The 34 Hottest Breweries in America Right Now
by Cindi Sutter, Founder & Editor Spirited Table® - All content provided by Ezra Johnson-Greenough, Zach Mack, and Ale Sharpton
Beautiful beer gardens, innovative techniques, and award-winning brews.
We live in a golden age of craft brewing, one where more than 8,000 breweries are currently pouring everything from buzzy hazy and milkshake IPAs to traditional Belgian fare, stouts, lagers, and everything in between. Usually with punny names. Because craft beer’s gonna craft beer.
The 34 breweries on this list range from old-school favorites making new waves to up-and-comers offering destination-worthy pours. They also reflect the innovation and adaptability that brewers have had to exercise in response to pandemic regulations. As chosen by our own boozy supergroup of beer minds, they’re the hottest breweries in America right now. Oh, and be sure to circle back soon, because this list will update as often as a tap list.
Alvarado Street
Monterey, California
In an alternate reality, John Steinbeck would be having beers with Madeline Martha Mackenzie at Alvarado Street Brewery. The Nobel Prize-winning giant of American letters would probably be more inclined to share a drink with a blue collar everyman than Resse Witherspoon’s upper-class elite helicopter parent from Big Little Lies, even though they both call Monterey home. But one thing they could agree upon is a Mai Tai, and I don’t mean the tropical cocktail but the single-hop and single-malt tropical Mai Tai P.A. from here. Over recent years it’s racked up more GABF medals than just about any other IPA in the last decade. The downtrodden working man and a wealthy alpha female can find common ground over world-class social lubricants at any of three Alvarado Street Brewery locations in the county.
Bierstadt Lagerhaus
Denver, Colorado
Have you ever found yourself just dying for that first sip of beer after a long day only to find the line to the bar to be agonizingly slow? What if once you finally bellied up to order, the beer took a painfully long six minutes just to pour? At Bierstadt Lagerhaus that’s a feature, not a bug. Served in the traditional Czech slow pour style out of side pull faucets and brewed on an all copper 1932 German-made brewhaus, these beers are worth the wait. Brewmaster Ashleigh Carter knows that truly great lagers require patience, lager means to cellar, and though these beers are deceptively simple the process is decidedly not. But good things come to those who wait, and by the time that glass of Slow Pour Pils, Helles, or Dunkel hits your lips it will be better than you ever imagined.
Bissell Bros
Portland, Maine
Forget all those comments about Portland being the new “hot food and brewing” town: New Englanders have known this to be true for the better part of two decades by now. And it’s thanks in part to white-hot breweries like Bissell Bros that it’s reputation continues to grow with every can release that rolls out of their fermenters. Seeing that it’s peak tourist season in Vacationland, the taproom is in full swing with fresh can drops of crowd favorites like the Substance, a super juicy NEIPA, and Precept, a crisp German-style pilsner. Most of all, it’s easiest to revel in the fact that the hype around this place isn’t just relegated to haze-craze fanatics looking for a juicy one-off release.
Boxing Bear
Albuquerque, New Mexico
This brewery on the banks of the Rio Grande is staunchly standing up for the New Mexico craft brewing scene, like some sort of beer-drenched John Ford western. Boxing Bear brought the cavalry out for a recent run of gold medal-winning beers, including its Featherweight Session IPA at the 2018 North American Beer Awards and another gold earlier in the year for its Chocolate Milk Stout at the prestigious World Beer Cup. We hear a sequel to Rio Grande is in the works where a digitally resurrected (but still past his prime) John Wayne will take on a Boxing Bear voiced by Kevin Hart and played by Glenn Ennis, reprising his role as the bear from The Revenant. Well, probably not. But at least the beer will continue to be great.
City Built
Grand Rapids, Michigan
With Grand Rapids consistently regarded as one of the best beer cities in the country, City Built CEO Edwin Collazo and team have done a stellar job making their name known. With a knack for captivating the eye thanks to award-winning can labels including a recent national winner, Prague Underground, Collazo makes sure the beer warrants the same accolades. From imperial stouts to IPAs, sours, and pilsners, the beers showcase the brewery’s inventiveness using an array of spices, exotic fruit, and other adjuncts the right way: balanced and simply delicious. Since 2017, City Built aligns its lauded core lineup with brewery collaborations and paying homage to rap duo Run The Jewels with a recent “Look Ma! No Hands” double dry-hopped IPA to keep things fresh. To give this brewery a welcomed edge, Collazo’s Puerto Rican heritage is demonstrated through authentic cuisine served inside the buoyant taproom. Acclaimed brews. Dope art. Solid merch. Slamming eats. Plans to triple capacity in 2022. Yep, City Built is simply the shit.
Cloudburst Brewing
Seattle, Washington
Cloudburst co-founder/brewer Steve Luke was a brewer at Elysian Brewing and his mentor, Dick Cantwell, literally wrote the book on Eclectic IPA, and the pair just happened to be on the brew deck working on a collaboration when Cloudburst Brewing was named one of the Breweries of the Year at the prestigious 2021 Great American Beer Festival. In their six years of existence, Cloudburst Brewing has become known for mastery of cloudy beers, but as great as their wizardry with hops is, they pulled off a parting of the clouds to win bronze and silver for clear lagers.
COURTESY OF DOVETAIL BREWING
Chicago, Illinois
Dovetail’s ability to turn classic European-style lagers into some of the most celebrated beers in the country is a testament to two of the brewery’s strengths: a proficiency at brewing delicious lagers across a range of styles, and a welcoming attitude that encourages even beer newbies to join the party. It’s the rare brewery in 2021 that not only makes beer-flavored beer, but makes it fun. Some beers in Dovetail’s lineup are destined to become fridge staples—a Helles, a kolsch, a hefeweizen—while others expand lager lovers’ palates into perhaps unfamiliar territory. Grodziskie or rauchbier, anyone?
Energy City Brewing
Batavia, Illinois
More than 40 miles west of Chicago, Energy City has been steadily making a national name for itself since opening its doors as a one-barrel brewery in 2017. From those humble roots, former home brewer David Files and his wife and brewery co-owner, Heidi Files, have had to grow to keep up with intense demand for the brewery’s hazy double IPAs, smoothie hard seltzers, and Bistro line of food-flavored berliner weisses. The latter encompasses everything from Pumpkin Cobbler to Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwich to Blueberry Pancakes. Within just a year, Energy City was brewing its beer at other, larger breweries in Illinois and Indiana, and it’s still hardly able to get its beer to all the fans who want it.
Edmund’s Oast
Charleston, South Carolina
Edmund’s Oast might have replaced Charleston’s best beer store, Charleston Beer Exchange, but it replaced it in style. Edmund’s Oast is a posh combo of mixology, gourmet dining, and taphouse with 48 taps ciders, wines, and a wide range of inventive ales and lagers brewed from a five-barrel capacity on site coupled with respected craft breweries nationwide. (The Peanut Butter & Jelly ale is a local favorite that frequents their casks as well.) Outside this 6,000-square-foot warehouse-turned-fancy-fortress, there’s a lavish pavilion in the spacious courtyard shared with other businesses. The Oast empire has since flexed serious muscle in 2017 erecting two more operations: the reawakened, two-story Edmund’s Past Exchange bottle shop adjacent to the restaurant and a 20,000-square foot brewery filling glasses with solely house brews from its 30-barrel system, plus sake and spirits. These cats are no joke.
Fonta Flora Brewery
Morganton and Nebo, North Carolina
Let’s keep it 100: When there is word of expansion from your favorite local brewery, there is certainly concern things will become, shall we say, compromised? Not the case with North Carolina’s beloved Fonta Flora. Putting Morganton—Asheville’s little brother an hour’s drive away—on the state’s loaded brewery map with their mostly European-inspired creations, it now has a tranquil Whippoorwill Farm addition in nearby Nebo. The applauded series of Lake James adjunct-corn lagers the in-house coolship, aging legion of bourbon barrel-aged stouts, and new canning line further justify Double F is certainly hot. (Addressing the cans, the packaging is consistently captivating thanks to former classmates of brewer and co-owner Todd Boera’s Warren Wilson College alma mater.) Fonta’s distribution continues to grow with currently Georgia, the Carolinas, and Cali beer lovers fiending for its latest creations. Now that’s fuego.
Great Notion
Portland, Oregon
Nerds have been voraciously playing a new mobile app where they take on the persona of a lumberjack character named Victoria Lane to scale trees, unlock woodland creatures, and win points for perks and rewards hoping to get to the elusive Timberbeast. No, we aren’t talking about the latest Pokemon game, this is the new Great Notion App that gamifies beer geekdom with digital merit badges earned by interacting with the brand and ordering beer shipments to your door. This is all a delivery mechanism for world-class, NE-style hazy IPAs that helped bring that style to the forefront of popularity to begin with, and since then the brewery has staked a claim over culinary inspired dessert beers and sours with maple syrup, pineapple, marshmallows, peanut butter, and blueberries. We will trade you a timberbeast for that double-stuffed oreo cookie milkshake Imperial Stout.
Green Bench Brewing
St. Petersburg, Florida
Already kicking ass with its world class Sunshine IPA since 2013, Green Bench’s brewing genius Khris Johnson runs this space with a beautiful courtyard separating the original headquarters, which now boasts a state-of-the-art tap room, barrel-aging space, additional foeders, and the ability to increase production three-times the former rate. This swanky addition to the family is christened Webb’s Cellar Room, and its Peach Alice sour was arguably one of our most favorite in that style. Green Bench continues to steadily stay ablaze with numerous brewery collaborations and surrounding St. Pete construction to make them even more the shit for years to come.
You’ll find the rest of this amazing list at https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/best-breweries-in-america