Beer Sherpa Recommends

In the annual tradition of year-end lists, I bring you my idiosyncratic, highly individual list of the best beers I had last year. Even writing the post made my mouth water!

I had tried to avoid going straight to a lager brewery when I walked into Wild East, thinking even then I was on target. I planned on seeing Finback and painting my tongue green with hops. But beer cares nothing for my plans. It has its own agenda.

When we talk about great beer cities, the name Atlanta rarely comes up. After a visit to five excellent breweries in town—New Realm, Bold Monk, Monday Night, Halfway Crooks, and Elsewhere—I was convinced it should.

The last stop on my swing through the Midwest took me to Chicago, where I visited Half Acre, Middle Brow, and Dovetail. I managed to finagle a tour of Dovetail, and witnessed the old-world processes seemingly transplanted from Franconia to North Chicago.

I am midway through the first leg of my book tour and I have some reports. Unexpectedly, cask ales have been the early stars of the show. 

An exceptional new brewery opened in Bellingham a year ago, and they specialize in rustic styles, including Franconian lager. But my fave was a Polish lager. 

A quintuple IPA arrived in my mailbox and promised to answer a question I’ve long wondered about: is there a point of diminishing return on IPAs, where hop intensity can no longer increase with the strength of a beer? The answer lay within.

Portland has so many breweries that many get lost in in the scrum. Yet while they may not be as buzzy as Great Notion or Breakside, some of these lesser-known breweries have a lot to celebrate. Here are seven of the best underrated breweries you should check out.

As my perambulations take me around the beautiful sort-of post-Covid City of Roses, I have been finding a number of great beers to try. Today we have a look at stouts at Assembly, hoppy wild ales at Little Beast, and cask summer ales at Upright.

Bits and bobs as Portlanders brace for a heat wave that may well melt half of us. 

Hazy IPAs are the style that launched a thousand breweries. Yet their fusty old predecessors haven’t been banished entirely, and Fremont’s new release, Ollie, shows why.

What can we learn from Hopworks’ new beer, Beestly? It’s a porter, it’s organic, and it’s made with honey in an effort to help save the bees. In all ways, it seems like a project out of step with current trends—or maybe that makes it ahead of its time? Plus, look how Germans are appealing to the Yanks.

Every now and again, an explorer will follow a path deep into a thicket before finally tracing their way back out. The Sherpa has lately been following American-brewed Czech tmavés deep into the underbrush, and today’s edition reveals what he found.

Having been neglectful about actual, tasty beer, I offer a round-up of recent discoveries, both in trends and individual beers.

Great Notion is a polarizing brewery, but for an unusual and—for some—unsettling reason. Both fans and critics of the brewery agree they make beers that taste uncannily like a blueberry muffin, stack of pancakes, or scoop of sherbet. Where they disagree: whether the beer should taste like those things.

Just a year old, Beachcrest Brewing has become a must-visit on Oregon’s central coast.

The Beer Sherpa recommends a beer from each stop on his grand European odyssey. 

We have become balkanized in our IPA preferences, divided among our tribes of hazy fans and West Coast devotees. But the flagship IPA of Grains of Wrath has something to please everyone.

Riffing on the name Beervana, I have traditionally identified the best new beer of the year with the Satori award. It honors the beer that in a single instant, through the force of tastiness and elan, produces a similar flash of insight into the nature of beer.

Three beers to get your weekend off to a good start from Little Beast, Level Beer, and Pelican.