Pretty cool article I ran across today. I agree with most of these picks.
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I can dig it. Some of these, I have never had. I turned 21 in Seattle in 1998, so learned to love beer with Red Hook ESB, Big Time Porter, and Mack and Jack African Amber. Old Rasputin was my first “holy crap, beer can be this good?” beer. SNPA definitely earns the #1, though.
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I don’t know another popularity contest. By the way Dale’s pale and celebration really turned me on to IPA style beer. Im glad to see flower power. It’s a great beer didn’t know it had a national following though. Hell I can’t even get it in CT one state over
I wouldn’t look at it as a popularity contest. It’s a survey of the beers that shaped the craft beer movement. Each of these had a role to play in the development of the craft and the market.
I generally find Food & Wine articles to be a fun internet-speed read. Since it’s an online article, the title has to “turn up the volume” to the “click bait” setting to get attention. The list appears to be time (2010s) and location (USA) biased.
Overall, an interesting quick read. Thanks for pointing it out!
Are we sure that SN and Anchor didn’t pay for this advertising? 
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Anchor Steam was and is a survivor. Definitely a forefather of today’s amazing beer variety. Fritz Maytag resurrected that brewery during the 60’s and 70’s when all the other independents were dying or being swallowed up by G Heilemann, pabst, AB, Miller, Coors, Schlitz…all making the same stuff.
I would add New Belgium Ranger to my list of top beers. It was the first IPA I ever tasted. This one taste started my brewing of IPAs and Pale Ales.
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I’m doing a Pliny the Elder extract kit as soon as I have a free day. Lots of hops, not much for steeping grains, 90 minute boil. Calls for 2 oz whole cascade hops in the steep. Something I’ve never done before. 4 kinds of hops in the boil, 3 kinds of hops dry hopped. 9 lbs LME, 1/2 lb DME, maltodextrin and corn sugar additions. Should be interesting.
This year, I put together a beer trade and finally got an actual bottle of Pliny. I was pleased to find it wasn’t your typical bone-dry California IPA. Kind of fit the maltier, more balanced, midwest IPA style. If you’re familiar with Steel Toe Sticker Fight, I thought that was pretty similar.
Didn’t another person from that family start a Blue Cheese empire (Maytag Blue)? That’s got to be an interesting family.
Yep, washing machines, wine, cheese and “the father of micro brewing” in one family.
It is a reliably tasty beer.
I’m reading a book right now called “The Audacity of Hops” that charts the birth and formation of the craft beer movement (and, not coincidentally, homebrewing) in America. The story of Anchor and Maytag is pretty fascinating; for a while in the 60s and 70s, it was the ONLY craft brewery operating in the United States.
Good book, worth reading.
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