28 April 2015 - Best Beer HQ

Paste Magazine’s 39 best American wheat beers

Paste Magazine’s 39 best American wheat beers

Pop-culture website Paste has published a list of what it calls the “39 best wheat beers in America”. Why are there 39 beers on this list and not a nice round number like 40? Your guess is as good as ours.

Regardless, it’s a fairly impressive list of wheat beers, which were taste-tested over a period of two days. Each beer was given a score out of 100 and, as a measure of fairness, each beer was judged purely against the others of its style.

“In organising our own tasting of wheat beers, we had to decide which substyles were fair to compare,” wrote Paste news editor Jim Vorel in the article.

“Rather than put on a tasting of simply American pale wheats, hefeweizens or Belgian wits, all of which seemed a bit boring, we therefore decided to combine those three substyles and simply rate them all on how strong an example of their particular style they proved to be.”

Therefore, the styles of wheat beer that were included in this taste test were hefeweizen, Belgian wit, and American pale wheat. Berliner weisse and gose were not included in the test.

To read the judge’s tasting notes, check out the original article here.

Beers 39-21 are in no particular order…

Alaskan Brewing Co. White

Ale Asylum Unshadowed Hefeweizen

Angel City Brewery West Coast Wheat

Boulevard Brewing Co. Wheat

Cigar City Brewing Tropical Heatwave

Dryhop Brewers Gorilla Meets Hippie

Eagle Creek Brewing Co. Grass Roots Lemon-Lime Hefeweizen

Funky Buddha Brewery Floridian Hefeweizen

Gordon Biersch Hefeweizen

Great Northern Brewery Co. Wheatfish Lager

Harpoon Hefeweizen

Harpoon White Ale

New Belgium Brewing Co. Snapshot Wheat

New Belgium Brewing Co. Sunshine White Ale

Red Brick Brewing Co. Hibiscuit

Red Hare Brewing Whabbit Wheat

Rogue Pumpkin Savior

Starr Hill Brewery The Love Hefeweizen

West Sixth Lemongrass American Wheat

Paste Magazine’s 39 best American wheat beers

The top 20 wheat beers in the US…

20. Upland Brewing Co. Wheat Ale

19. 21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon

18. Revolution Brewing Bottom Up Wit

17. Hopworks Urban Brewery Nonstop Hef Hop

16. Thirsty Dog Brewing Co. Whippet Wheat

15. Ballast Point Brewing Co. Wahoo White

14. Odell Brewing Co. Easy Street Wheat

13. Dogfish Head Brewery Namaste

12. Fort Collins Brewery Major Tom’s Pomegranate Wheat

11. Clown Shoes Clementine White Ale

10. Maui Brewing Co. Mana Wheat

9. Cigar City Brewing Florida Cracker

8. Brooklyn Brewery Greenmarket Wheat

7. Sierra Nevada Kellerweiss

6. Brewery Ommegang Witte

5. Bell’s Oberon

4. Avery White Rascal

3. 3 Floyds Brewing Co. Gumballhead

2. Urban Chestnut Schnickelfritz

1. Allagash White

Craft Beer best beer / USA /