Ranking Minnesota Breweries (March Update)

I'm not going to begin to shuffle any around. I agree with most of this.
I guess I need to check out Hammerheart. I've heard of them, but they are far away for me.
I'd maybe bump Castle Danger up a notch from my experience. Plus, I'd add LTD to the Excellent list.
Fun to see. I'm sure I could add a few the the lower two groups, but I don't see a reason to name names.

 

So Excelsior is moving up in the world?

 

Seems reasonable to me, I might bump steel toe up a notch though.

 

Interesting to see Waconia ahead of Excelsior. Excelsior is my go to spot because of location (1.3 miles) but I've never been to Waconia. Now I have to go visit. Thanks for the list.

 

Still no Fulton? (Just jabbing you from the last list)

Thanks for doing this. I'll have to revisit Waconia and you have to visit Enki before the move out of their current locaction. The are moving to a new brewery in Victoria at some point. I love their current place

 

I love seeing Bemidji and Junkyard getting love! Those are two that are closer to me and I have had nothing but great experiences at both.

 

Indeed. I haven't hit Bemidji, but I'd put Junkyard in the excellent range.

 

I thought it would be interesting to re-sort your list based on this site's average beer rating for each brewer.

* Disgruntled and 10K don't have a rating here, so they are not included.
* I had to choose where the division goes for the categories. That part is somewhat arbitrary.
* The number is the BA average beer rating.

BEST OF THE BEST:
4.14 Junkyard
4.11 Lupulin
EXCELLENT:
4.08 Bad Habit
4.06 Steel Toe
4.03 Birch’s on the Lake
4.01 Bent Paddle
4.01 Sisyphus
VERY GOOD:
3.99 Hammerheart
3.99 Northbound
3.98 Town Hall
3.98 Harriet
3.97 Bad Weather
3.94 Bemidji
3.93 Bauhaus
3.93 Gull Dam
3.92 Indeed
3.92 Jack Pine
3.90 Castle Danger
GOOD:
3.89 Badger Hill
3.88 Fitger’s
3.88 The Freehouse
3.87 Fair State
3.86 Insight
3.85 Liftbridge
3.85 Day Block
3.84 Dangerous Man
3.84 Lupine
3.83 Beaver Island
3.82 Lucid (North Loop)
AVERAGE:
3.79 Able Seedhouse
3.76 Tin Whiskers
3.75 Flat Earth
3.74 Great Waters
3.74 Rock Bottom
3.74 Bent Brewstillery
3.71 Lake Monster
3.70 Bang
BELOW AVERAGE:
3.68 Canal Park
3.65 Barley John’s
3.65 East Lake
3.65 Big Axe
3.56 Big Wood
3.55 F-Town
3.52 Waconia
POOR:
3.47 Excelsior
3.39 Omni
3.37 612
3.36 Maple Island
2.79 Wabasha

 

Do you mean to say that you change your mind with new information?? Do you even internet, bro?

Jokes aside, I've enjoyed watching this unfold.

 

The folks that own Bemidji are just straight up nice people. I actually ran into them in a Fargo bottle shop last weekend and chatted with them for 5 minutes or so. They're in the middle of an expansion and, though I didn't prod them for too many details, I really hope they eventually are able to start distributing their beers. Very solid stuff. Check it out if you're ever up in lake country, it's worth it.

 

Lake Wobegon effect applies to breweries now?

 

@ZAP
Why are only 'growler filling' breweries listed? Basically eliminates only 3 breweries from the lists: Surly, Schells and Summit. Why not include them in your tiers as a reference point to which the others could be compared?

@MNAle
Avg BA beer rating is misleading, too. I don't think any brewery can be considered in the top 3 tiers unless they brew and regularly offer at least 5 different styles of beer. I'd take the highest rated beer for every different style of beer they have - then take the top five of those and add them (perfect score being 25.0). Those lists might look different. Definitely eliminate the arguments for a brewery to be top tier purely because "they make that one beer that is really great...".

 

Have at it! (Sounds like too much work to me, though...)

Anyway, I did have several observations from the comparison between @ZAP's list and the BA ranking. The most dramatic was the significant re-ordering at the top. Less obvious was the compression of the numerical rankings. The BA scale is 1-5 (you can't have a rating lower than 1 nor higher than 5), so an "average" brewer should be rated 3.5. But, the average of the 49 brewers was 3.79, with only 5 of them (~10%) actually rated below the theoretical "average" mark.

I didn't really think about it much beyond that.

BTW, if the list DID include Surly, it would be #2 on the list with a 4.12 rating; Summit would be #25 @ 3.85, and Schell's would be #44 @ 3.59. What does that tell you? Is Schell's really in the same grouping with Big Wood and F-Town? Is Summit really no better than Insight and Badger Hill? Is Surly really that much better than Town Hall? IDK, but that is what the BA numbers say.

 

Yes it would be quite tedious (was hoping someone else would be inspired to actually do it).
I just think the Avg beer rating is skewed. Junkyard for instance doesn't have more than 13 ratings for any one beer, most have low single digits. Larger breweries will experiment more - resulting in more interesting offerings should you stop in, the potential of creating a mind blower... but the ones that fail and are never brewed again drag down the overall beer avg.

I agree about Surly, Summit and Schells. But their placement is still an interesting reference. The tiered rankings seem to answer the question: "If I go there, what are the odds I'll love what they have to offer?" Surly ranks high - and makes styles of beer that BA nerds flock to. Summit and Schells - while very solid breweries - brew more styles that rank lower among us.

 

I think he was being facetious, saying that some people tend to dig their feet in and refuse to acknowledge competing points of view. Whereas you, upon receiving new info, actually changed your mind about something. He was paying you a subtle compliment.