America’s 40 Most Delicious Beers

Built around a solid core of malt, this appealingly quaffable ale shows traces of stone fruit, with a ribbon of butterscotch running through it and a crisp finish.

A fragrant IPA, described by the brewery as a “citrus bomb,” this infinitely refreshing ale balances lemony and tropical fruit flavors against a solid malt center.

Dark in color but light on the palate, smooth, crisp, and clean, with a bracing finish, the easy-going Death and Taxes gets compared frequently to iced coffee – but if that’s accurate, it’s iced coffee that isn’t loaded down with sugar.

Named for the great-grandfather of the brewery’s owners, and brewed with well water from the farmstead property, this is a solid, hazy, very nicely balanced IPA, showing floral notes and plenty of hoppy flavor.

This one’s rich, earthy, piney, and oaky, with plenty of caramel, vanilla, and almond notes. There have been six Anabasis blends released so far, each one aged in different combinations of bourbon barrels, lending heft and authority to both the flavor and the mouth-feel.

Grodziskie is an unusual beer style, little-known today even in its native Poland (where it has been referred to as “Polish Champagne”). Made with oak-smoked malted wheat, it’s definitely smoky, with pinpoint carbonation, nice hoppy bitterness, and a hint of sweetness.

This is a Golden State interpretation of the classic Belgian style called gueuze (hence the punning name). Gueuze is a type of lambic – beer fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria – made by blending young and older barrel-aged beers. This one is lively and redolent of stone fruits, with some tartness and sweetness.

There’s a lot going on in this bourbon-barrel-aged big boy – dried fruit, caramel, chocolate, vanilla, brown sugar, a bit of smoke…and a serious 17% ABV. It’s a liquor-soaked dessert in a glass.

This is a 13% ABV half-and-half mix of two well-loved Modern Times brews – Monsters’ Park and Modern Tones. It’s rich, black, malty, and bittersweet, with an aroma that hints at coconut and chocolate and a mouth-coating body that mixes suggestions of caramel and coffee into the recipe.

Alma Mader calls this one Italian-style pilsner, but it’s pretty easily recognizable as a pilsner made in the more familiar Czech style, golden-pale in color, with attractive citrus and resin notes in the background and a soft, flowers-and-herbs character in the mouth.

This two-fisted Texan take on wild-fermented Belgian framboise (raspberry-flavored beer), which comes only in 500 ml bottles, is gorgeously garnet in color, and surprisingly dry and vivid on the palate, with plenty of juicy fruit.

Brewed in a rustic Belgian style, this earthy, haystack-yellow ale is herbaceous, crisp, and dry, with some bitterness and earthy flavor.

Russian stout is said to have been developed to please the tsars of the 18th century, dark and high in alcohol (though this one is a comparatively modest 9% ABV). Old Rasputin is full-bodied, malty, and chocolatey, with a hint of strong-espresso bitterness.

This full-bodied abbey-style dark ale, at 9.5% ABV, is a classic dessert-style beer, with lots of dried fruit, brown sugar, baking bread, and roasted almonds both in the nose and on the palate.

A classic example of this style of beer, hazy but bright golden in color, with tropical fruit and pine in the aroma, and a creamy mouth-feel with tinges of citrus and spices.

IPAs are defined by forthright hops character, but this one takes the concept almost to the limit, with hops, hops, and more hops. Resin, grapefruit, green grass, and more combine in the aroma and on the palate.

Sourness and a counterpoint of sweetness, with a hint of acidic bite, characterize this dry-hopped, superbly balanced ale, barrel-aged for two years.

This is a riff on Sainte Adairius’s popular West Ashley, with more wood and more fruit. The fruit is apricots, lending a seductive jammy character to this sour, tart, oaky, barrel-aged delight.

Redolent of American and Australian hops, with a piney, herbaceous character and a bracing citrus bite, this is a complex brew that develops nicely in the glass.

Clear and golden, this IPA offers a generous aroma full of pine needles, roses, and warm biscuits, then delivers a perfectly balanced interplay of hops and malt.

A definitive stout, black and viscous, with toasty malt and chocolate aromas and a flavor that evokes more chocolate and maybe a hint of good cigars.

Here’s one for beer-drinkers who don’t want a lot of extraneous ingredients or flavors in their brew – a dry, fresh, clean double IPA, fruity and spicy, with a resiny flavor and lightly bitter finish.

Sunny yellow in color, with low-key carbonation, this is an elegant, complex beer, with honey and vanilla in the earthy nose and a faintly funky flavor with hints of tart apples, citrus fruits, and white pepper.

Look for layer upon layer of flavor in this jet-black vanilla-heavy stout – the vanilla coming from the repeated addition of Ugandan vanilla itself and then the oaky vanillin lent by aging in three different rye and bourbon casks. Then there’s a distinct smack of chocolate and some toasty malt with earthy undertones. This is a beer with lots to unpack.

Big brother to Tree House’s popular Haze, this is a very tasty IPA, medium-to-light in body, with an abundance of fruit – orange, lemon, melon, pineapple…you name it…and a nice edge of hoppy bitterness to counterbalance the sweetness.

Dark, smooth, sweet, and oaky, this luxurious stout is concocted with what its brewers call “a blend of coffees and imported chocolates” and aged in bourbon barrels that had previously held Michigan maple syrup – adding up to a complex and satisfying confection.

Luminous mahogany brown in color, with a toasty, yeasty nose, this seductive dark ale offers a flavor suggesting Anadama bread glazed with caramel and a smooth, unctuous texture.

A heady imperial stout (14.3% ABV), blended with Madagascar vanilla beans and aged in bourbon barrels, this rich, dark beer surprises the palate with the subtlety of its oak and whiskey flavors, and leaves a very agreeable aftertaste.

Elegant proof that a beer doesn’t need a lot of added flavors to be complex and immensely satisfying, this textbook-perfect pale ale, strongly flavored with Yakima Valley Citra hops, is attractively resinous in the nose, fruity, and yeasty.

This exemplary IPA, named for the Two Hearted River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, is well-rounded, fresh, and smooth, with plenty of malt supporting forthright hop aromas and a piney hops flavor.

Russian River’s superlative Pliny the Elder (see No. 3) is a double IPA. This piney, floral offering, rich but suave, with a touch of smooth sweetness, is a triple – made with roughly three times the usual ration of hops, which announce themselves vividly.

Not to be confused with the Tree House’s Julius, King Julius, or JJJulius IPAs (also all worth trying), this is an immensely rich, hops-forward brew offering a whole bouquet of fruit aromas and a pronounced bitterness in the mouth.

A rich, thick, black stout, double barrel-aged in rum and apple brandy casks, with cacao nibs, ancho and pasilla chiles, cinnamon, and Madagascar vanilla beans, this powerful (11% ABV) brew is rich enough to eat for dessert.

Very dark, almost black, and viscous, this spicy seasonal imperial stout is brewed with cinnamon sticks, ancho chiles, cacao nibs, and vanilla beans and aged for a year in Rittenhouse Rye barrels.

Black and heavy, with plenty of oak from its aging in bourbon barrels and a serious kick (at 14% ABV), this hearty Alaskan beer is finished with coconut and vanilla beans, for an exotic confectionary character.

Gorgeously rich and well-balanced, this serious stout, brewed with coffee and maple syrup, is medium-rich and sweet but manages to avoid being cloying, and closes with a long, luscious finish.

A rich, dark, malty, earthy imperial stout brewed with what Founders calls “a massive amount of coffee and chocolates.” If you like your beer richly textured and pleasingly sweet, this one’s for you.

Malty and nicely bitter, this imperial double IPA – offering an earthy, grassy hops character in the nose (it has been described as a “hop bomb”) and plenty of malt and citrus on the harmonious palate – inspires intense affection among IPA lovers, for good reason.

Ranked No. 1 on the most recent Beer Advocate listing of America’s top 250 beers, with a score of 4.83/5, this imperial stout is dark, dense, sweet, complex, smooth, and memorable, combining flavors of chocolate, coffee, maple syrup, bourbon, figs, toffee, and vanilla to what its many fans consider transcendent effect.

The classic hard-to-find New England double IPA continues to knock it out of the park with its forthright bitterness and complex interweaving of floral, citrusy, and piney flavors. It’s the kind of beer you don’t forget once you’ve managed to try it. As one Beer Advocate reviewer put it, it might well be considered “the granddaddy that today’s IPAs were born from.”