The “Perfect” Brewery - A Thought By Raul

Selins grove brewery is very small but been around for awhile and produce great beers across the board

 

Re: "I don't necessarily disagree"... Well, if you feel strongly about Allagash, then you can agree with me a teensy bit more "strongly" too. (I'm kidding, and I get your ultimate point.)

When considering a "perfect" restaurant... serving both Mexican and Chinese food isn't really high up on the list of criteria. Having one dish I want to go back to again and again is though.

 

Totally agree in practice or in general - but OP was specifically getting at a “perfect” brewery from a range of styles perspective.

 

Lol. My biggest pet peeve is menus that are too big. Oh, you do Italian AND a pad Thai dish? And your menu is 14 pages? Pass.

I will see your “one dish” and raise you four more. Give me five a restaurant that does five dishes really well and now we are talking.

 

Perfect is in the "Eye of the Beholder" - a couple of examples which may or may not have already been mentioned.

Hill Farmstead - My favorite 1. Brown 2. Pilsner 3. Farmhouse (1a) 4. Porter

Side Project/Shared - May Favorite 1. Stout 2. Wild 3. Farmhouse (1b) 4. Plus very solid IPAs curtesy of Shared

Austin Street - Top Notch in most all styles plus their location lends itself to enjoying many other breweries too (i.e Battery Steele, Foundation, and Definitive).

Anchorage Brewing - Again Top Notch in most all styles plus if you visit in person that means you're in Alaska....one of the most scenic bodies of land in the entire world.

 

I’ve seen @zid pull out that analogy before! But thinking about it I’m not 100% sure it works. I feel like the Indian & Chinese & Italian combo places are more like those places you sometimes find where they have their own beer, whisky, gin and wine. And yeah no thank you to both scenarios.

 

I have to say between Sante Adairius Rustic Ales and Private Press I’ve got all my bases covered for styles.

 

Jack's Abby does lagers (and does them damn well). They are my favorite brewery and I would happily live off of their beer for the rest of my days. But, if I could wave a magic wand, I'd have them add both a Robust Porter (preferably at about 6% abv) and an English Dark Mild (preferably at about 4% abv) to their lineup.

 

I think I stole the basic analogy from @herrburgess and then adapted it. But maybe I said it before as well. Such a blur.

 

Thanks for the nice explanation, Jack. After I asked my question about "other brands" I thought to myself that varying the sources of the German malts and/or hops would have to be what you were referencing as to what would be behind the other brands, but I didn't think the change in taste would be significant enough to create "other" pilsners within the pilsner style. Then I realized that I've had an imperial pilsner somewhere that I recall being distinctively better in taste from a standard one, thus varying the amount of hops and malt can produce a different beer. If the amount of ingredients does that, then the source of the ingredients could do it too. I'm certain that you've had way more pilsners than I have, thus you have the personal experience to know that the source of ingredients does produce a significant taste. It's just that the way you wrote that first quote above caused my brain to think there must be something more dramatic than variances in the standard four ingredients.

Well Bell's was mentioned above, and I agree with that suggestion, presuming that the 'perfect' brewery does not produce all 5.0 beers, but rather everything that they do produce does get rated well above average in every style. To me, that's a good definition of how good Bell's is.

And, oh yeah, there seems to be a number of breweries being named in this thread as being 'perfect', although the thread hasn't turned into as many of them as what I though it would.

 

I’m sure there is a “Tier 1” that we could agree on as a short list of perfect brewers with a few honorable mentions tossed in. I think 3-4 minimum styles at a world class level of craftsmanship, with their lower ranked beers at least at a respectable level of quality and craftsmanship as well.

 

I totally thought of Hill Farmstead! The real question is, is here a style they do not make well?

 

Not that I have tasted except for one:

I can't remember the brand name (I am confident that some BA will remind me) but that there was an IPA that featured Columbus hops which was straight up dank (re: marijuana) that I disliked. Not because it was poorly brewed but it had an aroma/flavor profile that was not pleasant for my personal palate.

Maybe there is another beer(s) they make that I could report was not an A beer (for me) but given how difficult it is (now) for me to drink their beers who knows?

Cheers!

 

Not that I’ve had. And I pretty much like all beer styles.

 

Not a fan of the pungent Mary Jane? To each his own I suppose
In my memory, I don’t think I’ve had a HF beer I wasn’t satisfied with, if not downright blown away. From the NYC perspective, off the top of my head, KCBC seems to make all the styles and well to boot.

 

FWIW, there are 19 U.S. breweries (out of 8,638) rated here on BA that carry a 5.0 rating, but probably hard to consider them to be perfect with only 1 or 2 ratings. You have to get down to Hill Farmstead with a plausible number of ratings (715) to 'define' it as a "perfect brewery" numerically (4.67). Jester King (4.65) and Sante Adairius (4.64) are the close runners-up that have a significant number of ratings.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/place/list/?start=0&c_id=US&brewery=Y&sort=avg

If you look only at overall Beer ratings to measure "perfect brewery" The Alchemist (4.61 rating), Tree House (4.48) and Russian River (4.45) are the top 3.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/place/list/?start=0&c_id=US&brewery=Y&sort=avgbeers

Numbers don't lie.

 

I would submit
Brasserie d'Orval S.A.
Though I have only had 50% of their beers.

 

Starless age was fantastic. I could drink the crap out of that beer. Those troubadour malts really make TRVE stand out.

 

Side note, I have a personal dream of building a bike and riding to Alaska on it some day.