Craft Beer & Brewing magazine just published its list of the Best 20 Beers in 2024. Why should you care? The list includes beers from across the nation and around the world, but six of the beers are from Washington and Oregon. Impressive! I list those beers below, along with some thoughts about each brewery.
Tasting and evaluating beer is what they do. The team at Craft Beer & Brewing tastes a whole lot of beer throughout the year. I can’t imagine how many individual beers pass their lips. The beers are submitted by breweries far and wide for evaluation. Some beers make the pages of the magazine. Not every brewery submits beer, but many do.
While the list is subjective and not empirical, these decisions are not arrived at without a lot of tasting and analyzing. As the magazine puts it, “A year of focused tasting panels plus two full days of blind judging and lively discussion among our editorial panel—including Kate Bernot and Stan Hieronymus—culminates in this [list].” (Kate and Stan are serious heavyweights in the beer world, ICYDK.)
The Best 20 included six beers from Washington and Oregon:
- Panopticon IPA, Grains of Wrath Brewing (Camas, WA)
- Zoospaloos Dark Czech Lager, Ladd & Lass Brewing (Seattle, WA)
- Helles Lager, Gold Dot Beer (McMinnville, OR)
- Unholy River Oak-fermented Wild Ale. Funky Fauna Artisan Ales (Sisters, OR)
- Huckleberry Crush and Cucumber Crush, 10 Barrel Brewing (Bend, OR)
- pFriem Japanese Lager, pFriem Family Brewers (Hood River, OR)
Nobody should be surprised when Grains of Wrath Brewing is recognized for its IPA prowess. By now, we should all be firmly aware that the brewery pumps out a consistent stream of super-hopped IPAs. It’s not the only thing they do, but Mike Hunsaker and his crew excels at IPA. The brewery won five medals across a variety of styles at this year’s Washington Beer Awards and was named Mid-Sized Brewery of the Year.
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Ladd & Lass Brewing is quickly earning a reputation. An up-and-comer you need to know about, the brewery is just a couple years old. The brewery took over the former home of Floating Bridge Brewing in the University District and opened in January 2022. It’s been a quick ride to the top. Among other accolades, Ladd & Lass secured four medals at this year’s Washington Beer Awards.
Gold Dot Beer is a collaborative project hatched by a pair of esteemed NW brewers with serious lager chops: Kevin Davey (Wayfinder Beer, Chuckanut Brewery, etc.) and Lisa Allen (from the Heater Allen Brewing family line). In fact, their relationship is a collaborative partnership, so to speak. They are a Northwest brewing power couple. And they’re kind of adorable, too. This lager-focused brewing operation never disappoints and most often amazes.
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Funky Fauna Artisan Ales only recently blipped on my radar screen. Sounds like Craft Beer & Brewing is in the same boat. Paul Arney of The Ale Apothecary thought Kate Bernot needed to know about this one. If you make oak-fermented wild ales, and Paul Arney is listed as a reference on your resume, you are most certainly doing something right.
I’m happy 10 Barrel Brewing made this list. The now-dismantled innovations brewing team down in Bend has done some amazing things over the years. If you were able to look past the whole Anheuser-Busch thing, you tasted some amazing creations. When Tilray Brands bought the brewery from A-B, we hoped for the best but were delivered the worst. Tilray basically shitcanned the best part of 10 Barrel. That’s all I have to say about that.
When I was working on an article about Japanese lager (rice lager), I knew who to use as an information source. If pFriem Family Brewers was making a Japanese Lager, no American brewer knows more about the style. Whether it’s a Japanese lager, an IPA, or a sauv blanc barrel-aged Belgian-style golden ale, the attention to detail always finds its way to the glass. Do yourself a favor, consider joining the pFriemster’s Union, and get the brewery’s magic delivered to your doorstep.
You can read the complete story and see more about each of the 20 beers on the list here. Many of the beers are long gone, others will never find their way to a beer store near you, but it is still a good read.
