Top Breweries in MA

Baffling comment. What kind of festival is it supposed to be?

 

Good lord this drives me nuts. Respect to Jack's Abby, but if I look at their available beers at the moment there are, more or less:

• Lagers with aromatic American hops
• Traditional German lagers
• A lagered porter that is barrel-aged with flavored variants

But regardless of what JA is doing, this argument always goes the same way:

A: "They only brew IPAs"
B: "They also brew stouts and a couple sours"
A: "They only brew IPAs, stouts, and sours"
B: "They also brew pilsners and saisons"
A: "But do they brew an ESB and a barleywine?"
B: "Sure."
A: "Do they brew a brown ale and a Belgian pale ale?"
B: "Yup"
A: "Do they brew a Rauchbier, a Quad, and a California Common?"
B: "..."

Etc. etc. brewing a lot of styles doesn't really mean anything.

 

You're just naming styles with no regard to context. Brewing styles with various degrees of difficulty, and brewing styles that are both traditional and "innovative"/"modern" is impressive in my personal opinion.

A brewery doesn't HAVE to brew multiple styles to be impressive. But talk to any experienced brewer (by experience, I don't mean 5 years), or a professional brewer, and they'll always give the nod to the brewery that nails a Pilsner as opposed to an IPA. Many of them post on here quite frequently as well. In fact, many of them only brew IPAs because they sell. One local brewer that I was speaking with recently, who is quite skilled and experienced, said he's only started doing this "New England-style" IPA because it sells so well. And for just starting out brewing this style, it's already very good.

And those three types of styles you listed from Jack's Abby all hit VERY different notes. Effectively their hoppy beers are IPAs, their porters are barrel-aged stouts, and their traditional beers?...Those took them years to dial in, across many different traditional lagers, as they began decoction mashing...etc.

For the record, I don't necessarily penalize say, Trillium (I love their hoppy beers), because they do mostly one thing very well, or Treehouse. They both clearly do it better than everyone else. But I feel like some DO penalize other breweries for not making IPAs, specifically "New England-style" IPAs. Again, I wouldn't penalize a brewery for doing one style particularly well, otherwise we'd have to penalize breweries like Schlenkerla, Cantillon, Westvleteren...etc.

 

I really enjoy the new school NE IPA-driven breweries, but it does become like eating fancy dishes every night for dinner. Boston Lager and Harpoon IPA are the well made grilled cheese/hamburger that keep me grounded and able to derive maximum enjoyment out of the relative rarities. Not quite the Dominos analogy, because I feel the ingredients themselves are far superior to "fast food" but the recipes are eminently repeatable with no variation.

 

This is an awesome thread that, to support a previous post, surfaces not only the subjectivity of taste but also the criticality of freshness. I pretty much acknowledged on another thread that I will be in the dirt before I get my hands on 4 week-old Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, or any SN beer to be honest, and I'll include Boston Lager on this list after reading all this awesome banter. If anyone knows the best retailer in MA to score freshies - please let us know! I think many of us would benefit from the opportunity. Thanks, all.

 

Boston lager and Sierra Nevada hold up very well and I will purchase them at up to two months old. I have had numerous Sierra Nevada beers at over six months old and they were plenty hoppy.

 

I get what you're saying but I'd argue that it's much further away than "not quite" the Dominos analogy. Dominos pizza was designed from the ground up to be innoffensive, bland, and broadly appealing to everyone. I worked there for 4 years in college and the thing that sums them up best is that we were instructed to squash any of those delicious dough bubbles that form because corporate decided the public liked a uniform looking crust (what brain damaged focus group did they interview for that one?).

Harpoon IPA was anything but bland and innoffensive when they created it and it was certainly not expected to appeal to everyone. It was a hop bomb the likes of which was not very common on the east coast at the time. Even today, the only people who would find it bland are a small percentage of beer geeks who are already a small percentage of people who drink beer. Your average joe/jane is still going to find it unpleasantly heavy and bitter.

So if we really must do restaurant comparisons here, I'd say a brewery like Harpoon is much more like a great, innovative, mom and pop pizza place that was the first in the neighborhood and still makes delicious food the same way they always have, but is easy to take for granted now that there are dozens of other options around.

ETA: to be clear, I'm not arguing they should be on this list. As @oldbean says below the list makes its criteria clear and so the list is what the list is. I'd say the only misstep they made really is having the cut off for the number of reviews too low which led to a couple of head scratchers being included.

 

No I think the confusion is that this is literally just a list of breweries with the highest average BA ratings for all their beers and people are acting like their opinion of Harpoon matters given that criteria.

 

Very interesting philosophical debate on how to judge a beer. Here's what I see as the different ways we assess a beer, based on the above discussion:

1. Execution of intent
2. Execution of the style
3. How favorable it is to one's palette and style preferences

I would guess that most people on BA rate according to the third method. The problem with that is good beer gets docked just because of personal preference.

If we were to go by the first method though, maybe we wouldn't take issue with Sprang. That is kinda doesn't sit well with me though and perhaps a better choice of label would be a good fix for that. Also, I could intend to make just a straight up bad tasting beer (ex. bunch of flavors that most people think don't go well together, like a smokey pilsner) but I executed well in that intention... I think that should still be rated poorly.

IMO, I think rating by a combination of #2 and #3 seems to be the most fair.

 

Maybe not ready for a top ten list, but everything I've had from Brick and Feather is very good.

 

I think the general consensus is that there are others on this list that aren't ready, and some would probably put Brick and Feather above BLDG 8

 

From what I've sampled Brick and Feather is better then BLDG8.

 

I haven't had much from BLDG8, so can't make the comparison. Nonetheless, neither one should be regarded as a top 10 candidate. Although, Brick and Feather has yet to disappoint.

 

Thanks for the context, I was searching for an analogy and that's kind of what I was thinking. At the time these beers were released they certainly were closer to the fringe and not nearly as mainstream as they are currently.

For my local pizza places, I would probably equate Harpoon IPA with Caserta Pizzeria. Been around forever, delicious and reliable. The newer haze bombs I equate with the several coal fired pizza franchises that have started up around town. I go to the new school places more often, but am always satisfied and nostalgic about Caserta's when I revisit them.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, what is particularly special about a pilsner? All that says to me is that they can repeat a process successfully, as long as you understand what you are doing, it can be done. It's a beer that's been done a million times over. This argument about "quality" is really mass-producers vs. artisans which is an endless debate. Both can brew quality beers (however you want to define that), neither really focus on the same ones. I don't doubt any of the breweries in question can produce a great pilsner if they wanted to. That just seems like a smug way to judge someone: pick the one style that isn't usually made by small breweries so they have less credibility.

When large-scale breweries move outside their comfort zone they can fail miserably or sometimes won't stick with a great beer if it did bad that quarter. I had a Harpoon Trippel a while ago that was depressing. Sam's cranberry lambic should've been considered a sin. The rainbow of UFOs aren't particularly appealing to me but still look like big sellers. I've had some poor beers from Trillium but it wasn't like there was much of a precedent to what they were trying to do. Many small breweries don't have the advantage and leisure of testing out recipes on a pilot system. It either better be good enough to sell or an entire batch is dumped (hopefully, so the consumer doesn't get duped into buying it). A lot of people think tossing a bunch of hops or adjuncts into a beer isn't anything that takes skill. Jim Koch's "any monkey can do it" comment always came off as very bitter and jealous. Sometimes they remind me of people that go to a Reinhardt exhibit and walk away saying "I could paint that!," not facing the fact that the don't really get it.

The smaller brewery is making more creative beers while the larger one may copy it if it looks profitable. Usually not even fully satisfying the parameters of the beer they are cloning if it's already good for their bottom-line. The upside is that the bigger brewery may come out with a good, consistent and affordable everyday beer.

 

I don't drink much Sam Adams stuff but I'm having a hard time squaring the idea that it isn't good with the fact that it's turned Jim Koch into a billionaire.

 

Oh man, that Cranberry Lambic gave me very strange ideas about what lambics were supposed to be for a very long time. Maybe in another 10 years they'll figure out a way to turn it into a luxury item like they somehow did with that awful Triple Bock.

 

A smoked helles is delicious, like schlenkerla helles. Maybe with a pilsner you'd have to dial back the hop bitterness. If the flavors truly don't make sense together it shouldn't be made, but then why would you make it? If there is a way to tweak a few things to work together then it's possible to make a good beer. I bet when people even started using just a tiny bit of hops in beer someone was like "wtf is this garbage? where's the heather and spruce tips?!?" Look how far we've come

 

Precision and straightforwardness:

"With a boozy, sweet, ingredient-packed beer you can cover up any flaws, but a delicate pilsner—low in alcohol, typically made of only the four most basic beer ingredients—bares it all. It’s one beer style that stands naked, waiting to be judged.”​

 

Go to a homebrew store, say you're just starting brewing, and ask which style you should start with. They'll likely tell you to brew something like an IPA first, and then work your way towards lagering, specifically styles like a Helles, Pilsner...etc.

Pilsners are arguably my favorite style and I've spent a long time trying many different attempts at one. I used to be able to count on one hand, now maybe I can count on two, how many US breweries have hit those melanoidin characteristics just as artfully as the Germans have. The mashing process and water manipulation for example all need extra attention to detail, that otherwise aren't as important in a style such as an IPA. And never mind brewing one well, but a Pilsner is a much lighter style, and any flaw in your brewing process will also stand out.

You're not going to notice this in many IPAs, especially in a more modern, turbid IPA, in which the malt presence is largely muted. You're not going to pick up graham cracker notes from Pils malt if the brewer chooses to use it. If they use it, it will lighten the beer, but you won't add any nuance to the beer. The 800 lbs. of hops that were added in the late stages, whirlpool, dry hopping...those are the showcase (and yes, there's obviously skill with this as well, I also agree "any monkey" could not do it).

There's a reason Jack's Abby leaves an ingredient like Pils malt for their actual Pilsner, and they use American two-row pale malts for Hoponius Union. They don't want to waste more expensive malts on a beer in which the flavor of those malts isn't going to be perceivable.

It's also not just a Pilsner. US Oktoberfests for the most part do not hit the mark, and you mentioned Belgian Tripels...I still haven't had a Belgian beer that is better than the Belgians. Now, much of this may be for a lack of trying in terms of small breweries. And you're absolutely correct, most of it process, but it's also an art. I'm sure with time some of these smaller breweries could nail a Pilsner if they put in the amount of effort that they do with IPAs.

I can't defend Cranberry Lambic, and I also do not prefer UFO (although that's not really a true Hefeweizen, more of that crappy "American pale wheat ale" style). But I have a hard time believing companies with decades of experience are purposely sending out sub par product. If I had to guess, Cranberry Lambic is geared towards the general public who want a fruity beer, and it's not actually supposedly to be a true lambic. Same thing with UFO and its variants, something to suit the general public, and it's not meant to be a true Hefeweizen.

I don't believe that bigger breweries don't try to be more creative. Below I've quoted the Sierra Nevada rep who posts here quite often, and he explains why a brewery their size can't do this "New England-style" IPA, even though he himself enjoys them. But that doesn't mean they don't try to be creative in other ways, I would argue their recent Oktoberfest collaborations were very creative, and quite successful (more so from a sales stand point, I personally didn't care as much for both beers, but they were definitely well made).