Yet Another "Best Craft Breweries" List

Once again it's west coast heavy with only two from the east. Dogfish head and cigar city. I am surprised they let michigan in.

 

No Firestone...?c'mon man!

 

And not one German brewery in the list.

 

The title of the article is the "15 Best Craft Breweries in America."

 

round up the usual suspects

 

I know, no Czech or Belgian breweries, either.

 

Just another list of opinions. Not saying they are not worthy, but a lot from Colorado, but none from New York, Pennsylvania, and no Great Lakes? Yes, bit of a homer, but they are solid, one of the original, and have held true to their craft for 25 years.

Too many good ones missed. Better list than some, in all fairness, but you could have a list of the top 50, and you left out someone's favorite that they feel has a right to be there.

 

No Japanese, Dutch, Jamaican, Russian, or Canadian either. Odd misses for a list of American craft breweries I must admit........

 

Am I missing some grand point here? Would you expect an article entitled the "15 best craft breweries in Belgium" to have American breweries on it?

 

i like the list for the most part but i too must admit it is west coast heavy(not that the west coast doesnt have a higher amount of quality breweries) but as far as the top tier u cant tell me hill farmstead, victory, and maine beer co. arent better than rogue cmon now...would have liked to see firestone on there too instead of rogue

 

Come on - a Jamaican brewery in the best 15. Though that McEwan's Strong Ale wasn't bad. Who was it who brewed that? Was it Desnoes and Geddes or Guinness?

 

Dogfish is so overrated damn.

 

I tend to agree with you. They've got some great ones, but there's so many misses because they try so many crazy things that are just terrible.

 

I can't really argue with too many on the list, though there are plenty more that are as equally as deserving of a spot.
I think that Rogue and Dogfish made the list as much as the fact they're innovators rather than them hitting it out of the ballpark every brew. So some of their brews aren't all that good (Rogue Doughnut, most of DFH big bottle series) but they are experimenting and pushing the limits and boundaries of what beer can be.

 

I love this attitude we see from some BAs that it's all good just because they're experimenting.

Actually, no. "Pushing the envelope" just for its own sake isn't good if what you turn out is crap. Why not just add things like, oh, rust flakes? Rutabagas? Hand lotion?

Or a tiny bit of cyanide to the boil? Now that would push the envelope!

I wholly support entrepreneurship and innovation, but there's a difference between experimentation and just plain doing stupid sh*t.

I would even suggest Rogue and DFH do that stuff for marketing purposes to attract attention, but of course we all know craft drinkers are too sophisticated to fall for marketing schemes. That only works on people who drink AALs from the Big Beer companies (aka BMC), right?

 

I don't know if I've had a single "great" dogfish head brew, and I've had a bunch. They wouldn't be in my top 50.