Sierra Nevada SummerFest and Sam Adams Boston Lager

Not to mention a big hats off for choosing CL as numero uno.

Nice job Lauren!

Cheers!

I’d like to see somebody go into detail on the wine/ale, but in the interest of brevity I’ll just comment on pumpkin beers. I don’t see the emergence of entire festivals around pumpkin beers as a bad thing, but they are seasonal and when you have only 25 beers with which to present some breadth making two of them pumpkin seems pretty limiting.

Besides, Jeff’s last comment made me giggle.

Yikes – looking back for that, Jeff, I just noticed your challenge in a previous comment. Guess they came too fast and furious and I missed it. Will give it some thought.

But why all the hate on pumpkin beers? Pumpkins have been used as adjuncts in brewing for a very long time. Unless you are a Bavarian brewer ‘adjuncts’ should not be considered a dirty word. Admittedly most Pumpkin beers are what I might call “dessert” beer but there is nothing wrong with that.

@ Stan – Take it personally?! We are all writers here, yes? I think it’s part of the profession (or passion) that you have to take pride in what you write and wear a thick skin… while remaining open to discussion and criticism. I did not think that everyone (especially such an esteemed beer journalist as yourself) would agree with my list, and did not for one second think that people would not express such differences, but I kinda expected people to read the intro to understand what they were reading! But that’s my frustration, and admittedly a large part of the reason I felt obliged to chime in online; I just wanted everyone to have the context of the list. And I agree on the international perspective, and I’ll try to keep that in mind.

@ Jeff – No problem! You know, you were just being honest, which is TOTALLY great. But again, since I wanted to add some context to the list, here I am… or here we are.

I appreciate your thoughtful comments. Unfortunately, some of what you mention here is just the nature of the beast. Yes, these lists are always subject to criticism, and of course others who know more about the subject or have more experience than you are going to tell you you’re wrong. But you know what… I work with what I have. I’m fortunate to love what I do, and I’m even more fortunate that I get to share my passion with others. What’s even cooler is that I now get to do that for wine AND beer.

I take every opportunity I have to promote the enjoyment of all well-made beverages. I’m proud to bring beer into otherwise wine-centric lives. It makes me happy to hear when I’ve “converted” people. And while I might agree that some may argue the utility of such a list, I just think of all the winos out there going to the beer distributor, article in hand, looking to try something new.

They would probably run something like this: I guess we should just call this year’s list a mulligan. Given the way it was compiled, it is relevant only in a very narrow context. What’s regrettable about these lists is that they are always stripped of context–I learned about it when I saw a tweet from Deschutes. Tweets are almost definitionally context-free. Magazines put thees lists together because they are interesting and sell copies and anyway, don’t we all love the power of codifying bests in lists?

For W.E., the inevitable blowback may be instructive: it will let editors know that any such list is always going to be interpreted in absolute terms, and once they put it out there, they will hear from those who probably have a great deal more knowledge about beer than they have. (As a beer writer, I have learned this the hard way.) As the writer who had to put this together, limiting yourself only to the beers breweries sent was a terrible handicap, and produced a strange list. Not your fault perhaps, but readers are right to ask what utility such a “best of” list is if it’s as capricious as this.

As for the two pumpkin ales? As long as you received at least 26 beers this year, that’s still a problem.

Thanks for the clarification and please don’t take it personally. I like to make fun of everybody’s lists.

As you might tell from my intro I had to guess on how you came up with the list. Perhaps my bad – but I looked for the magazine yesterday at Border’s and the new one wasn’t in.

Not that I expect you to read everything here, but as much as I love what American breweries are doing – and I have told several importers I’d be happy to write about only American beers – I’ve written more than once about how lack of international perspective bother me.

I understand that your magazine is geared toward Americans, but your website is read by everybody in the world.

PS – Kudos for having the guts to put Boston Lager on the list.