Top Five Beers of the Year
Mount St. Bernard Tynt Meadow (Coalville, Leicestershire, England) Trappist beers used to be a foundation in the evolution of beer palates. Now, people might start and stop at cans of double-dry-hopped haze… but the ghosts of the past continue to press on in fantastic ways. This British darling presents malt and phenolic aspects, united in a classical and romantic fashion. Waves of malty dubbel unite with a pop of that yeasty spice from attenuated tripels, forming this clean raisin-bread swallow that unites the enduring history of beer with the present.
Sierra Nevada Celly Drippins (Chico, California) Sierra Nevada continues to both innovate and pay homage to the past, whether that’s with eight-ounce cans of Pils, the best NA program possible, or Celly Drippins—the super-saturated, old-school amber IPA that’s become a hot brewery-only commodity. The malt structures the beer’s resin and coniferous aspects, and it finishes aserose and dry in the way that only a squeezed hopsack can provide.
Lindemans Cuvée de l’Amitié (Vlezenbeek, Flemish Brabant, Belgium) A Wegmans-exclusive gueuze comprised of three-, five-, and six-year-old lambic is wild, but coming from Lindemans, it’s nothing short of staggering. This flips all prior saccharine notions you may have on their head and takes Cuvée Rene to AARP goodness. Musk and Brett drei push this old minecart along with canvas and Honeycrisp apple in a way I might expect from Bokke, not from gold-foiled bottles in the grocery store. This is the ultimate sleeper hit of 2025.
Single Hill Lucky Number 7 (Yakima, Washington) Given the brewery’s location smack in the middle of the Yakima Valley, the hop excellence is a given—and this beer is an impassioned plea for single-IPA grace. In a world taken with resin or orange-juice pulp, it melds Talus Cryo and Chinook, Sabro Cryo and Columbus, Krush and Nelson to present a delicate throwback that is complex and crushable. It is the antithesis of the hackneyed “IPA IS GASOLINE” punchline you have to endure on social media. It is an elevation of form.
Wondrous Triple Cuff (Emeryville, California) This was my overall winner for the multi-month Triple IPA Showdown we conducted for the podcast—and this love letter to Pliny the Younger perhaps exceeds its source material. Even when swished and spit, the Mosaic, Krush, and Riwaka are lovingly united to make the unwieldy TIPA seem nuanced and artful.
Top Five NA Beers of the Year
Rothaus Tannenzäpfle Alkoholfrei (Grafenhausen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) You simply cannot drink enough of these. Like Master P and Lindsay Lohan, the limit does not exist. Endlessly drinkable in every context while also feeling like actual beer, this NA masterpiece checks every box. The base beer already had so much to love, and this adds the depth of accessibility and utility. Finally, a beer you can enjoy while free-soloing El Capitan or running an open bandsaw.
Lakefront Riverwest Stein NA Amber Near Beer (Milwaukee) Malty beer is the Konami code to NA beers, and this one instantly gives you 30 sober lives. You need stacks of these on hand. If you’re drinking NA in Wisconsin, you’ll essentially need infinite beers, and this is exactly the one you want. Mildly sweet with a blast of pumpernickel, it will kick you right down the chalet slide of life.
La Trappe Nillis 0.0% (Berkel-Enschot, Tilburg, Netherlands) An NA Trappist beer seems like an impossibility when the whole draw of those wizened old monks is their yeasty wizardry. But a new apocrypha has been written in refreshment. Nillis provides incredible sustain, froth, and more esters than a nursing-home roll call. This bottle delivers on all that while never becoming watery or arrested-ferm sweet. You could easily live off this alone for 40 days.
Bonn Place Not Nemo (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) This unassuming Pennsylvania cat sets the standard for hyperlocal, high-quality NA beer. Billed as a porter, it dances between the laser pointers and starts scratching posts across stylistic designations. You get the licorice and light anise, but also the light toast of Edmund Fitzgerald, a sober allusion to Tootsie Rolls, and a whole-grain-bread closer. This will convert any NAy-sayer to the cat side.
Samuel Smith Sam’s Brown Ale (Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England) The most ringing endorsement for some NA beers is simply, “It tastes exactly like the original.” This Diet Dr. Pepper sniper hits all the classic notes you crave: malt, meringue whip, rye bread, Gardetto’s rye chips, and a smattering of almond skin on the swallow. I don’t know whether you can get a DUI in a horse and carriage, but thanks to this beer, we’ll never need to find out.
The Beer I Probably Drank the Most this Year
Burial Socialdevice Non-Alcoholic Pils (Asheville, North Carolina) In 2025, cans of Socialdevice were in my garage fridge in nonstop rotation. This delicate smattering of Blanc and Mittelfrüh constantly provided a crackly-crackery pop of near-beer throughout the year, underpinning the watching of toddlers on scooters and the building of sheds. Burial did a fantastic job of making a beer that slides right into place for preexisting life obligations, never feeling like a compromise. Toddlers know no compromise.
What Convinced Me That Craft Beer Is Not Dead
Go to any brewery that’s 50 miles outside of a major city. In Alaska, people were having the time of their lives drinking solidly mediocre beer, swapping adventure stories, enjoying pizza, and embracing that aspect of beer that unites us all: community. That dual purpose of beer as a beverage and a reason for meeting speaks volumes. No one there was complaining about Nectaron hops. No quantity of mergers, RTD cocktails, or hypecans will take away what beer is at its core: something that brings people together across all walks of life to appreciate being a little more in the present.
A Song, a Beer, a Moment
I drank a Stella Artois 0.0 at Petco Park in San Diego while watching A Day to Remember. When you’re young, you seek out alcohol and structure your entire night around it. Then you get older, and the inverse happens: You find the fun of the night and actively avoid getting drunk. It was surreal to see a post-hardcore band, in a ballpark, at night, completely sober and more content than ever. Alcohol is still omnipresent, but the way people approach fun is changing. People are finding new ways to not disrespect their surroundings.
Why Beer Gives Me Hope for the Future
We live in turbulent times, when people often disagree and find ways to see the worst in each other. The best exchanges always happen at a granular level, a little frothy, maybe messy, often with a Lukr tap involved. Beer is meant for those intimate moments with old friends or current enemies. It is that fermented gravity drawing us inward with the enduring, common desire for one more round in each other’s company. Round after round, nothing pulls us together like beer.
