10 most important American craft beers
Food & Wine had a great idea. I’m borrowing it. L ast month, the magazine asked 21 beer industry luminaries to rank the most important craft beers of all time. Not the best, which would have been a ridiculous and impossible undertaking. The most important. As you might expect from a pack of luminaries, the list was fairly well-constructed. But after sharing it on social media and following with my own thoughts, most of which blew past 140 characters, there was only one thing to do: Make a list of my own.
What makes an “important” beer? To me, the definition i s simple: It’s one that either changed consumer tastes or how breweries approach making beer. Some of the beers below have inflfluenced both drinkers and brewers. Others hew more in one direction than the other. Others fifind their power in the brand or the package even more than the beer. As you’ll see, I agree with much of the Food & Wine list but also take several exceptions.
Here is my ranking of the American craft beer industry’s 10 most important beers ever (which actually numbers more than that due to a tie):
1. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Sierra Nevada Brewing)
As simple as the concept is now, Sierra Nevada’s flflagship beer was revolutionary in 1980: a hop-forward pale ale showcasing the spry citrus character of Americangrown hops. Nothing like it had existed before on a commercial scale; now such beers line shelves of any and every reputable beer store in the country. There’s no other reasonable choice for the top spot. (Food & Wine rank: 1)
2. Sam Adams Boston Lager (Boston Beer)
Not the most exciting beer, but the company’s ambitious growth, crossed with founder Jim Koch’s marketing savvy — including a very public war of words with Anheuser-Busch during the 1990s — has arguably done more than any other brand to challenge the dominance of Bud, Miller and the old standbys. As Goose Island founder John Hall once told me: “Jim built a tent that the rest of us could step into.” (F&W: 2)
3. Bourbon County Stout (Goose Island Beer Co.)
When f i r s t re l e a s e d i n 1995 (yes — it was 1995, not 1992 as the label says), an imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels might as well have been a lager brewed on Mars; it just didn’t exist. Goose Island gave the world a gift by coaxing those phenomenal flflavors that result from imperial stout meeting whiskey barrel — vanilla, chocolate, coconut, marshmallow and oak. The evidence lies in the hundreds, if not thousands, of breweries that have followed suit. (F&W: 3)
4. Anchor Steam ( Anchor Brewing)
The original Americ an c r a f t beer. End of s t or y. (F&W: 11)
5. 90 Minute IPA (Dogfifish Head Brewing)
Like “Jeopardy!” this spot began with an answer: hops. Hops have been the engine driving craft beer for more than a decade, and without an India pale in the top four, it was time for an India pale ale. Dozens of IPAs have been inflfluential, which made zeroing in on one a challenge. But I settled on this classic, and without much consternation. Back in 1999, when many American craft breweries were still built on mimicking European beer styles, Delaware’s Dogfifish Head changed how a nation thought about hops, with this boozy (9 percent alcohol), bitter (90 IBUs) and assertive imperial IPA. What made the beer even more important was the company’s aggressive distribution strategy, which made Dogfifish the nation’s fastest-growing brewery by 2011 and put 90 Minute IPA in countless awestruck hands at a time that craft beer was building momentum toward the breakthrough that followed. (F&W: 23)
6. Blue Moon Belgian White (Blue Moon Brewing Co.; subsidiary of MillerCoors)
The Brewers Association defifines a craft brewer, and MillerCoors certainly is not one. However, the Brewers Association does not defifine craft beer, and it is widely agreed: Blue Moon is a craft beer. Ubiquity and the power of that MillerCoors distribution network have made Blue Moon crucially important to the growth of craft beer; it has educated countless mainstream drinkers about the genius of the Belgian wit. (F&W: Not ranked)
7. Lagunitas IPA (Lagunitas Brewing)
Hard as it is to imagine, IPAs barely existed in 1995, which put this beer and its citrus-pine hop character ahead of its time. More subtly, but equally important: L a g uni t a s founder Tony Magee claims to be fifirst to package an IPA simply as “IPA.” Until then, he has said, the style was largely portrayed as I.P.A.” and with the sort of images — a raja, the Taj Mahal, a Ben- gal tiger — that nodded to the style’s history as a British export to India. If in fact Magee was fifirst to package IPA without the periods and the campy iconography — and I’ve found no compell ing evidence to the contrary — this beer has been even more inflfluential than its tasty liquid (which has become the nation’s top-selling IPA). (F&W: Not ranked)
8. New Belgium Brewing Fat Tire/ Bell’s Amber (tie)
No one cares much about amber ales anymore, but like Sam Adams Boston Lager, the style helped convert scores of craft drinkers in the ’80s and early ’90s. It also gave breweries the bedrock, highvolume beers that fifinanced their ability to embrace the wilder experiments that have come to defifine the industry. (F&W: Neither ranked)
9. La Folie (New Belgium Brewing)
Long before oak-aged sour beers were popular in American brewing, there was La Folie. This showed a generation of brewers the possibilities. (F&W: 13)
10. Pliny the Elder (Russian River Brewing)
One of the original American cult beers, Pliny can’t be found outside of its tiny distribution footprint — California, Oregon, Colorado and Philadelphia — and that’s partly where the power of this imperial IPA lies. But the beer backs up the hype with superb balance: bold citrus-pine character, malt backbone and bitterness. (F&W: 7)