28 April 2015 - Best Beer HQ
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
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