Chicago's Top 11 Breweries, Ranked by Experts

Thank you captian obvious. Any other nuggets of enlightment this afternoon.

 

Everything in the world revolves around two things, my friend. Love, and money.

 

Buckledown in Lyons is MIA. Destihl & Brickstone are from downstate. Somebody buy the New Yorkers that run Thrillist a map.

 

My own top local 15 list, which like everybody else's, is worthless to anyone but me. In no particular order:

Church Street
Scorched Earth
Marz
Penrose
Only Child
Off-Color
5 Rabbit
Crystal Lake
Zumbier
Lagunitas
Urban Legend
Pig Minds
Cademon
Flesk
Une Annee

 

Seeing as there are a TON of great breweries in the Chicago area, it's really stupid that they put Three Floyds on the list.
Should Lost Abbey, Allagash, Surly, etc be on the list since their beers are on Chicago shelves? No...

I'm not sure what these "experts" were basing the rankings from, but going by the ratings on BA and RateBeer, this list is completely garbage. No disrespect to Metropolitan, but they certainly aren't the #2 brewery in arguably the country's best beer scene. I wouldn't even put them in the top 20, but that's just my worthless opinion.

 

I'll offer three. If you're asking a question you'll want to use a question mark rather than a period. And it's "captain" and "enlightenment".

 

If you look for directions via google maps to Penrose from a generic "Chicago" it's 44 miles. Do the same for Three Floyds and it's 30.7. These are all Chicago area breweries.

 

Agreed. Its not in Chicago proper but it is definately in the area. If your going to included breweries in the far northwest subburbs I would consider NW Indiana fair game.

 

Well Played.

 

It's a big area to cover. I doubt anybody has or ever will, be able to visit each and every brewery and brewpub in the metro area.

 

Apparently, the "Chicago area" keeps getting bigger and bigger. Here are some other places just as far from Chicago as Champaign:

 

Awesome, where should New Glarus fall on the list?

 

Notice that Three Floyds ranked 6th with 20 points, but it had two number 1 rankings among the individual experts. That means the other four didn't rank it at all. I suspect that two of the experts considered it part of the Chicago area and put it at number 1 (as I would have done) and four didn't think to include it in the Chicago area. If those four had included it and it averaged just a 5th place ranking among them, it would have been in first place.

 

Not everybody thinks FFF is godlike.

And to quote somebody on another thread today....

"I assume one also would have to not hate coffee. I personally can't stand the taste or smell of coffee in or out of beer, and that likely would preclude outstanding enjoyment of this beer by me. I may be in the minority, but surely I'm not alone. I wouldn't turn down a free or cheap chance to try it, though, only because it's the highest rated beer in the history of the other site. I'd love the chance to drag that rating down!

In seriousness, I think that because bourbon barrel-aging and coffee fans seek out this rare beer so enthusiastically, a lot of people like me to whom not both of those traits appeal never get the chance to rate it. It's consumed and beloved among those who are most prone to loving it and untried by those who aren't. To some extent this self selection bias affects all beer ratings, but I suspect it affects those of Kentucky Brunch much more than most."

An example of somebody not liking certain beer styles..... or certain breweries.

 

I wish I could bottle this thread and sell it as BeerAdvocate extract.

 

I'm not sure how that quote pertains here. If we were talking about the top ten beers in the Chicago area and, say, Dark Lord's place on it, then, sure, that idea potentially could apply. I don't think that a majority of "beer experts" in Chicago are systematically avoiding or failing to get their hands on Three Floyds' beers because they dislike the brewery's output in general. If you look at the top 3 lists of the people who excluded it, you'll notice that they generally aren't averse to some of the extremes that somebody could find off-putting in Three Floyds' line-up. I think my hypothesis that at least some of the experts didn't even think to include Three Floyds or thought about it and decided that it didn't count as a Chicago-area brewery is vastly more likely. Three Floyds not appearing on 4 of 6 experts' top ten lists if all of them considered and counted it as a Chicago-area brewery isn't much more likely than Surly not being included on 4 of 6 experts' Twin Cities-area brewery lists. Anyway, I don't care much about Three Floyds (I do think it's a top-notch brewery but have no emotional attachment to it; nor do I drink its beers frequently for reasons of distribution and price); I'm just noting a flaw in the methodology of the list.