The Best Breweries of 2021

BREWERY AWARDS

Each year, we acknowledge the breweries that collectively produced the highest-rated beers as evaluated in our Official Review. 2021’s top breweries were paragons of creativity and productivity, crafting styles ranging from thick, boozy and eminently flavorful barrel-aged imperial stouts to subtle and flawlessly executed lagers. Read on to discover 2021’s best breweries!

How We Award

We look at the top three highest-scoring beers (as rated by our judging panel) for each brewery in the calendar year.

We then consider how many of the three place into the 100 to 96: World Class category and the 95 to 91: Exceptional category. For example, a brewery with two world-class beers and one exceptional would rate higher than a brewery with a single higher-scoring world-class beer and two exceptional beers.

The brewery with the most world-class beers followed by the most exceptional beers is awarded the Brewery of the Year.

If two or more breweries have the same number of world-class and exceptional beers, then the brewery with the highest point total wins.

In the event of a tie, a fourth reviewed beer is counted as a tiebreaker.

If a fourth beer was not reviewed, we look at the highest score total among the brewery’s two top-scoring beers.

Read on and raise a glass to this year’s winners!