Best in Beer 2020 (Dec-Jan)

Now, here’s a different sort of winter warmer. The fruits and spices are up to you (every abuela has her own ponche recipe). Warm it up, mix with nog, stick a red-hot poker in it … or just enjoy in a snifter by the fireside. ¡Feliz Navidad!

From his Make Your Best series on dialing in various beer styles, here is Josh Weikert’s recipe for a Czech-style dark lager—a session-strength lager with layers of malt flavor and spicy hop character.

From his Make Your Best series, here is Josh Weikert’s recipe for a Belgian-style strong golden ale inspired by the devilish archetype.

Do future-you a favor: Take the time to organize your brewing zone.

This atmospheric bar in a historic brewery cellar features pizzas and a tap list studded with local and regional stars.

This lush treat features one of our Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® Best 20 Beers in 2020—some ryewine in the crust, filling, and caramel sauce—but you can sub in any strong rye ale or barleywine.

Tired of IPAs? This atypical Portland pub—featured in our Love Handles department for beer bars we love—embraces imported German beers, bratwurst, and crusty Bavarian-style pretzels.

For once, forget about planning every little detail and trying to dial everything in. (How often does that work, anyway?) Have fun, throw together some under-loved ingredients, and brew yourself a monster.

This is an ideal recipe for trying out the cold-and-short method of dry hopping—in this iteration, with fruity Michigan-grown Chinook, but you can sub in whatever hops you want to test.

Many of us these days seem to dry hop like that old joke about voting—early and often. Drew Beechum makes the counterintuitive case for the “cold-and-short” method.

Want to further simplify your homebrewing? Consider ditching those plastic and glass fermentors, and instead try fermenting in your corny kegs.

Here’s an example of split-batch brewing, with a batch that diverges post-boil to become both a hoppy lager and a saison. It's also a SMASH brew—single malt, single hop—leaning into German pilsner and lovely, lemony Loral.

Do you need to immediately chill your wort and pitch right after the boil? Not really. Josh Weikert explains the ease and simplicity of no-chill brewing.

To show what’s possible with “splatch” or split-batch brewing, Tannery Run head brewer Tim Brown shares this recipe for a brew that divides immediately after the boil to walk the divergent paths of a festbier lager and a tea-infused Belgian-style dubbel.

Consider the possibilities of split-batch brewing—to get twice the variety without a lot more work.

This comforting recipe features a Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® Beer of the Year (but you can sub in any bright, crisp, West Coast–style IPA or IPL).

Early hours, hearty food, and mountain views set this coffee/beer bar apart for students, locals, and visitors to Missoula.

One of Vitamin Sea’s mainstays is Double Summer, a hazy-juicy double IPA powered by Cascade and Citra. It began as one of their first homebrew recipes; here’s a more recent iteration that you can use as your own launch point.

In Weymouth, Massachusetts, Vitamin Sea Brewing are tinkering with and launching trendy styles to flavorful new heights—and finding plenty of fans up for the ride.

When the De Ranke brewery opened in 1994 as part of a new wave of Belgian microbreweries, its first beer was a beer inspired by Westmalle Tripel, Orval, and brewer Nino Bacelle’s love of hops.

One of Belgium’s most distinctive tripels leans in a more bitter, aromatic direction. Inspired by Orval as much as Westmalle, De Ranke Guldenberg is a contemporary classic. Here, Joe Stange speaks with cofounder Nino Bacelle about its origins and makings.

Still buying only what you need for that next batch? Josh Weikert makes the case for building a library of ingredients, where it’s not just about quality, it’s about quantity.

Want to get messy with marshmallow? This hefty imperial stout recipe from White Elm Brewing in Lincoln, Nebraska, includes marshmallows in the kettle and coconut toasties in the fermentor.

The rise of dessert stouts has included no small number of marshmallow beers, with the potential to evoke childhood memories of fireside treats. So, how do you brew with marshmallows—and is it even worth the mess?

Golden-blond with a lithe body, lively mouthfeel, resilient foam, and sneaky strength—equally at home on the dinner table or next to your easy chair—here are a few of our favorite tripels.

Brewers don’t develop their tastes and skills in a vacuum; they’re affected by others, both before and during their careers. Here, Yvan De Baets of Brasserie de la Senne in Brussels chooses his pack and defends it (and wishes he could pick more than six).

A 20th-century invention made famous by monks, this strong but elegant ale of hospitality is built from the simplest of ingredients—yet it’s among the most challenging to brew well. Jeff Alworth explains its origins and context.

In this edition of Gearhead, John M. Verive zooms in on the arsenal of less specialized, more humdrum (and often more beloved) tools that brewers use every day.

Beer brings people together—but over the past year, many people couldn’t get together at all. How does a homebrew club “club” when the clubhouse is closed? Drew Beechum has a few solutions that could remain useful even after the pandemic.

Czech-style tmavé pivo adds depth to light and flaky fish in this recipe that highlights one of our Best 20 Beers in 2020—pFriem Czech Dark Lager.

On the edges of Portland, Oregon, and the country’s most demanding beer scene, Grains of Wrath is turning heads and earning respect with bright West Coast IPAs and award-winning lagers.

A year without trade shows didn’t stop suppliers from bringing new malts and hops to market. Here we run down some of the most promising new varieties to try in our own breweries (starting with a couple that we’ve already taken for a spin).

We asked for your favorite hops and malts you like to use for brewing, and you told us. Here are your 2020 Readers’ Choice picks for favorite ingredients.

To warm the cockles of our hearts with beery libations—hot or cool, spiced or not, with or without an extra shot of Christmas spirits—Randy Mosher is here with a red-hot poker and lines of verse.

Lagers are on the rise, and so are light beers and larger packs. Craft beer is looking more like supermarket beer, but there are good reasons why—and is it really such a bad thing?

Beer? No. Craft? Yes. These drinks outside the beer space have grown exponentially over the past year. They’re hitting their stride. From the sublime to the absurd—and from cider to mead via seltzer and kombucha—here are some of our favorites.

What you love to buy and drink doesn’t necessarily correlate with what you prefer to make for yourself. In our Best in Beer 2020 Reader's Choice poll, here's what you said were your favorite styles to brew.

Draft or package? Cans or bottles? in our annual Best in Beer Readers' Choice poll, here’s how you answered the question, “How do you prefer to buy your favorite craft beers?”

Here is a homebrew-scale recipe for Grains of Wrath’s Citra-hopped West Coast–style IPA, which scored a 99 with our blind panel earlier this year, delighted our editors, and became one of our Best 20 Beers of 2020.

The cofounder and editorial director of Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® has traveled the country from coast to coast, talking to brewers and tasting their beer. Here’s a selection of highlights of his past year of beer.

After 13 years living abroad, our Missouri-based managing editor spent the past year getting reacquainted with the American beer scene. Here are his beery highlights.

We asked you to tell us what beers you haven’t had (yet) but are tops on your list to seek out. Note: For the first time since we’ve asked this question, a lager made the list!

You chose your favorite styles to drink, and while IPA again tops the list (as it has ever since we’ve asked the question), pilsner and helles made big gains in 2020.

Game recognizes game. Here we’ve asked five respected brewers for a favorite beer they drank this year while off the clock.

It’s been a tough year for drinking in beer bars, but here are your chosen favorites. We'll see you there at the bar next year.

Pandemic or no pandemic, your favorite cities in America for drinking craft beer in 2020 are...

The accomplished writer, certified beer judge, and our own contributing editor shares her beery highlights from a highly unusual year.

What’s up in New England? We asked Samer Khudairi. This Boston-based freelance journalist is a savvy beer enthusiast and contributor to DigBoston, Good Beer Hunting, Pellicle, and more. Here are his beery highlights of the year.

Going beyond your No. 1 fave brewer, we asked you for your favorite beers and brewers in eight specific style categories, from saisons to stouts (and, of course, IPAs).

Courtesy of Jack Hendler of Springdale Beer and Jack's Abby, here is a homebrew-scale recipe for one of our Best 20 Beers in 2020. “Creating malt intensity without body or too much residual sweetness requires excellent process control from the brewer.”

Once again, you told us your favorite homebrew gear, manufacturers, and retailers. It was a year of small shifts and subtle moves, as your favorite brands of 2020 remained largely unchanged.

The blogger behind DontDrinkBeer.com (DDB) and the Malt Couture podcast is back again with his list of year-end favorites, trends, and more.

Stan Hieronymus, author of several highly regarded beer books and a widely respected hops expert, shares his favorites from the past year of decreased travel and increased angst.

Here are the top 50 beers of 2020, as voted on by the readers of Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®.

Despite the challenges this year posed, we were able to taste thousands of beers over the past 12 months. Here are the very best of this unique (and unrepeatable) year.

You voted and we tallied—here are your favorite breweries broken down in categories by beer barrels brewed.

Pink salt, a light touch of coriander, and Lactobacillus give this traditionally inspired German-style kettle sour a bright lemony flavor and refreshingly tart finish.

Sam Milne of Brick West Brewing in Spokane, Washington, dishes details on their method of brewing kettle-soured beer—such as their Get Right gose, one of our picks for Best in Beer 2020.