Beers from just 10 breweries - which do you choose?

No, that isn't what I said. That was "where are the Lager breweries?". Nothing to do with what's my favourite.

 

I hadn't read your comment when I posted it, though.

 

I like that Ron mentioned Klosterbrau. Love their Braunbier and Schwarzla. Definitely an under the radar choice on here.

 

Their Maibock is awesome.

 

It's the best I've had. They used to have it at the Amsterdam Maibock Restival. I usually didn't bother drinking much else.

 

I should be having a beer there in exactly 11 days.

 

[/sarcasm]
Seriously, German brewers and styles as well as lagers more generally do appear on quite a few lists--compiling the list allowed me to see all of them. But, as a matter of preference, they are less likely to appeal at BA than some of the other styles. That does not make the agglomerated tastes any less diverse--as I said, more than 300 breweries have now been mentioned. Many make lagers, although that's usually not their primary focus. That does not mean that they "brew pretty much the same type of beer". I'm not even sure why I'm defending this as all I did is report the numbers--for which I'm in no way responsible.

 

Nice! I'll be there the first week of August myself. They were my wife's favorite brewery in all of Bamberg. Their staff was extremely nice, too.

 

I was grateful to you for doing the numbers. I was thinking of doing it myself, but couldn't be arsed. I was just making an observation. And obviously painting with a pretty wide brush.

 

I didn't mean to snap at you, but you might have noticed I either get long-winded or pretty snarky. But the theme of slighting pilseners and lagers is pretty common around here, so I would not expect too much support for lagers (except Jack's Abby and a few German breweries, but certainly not on the scale of Founders). My point, however, was less about lagers than about diversity of styles in general. I'm always surprised how much support wheat bears get here and I have never been a fan of summer seasonals, but they are much appreciated by some. And a number of top-ranking breweries make one or both, so it's not like the breweries themselves are one-dimensional. The big malty beers were also much further down the list, as they can be an acquired taste and many people don't like them. But they are present as well.

PS: The table took me a couple of hours, basically going line-by-line. It might have been easier to dump the whole thing into a processor and just run a macro, but there were way too many misspellings and extraneous comments to automate it. I took a separate count of non-ranking mentions (honorable mentions, haven't-had-but-want-to-try, "forgot about", etc.), but none of them had more than 4, and only one would have made the list if I counted those (from 1 to 3).

 

I have, had it too, I was underwhelmed

 

1 Firestone Walker
2 Dupont
3 Cantillon
4 Green Man
5 Three Floyds
6 Abbay St Remy
7 Founders
8 Cigar City
9 Weissbierbrauerai Hopf
10 Lawson's Finest Liquids

 

This was way harder than I thought it would be, but here is my list:

1- Hill Farmstead
2- Cantillon
3- 3 Floyds
4- Goose Island
5- Bell's
6- Russian River
7- Firestone Walker
8- Lawson's Finest Liquids
9- Lagunitas
10- The Alchemist (Here's hoping they expand and bring back some of their amazing older creations)

Runners up:
3F
Founders
Cigar City
The Bruery
Toppling Goliath
Tilquin
Fantome
Fat Head's Brewery Solely on Head Hunter
Ithica Brewery
Troegs
Dogfish Head

 

1. Stone
2. Sierra Nevada
3. Victory
4. Firestone Walker
5. Evolution
6. Weyerbacher
7. North Coast
8. Dogfish Head / Green Flash
9. Anchor / Lagunitas
10. Samuel Adams

Sorta kinda in that order, depends on day and mood. Hey, it's beer, enjoy!

 

Allagash
Bell's
Deschutes
Founders
Goose Island
Hill Farmstead
The Lost Abbey
Ommegang
Russian River
Three Floyd's

 

Founders
Dogfish
Ommegang
Brooklyn
Stone
Goose Island
Maine Beer
Lost Abbey
Smuttynose
Samuel Smith

 

Not necessarily in order...
1. Great Lakes
2. Southern Tier
3. Cigar City
4. New Belgium
5. Stone
6. Sam Adams
7. Founders
8. Kona
9. SchneiderWeisses Brau
10. Schlafly

 

Russian River
Surly
New Glarus
Founders
Bells
Great Lakes
Cigar City
Sierra Nevada
Goose Island
Deschutes