Most respected brewery not in the top 250

Agreed, and i actually would have guessed that SN would have a beer in the top 250. I don't really know how highly "respected" they are, but i think Brouwerij De Molen deserves a spot in the top 250.

 

Sierra Nevada, definitely. Narwhal and Hop Hunter should be top 250.

 

Most respected?
Besides Sierra Nevada it would have to be Anchor.
Beyond that, the list is essentially (unfortunately) a list of US beer. Respected breweries from outside the US are certainly underrepresented as a whole.

 

Sierra Nevada is great...but I LOVE 4 Hands. They've been putting out some stuff for the last few years that blows most of the stuff on the top 250 out of the water (to me, at least). I just had a Rose Weirdo that easily ranks in my top 5 IPAs. their barrel aged stuff is incredible, too...Volume 1 and 2, Madagascar, and Tinman. Warhammer and Resurrected are also great IPAs they do....the Resurrected tastes VERY similar to Jai Alai.

 

This is an interesting question.

- Fuller's has no beer in the top 250 but several in beers of fame.
- Upright and Ale Apothecary are two of the best farmhouse brewers around and nothing in the top 250 ... I get that the rules prevent some of these beers from being there but I could see Spencer, Rum Peach La Tache, Special Herbs, BA Flora Rustica, and Fantasia all being "top 250"
- Andechs is so solid and has several on beers of fame.
- There are really no European saisons ... apparently America is the only place that makes good saisons. Dupont, Fantome, etc, not represented. It blows my mind that if you look at the Saison category the first non-US beer is 23rd!
- Cellarmaker really impresses me and they'll get in the top 250 eventually, but they have some beers that certainly could be at this point.

I just skimmed the list and there are two German beers and no English beers so that seems to be an issue. The highest rated non-US beer is 17th and I think there are 24 or so non-US (two of which are Canadian) beers on the list. I'm not counting Evil Twin as non-US since all the beers on the list, unless I'm mistaken, are brewed by US breweries. It's just very skewed.

 

Yeah, there are a lot of european breweries (brouwerijs, bryggeris, whatever) and its a lot for most people to keep up with. Not being able to remember how to spell/pronounce them certainly doesn't help.

 

Hmm... I think to put it in, say, a context of respect for a film actor with a steady list of releases, I think one should put more interest and value on a personage that has a body of work that has solid characterizations that tell a solid story, with occasional flights of weird-ass avant-guard dabblings, that one that has a reputation of erratic behavior and crass celebrity. Just saying'....

 

According to Bif, its Coors.

 

I'm kind of suprised that DFH doesn't have one in the top 250. I thought for sure a beer from their Ageable Ale series would have made the list.

 

The qualifications for the Top 250 are just too specific to allow for certain beers to make it. Under the old rules, DFH 90 was a mainstay.

Ale Apothecary just has too small a footprint. The only way for a beer with 262 ratings to make it is with a 4.45 rAvg at the absolute minimum.

Basically, aside from some of the monsters on there with incredibly high scores from thousands of ratings (Heady, Pliny, KBS, BCBS), you need have have a "good" rAvg of 4.32 or better with 8,000+ ratings, or an amazing rAvg of 4.45 with 250+ ratings. There's no room for classic, "solid" beers with a 4.25 rAvg (as those tend to be on the beers of fame list) or for small batch monsters like Zhukov's Final Push, which has been hanging around the bottom of the list with just 98 ratings.

 

A quick search came up with nothing from Victory. Since they used to have the number one beer it seems that they deserve one. Storm King and Dirt Wolf are two I would place there. But then they do not have very limited release rarities.

 

The comparison of Upright to Jester King is an interesting one that I've never thought of before. It makes some sense - they both like their herbal beers, take some culinary inspiration for those, take a lot of pride in their table beers, and are best known for fruited beers. That said, they're also very different ... Upright does far fewer sours and really does focus on those botanical beers. And Fantasia isn't all that sour anyway. So I see your point that you only get proper due with wild / sour stuff. Which is a shame in that it really limits diversity. And I really can't think of a brewery doing the botanical / herbal farmhouse beer thing better than Upright.

 

Yep; people that give some mystical authority to the top 250 don't realize how much it's just an artifact of the rules. Tweak the rules and the list changes entirely.

 

As it did a couple of months ago. I was ready to punch the admins in the face, because the Top 250 often guides my trading, and all of a sudden a bunch of beers I traded for were no longer on the list.

Didn't you know that beers on the Top 250 taste better than ones that aren't? Suddenly my Bligh's Barleywine, Dark Lord, Old Rasputin, Chimay Blue, and Sour in the Rye no longer tasted so good.

 

Sierra Nevada surprised me, but a lack of DFH was a much bigger shock.

 

Dirt Wolf is one awesome brew!

 

Here's a crazy trivia question: what brewery has the 2nd most beers on the top 250?

I'm sure we all know number 1 is Hill Farmstead. But #2? Trillium.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love many of the Trillium beers I've had. They have the APA / IPA game dialed in. Dry Hopped Fort Point may be my favoritea APA. And outside of that Pot & Kettle was good, Big Sprang was tasty (though my ass it's a Kolsch) ... but Double Pot & Kettle (not top 250) was overcarbed and off tasting, and PM Dawn was horribly green pepper flavored - a coffee beer gone wrong - and it's still rated 4.3.

But it just seems like a flaw in the system that they can pack 8 APAs / IPAs / IIPAs, most with 100 - 300 ratings, into the top 250. Once Cellarmaker starts bottling I could see them doing the same. Not sure how this gets addressed but when breweries that make very good hoppy beers just plug in variant after variant the idea of a top 250 list loosing meaning.

 

What beer was that?