer at our local distributors, I’ll look for ones from the above breweries to ensure I get a solid understanding of their portfolios. If you have any breweries or brews that you think I have to try, please let me know in the comments. I will try my best to find it. One limitation I know I’ll run into is location and how far breweries ship their beers. For example, I’ve never tried Pliny the Elder because Russian River isn’t sold anywhere within 100 miles of our town. I also never tried it when I had a chance in the past. Beyond that, though, I’ll look for just about anything.