I say this every year, but it also becomes more true every year: You should drink local, because you’ll almost certainly find very good beer near your home (83 percent of you live within 10 miles of a brewery, according to the Brewers Association).  There are now more than 6,000 breweries in the United States — with dozens upon dozens more in the works — and they are, according to The Atlantic, driving “the Strangest, Happiest Economic Story in America.” 

So head down to your local spot.  Get to know a brewer, ask some questions, figure out why exactly you love beers with Galaxy hops but aren’t crazy about ones full of Simcoe.  Your spending will stay in the local economy and you’ll help create jobs. 

Two of my favorite outfits going right now — Goonda Beersmiths and Hidden River — are relatively unknown.  Goonda is just two guys brewing out of a shared space not far from where Memorial Stadium once stood in Baltimore.  And Hidden River is, as the name suggests, tucked into a fascinating old lodge next to a river on a road that lulls through rural Southeastern Pennsylvania.  Yet both of these places, according to my palate, make beer just as good as any of the breweries listed in our bracket above. 

It’s amazing how much that bracket has changed since we first started doing this, with Southern Tier edging out Founders in 2015.  Then in 2016 we asked you to vote for the best single beer, and Bell’s Two-Hearted beat Russian River’s Pliny the Elder.  Last year returned to voting for best overall brewery and Founders beat Wicked Weed in the final with 52 percent of the vote — and Anheuser-Busch promptly convinced Wicked Weed to sell out. 

This year we’ve filled the brackets using a completely new method (our previous method being mostly: here are the places we like and other places we’ve heard/read a lot about.)  We — my friend Andy Zenyuch, an award-winning home brewer, helped with the selections — turned to Untappd’s list of 50 Top-Rated Breweries and gave automatic bids to any beer brewery (sorry, mead fans) on the list that also had more than 80,000 ratings.  Then we split the country into four regions using the 40th parallel north and the 100th meridian west, which couldn’t be less precise or scientific but worked out perfectly for this exercise. 

Doing this filled our Northeast bracket (we seeded based on number of reviews, not ranking), but left us needing two wild cards in the Southwest, three in the Southeast and five in the Northwest. 

To fill these we again turned to Untappd, looking for breweries with at least 80,000 reviews and at least a 4.01 rating.  And then … we picked the ones we thought might deserve to get in. 

Because beer is subjective. 

Asking a large group of voters to select the best brewery in the United States, in 2018, is going to be messy.  Unimaginable growth — there weren’t even 2,800 craft breweries in 2013! —  has ensured that most breweries are producing a quality product, while many have also provided tap rooms to draw customers in and revitalize neighborhoods. 

I hope you have allegiances to some of your hometown spots, or maybe to a beer mecca you visited along the way and I’m sorry if those place didn’t make the list.  Maybe next year.  Or not.  It really doesn’t matter.  They’ll keep serving what you love either way. 

Voting is now closed. 

Northwest region

Southwest region

Northeast region

Southeast region