Best Brewery in the United States

There are a lot of fine breweries run by some very experienced people, so I dount that we will really be able to come up with The Best Brewery. Try as I might I haven't gotten anywhere close to trying all of them!

Still, my choice for the best combination of good beer, range of selection and service would be Dominion Brewery in Ashburn, Va.

They have a wide range of beer for all palates and in my experience most of their beer ranges from very good to just knock-your-socks off great. They have a first rate pub attached to the brewery that serves up good food and the staff knows the beer. The brewery offers really interesting tours with ample samples and the last time I took it the owner ran the tour and was refreshingly honest about the business and the beer.

The only exception to a fine list of beers is their latest Wheat beer. They replaced a really refreshing Hefe Weizen with a Kristal Weizen and the result in my opinion has very little taste. It is the only exception to a fine list of beers however.

The only exception is noted below. Dom

I agree. It's something like asking me what my favorite beer is... there are so many good ones, and so many different occasions to consume them, that the answer will vary.

That said, I'd throw Sierra Nevada in the ring as a great brewery. Very consistent product, well-balanced and well- crafted beer selection, very welcoming brewhouse (by all reports; I haven't been there myself... yet), and they've been generous in their support of homebrewers. [*]

My kitchen!

Phil =====visit the New York City Homebrewers Guild website:

Their Celebration Ale pretty damn good

Funny how the same thing can appear entirely differently to different people.

There are Stone beers I like, and they definitely are consistent in quality, but they come nowhere close to the best brewery for me. All of their beers are big, bold and often horribly unbalanced (not to mention the occasional muddled mess, like the Bastard). They're about a one-and-a-half-trick pony.

I don't have a best brewery. I don't even really have a favorite. I mean, if a brewery brews one single beer that you find orgasmically good and would go to great lengths to get, but the other ones didn't really catch your interest, would that be the best brewery? Would the brewery that maybe doesn't have one beer that just grabs you and demands your undivided attention, but every last beer they brew is in the category of maybe not great but very good, be the best? The brewery that is the most innovative and daring? The brewery that proves itself equally adept at making a low-gravity, low-alcohol, low-hop beer very flavorful as well as making very good big beers? The brewery that handles a wide range of unrelated styles very well?

Everyone's going to have entirely different criteria. And even if I chose just one criterion, my answer's likely to change year-to-year, month-to-month or even day-to-day.

And every possible contender I have seems to have some significant flaw that brings them back down to earth. Victory seem to be able to take any style they want and brew it well, but they continue to have bottling quality problems (although the last few times I've bought, it seems things are under better control). Plus the Storm King's a bit of a dog. Goose Island does almost everything consistently in the very good category, but maybe other than their Summertime (Kölsch-style) and the IPA, there's nothing I'd say that blows me away (some of the pub-only stuff is a different story). And that pils was a dog when it first came out (haven't had it since then).

Bell's does amazing stuff, but they can't seem to keep the diacetyl under control. Bear Republic has my everday beer (Racer 5), but there's other stuff that just doesn't grab me at all. Sierra Nevada does not have a dog in the lineup, the quality is consistent and they do a lot of interesting stuff. Anchor, especially the Steam, seems to deteriorate block-by-block as it leaves the brewery.

Hell, all that said, I'd probably go with Sierra. I've never been disappointed, they have a few things that are positively outstanding (Celebration, Bigfoot, Harvest) and I've never had quality problems with them. Ever.

-Steve

I'm a bit of a beer neophyte, but I'm going to go with Dogfish Head.

They make some fine brews. I've enjoyed their 90 degree IPA and the stout at the Rehoboth pub.

Do you have a favorite?

I'll just go with my favourites :^)

New Belgium Russian River Victory Rogue Alaskan Sierra Nevada Deschutes Bristol Coopersmiths umm..the list is getting a bit long...

Ommegang and Flying Dog??? (is that the co. or the beer, in colorado)

It's 90 Minute not 90 degree...and one of my favorites from the is their world wide stout

Yup...don't know where I got 90 degree...

The Chicory Stout is a fine winter beer.

That's the brewery's name

I'm a big fan of Troegs.

New Glarus is one of my faves.

I'd Like to nominate Bell's out of Western Michigan (Kalamazoo)

Rogue . . . because I like it

Sierra Nevada . . . because they are very good and widely available.

Hair of the Dog Brewing Company . . . because they are good old boys and make really good big beers

If you insist on using Google Groups' awful UI, you'll probably want to turn on the feature that includes posts to which you respond. Otherwise, nobody in Usenet (which is what this really is) will have a clue what you're talking about.

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