Favorite Beers of 2022
Join me for a look back at my favorite beers of 2022! You can also listen to my year-end episode below, and then I’d love to hear your own favorites from this bizarre year!
Burial Lessons in Solitude: Portrait II
Burial Lessons in Solitude: Portrait II is a 15% ABV Imperial Stout brewed with blood orange zest, Sey Coffee, toasted oats, vanilla bean, and French Broad cocoa nibs.
Initial notes of peppery coffee and dark, dry chocolate part to reveal orange cream ganache and silky vanilla caramel and milk chocolate. It finishes with a spritz of blood orange zest and a closing roastiness from the Stout base. Magnificent.
Masthead Zungenbrecher
Zungenbrecher is one of the best Doppelbocks I’ve had in quite some time. It pours a beautiful tea-stained copper color with sticky lacing, Notes of raisin, light caramel, and fresh, dark bread, with some unspiced sticky bun dough, and a faint hint of well-groomed leather. The finish is dry with minimal but noticeable bitterness. Robust but smooth, boozy but graceful, regal but rugged. We drank this while watching the snowstorm at the beginning of the month, and it perfectly fit the moment. It would perfectly fit a lot of moments.
Seedstock Heritage Pilsner
I finally got to taste Seedstock Heritage Pilsner, the beer whose creation and lineage I chronicled for Pellicle Mag last year. It has a lovely snappish bitterness with gentle Saaz grassy/floral notes, and a beautiful Pilsner malt honey-on-pale-bread note, with a pleasant shale-like dryness. I could drink a lot of this.
Fifth Street Brewpub Tropical
This format of [relatively] low-alcohol Belgian pale ale is a favorite of mine. I love the dryness and bitterness wed to an assertive, phenolic fermentation profile. There's a blend of white pepper and vanilla/clove that together consistently reminds me of viburnum blossoms (I promise I'm not trying to be purple with this - smell some snowball viburnums this spring). Then you add in the tropical hop notes. I've had some other Belgian styles with bold American hops, and they can be really good (I'm partial to Coppertail's Unholy Trippel), but the collision of phenolics with tropical fruit can sometimes lean a bit bilious. In Fifth Street Brewpub’s Tropical, the coconut serves as a buffer and a glue between that fermentation and the brighter hop notes, and it's just a smooth waterslide from the fruit through the coconut to the spice, but all of that in a dry, pleasantly bitter body. I downed that pint in a hurry.
Jolly Pumpkin Biere de Mars
Jolly Pumpkin Biere de Mars is a Flanders-style sour red ale brewed with American hops, aged a short time in a foeder, and aged longer in bourbon barrels. The beer is quite oaky, with leather, caramel, and raw oak notes filled in with that classic Juicy Fruit-heavy Jolly Pumpkin house character and the expected acidic dark fruit notes of the style. The perfect beer for the whipping winds of late March.
Branch & Bone Cosmic Slop
Branch & Bone makes some of the best Hazies anywhere, and Cosmic Slop is one of my favorites. This 6.8% ABV Hazy IPA with Galaxy and Citra hops is drenched in creamy, juicy tropical fruit—peach creamsicle, mango, pineapple, papaya—and those flavors cause it to lean sweet initially before an underlying bitterness comes through to balance each sip. Just gorgeous.
Fair State Vienna Lager
I hung out at Fair State Co-op my last day I was in Minneapolis for the Craft Brewers Conference, and their Vienna Lager was glorious. Snappy bitterness with toasty, lightly nutty malt. So clean. Endlessly drinkable. The platonic ideal of the style. I’m in love.
Lakehouse Ales Project Zappanaut
Lakehouse Ales Project Zappanaut 2020 from Stormcloud Brewing is a 6.2% ABV foeder-aged Saison dry-hopped with Zappa hops, and it’s a beautiful execution of a familiar concept. Soft, fuzzy floral spice notes and touches of lemon balm and subtle minerality lead the nose and meld with the initial sip, revealing thoughtfully restrained acidity over a base of rising pale bread dough, lemon, and just a touch of mothball funk on the finish. Run a Gueuze through the feathery influence of a 90s shoegaze reverb pedal and you’re getting close. Beautiful.
Noble Beast Murder Ballads
Noble Beast Murder Ballads was on my “must find” list for a while, and I finally got to try it last spring. This Baltic Porter has medalled twice at the Great American Beer Festival, and it’s truly excellent. I couldn’t find the seams or edges between the components of this beer. There’s mild chocolate and cola in a dry body with just the right level of balancing bitterness. It’s smooth and gentle despite its strength, and even at 8% ABV it feels endlessly drinkable. If you want to understand what a Baltic Porter should taste like, track this down.
Archetype Knight of Delusions
Archetype Knight of Delusions is one of the best and most unique chocolate beers I’ve had this year. Brewed with French Broad cacao nibs, Knight of Delusions is a 12.5% ABV Imperial Stout aged in bourbon barrels and on French oak with a mixed culture (not clear on the exact sequence here). The aroma is rich milk chocolate with a hint of acidity, and the flavor is all rich, decadent Imperial Stout with dark milk chocolate which slowly slides into notes of Pinot Noir, black cherry, and blackberry, and then reveals toasted oak and subtle fermentation acidity and a hint of understory. The dry finish offers just a whisper of bourbon. Gorgeous.
Great Divide 2016 Old Ruffian
Great Divide used to be easy to find in the Ohio market, but they retracted their distribution a few years back. I stopped in at their original taproom in Denver when I was in town in October, but they’re no longer available off the shelf where I live. I opened this 2016 bottle of Old Ruffian Barleywine this summer and was thrilled by how well it had aged. The hops were still potent but lacked the sharp edge of some younger American Barleywines, with resinous pine and some sweet orange. Malt oxidation was minimal, and the sip blended caramel, orange, pine, and gentle spice. An elegant reminder of a previous era.
Wolf’s Ridge Dire Wolf
This classic Imperial Stout is beautifully structured, with smooth, creamy, thick chocolate flavors climbing an ascendingly more aggressive roast to luscious green pine bitterness from the hops. Wolf’s Ridge releases a lot of doctored variants of their workhorse Imperial Stout, but the base version remains my favorite.
Rabid Crown of Horns
I collaborated on Crown of Horns with my friends at Rabid Brewing for their Feast of the Goat Queen in July. It was brewed with Philippine Malah Na Bulong cacao, a new origin imported by Uncommon Cacao and sourced for this collab through Ethereal Confections. I was particularly drawn to Malah Na Bulong for its strong chocolate foundation, and its earthy, herbal, and spicy notes, feeling they would perfectly complement a beer of this type.
We brewed the beer with an English ale yeast, and the combination of the cacao and the subtle esters from the yeast yielded an almost Belgian impression, with notes of pome fruit and banana, a silky, fruity cacao note underneath, a touch of earthy and herbal spice, and a gentle but lingering chocolate note.
Moontown Skoolhouse Bock
On a trip across Indiana this in June we stopped in at Moontown just northwest of Indianapolis. The brewery is in an old high school gymnasium and is one of the coolest taprooms I’ve seen in a while. Skoolhouse Bock is also one of the best Maibocks I’ve had in a long time, and has a couple GABF medals to prove it. It has a gorgeous round pale malt base that could steer sweet but never does. It’s fairly light-bodied with snappy noble hop bitterness and the tiniest touch of Smarties candy. We need more Maibocks.
Casa Humilde Viva la Frida
On a rainy day in June my wife and daughter and I stepped off the Pink Line in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood and walked to the National Museum of Mexican Art. It’s a lovely space, and the highlight was a temporary exhibit of Frida Kahlo’s photography collection. A short walk under dripping branches took us back to the L and a couple stops north to Casa Humilde Cerveceria, where we hung out with brothers Jose & Javier Lopez and enjoyed Viva la Frida, a lime and hibiscus lager they brewed in collaboration with the museum for the exhibit.
The beer is visually stunning, and backs it up with fresh, bright, spritzy lime and soft cherry notes on the nose, and a crisp, dry palate with bright lime, a bready base, mild acidity, and a cucumber skin-like crispness, with the hibiscus gently filling in any gaps. This beer is so vibrant and full of life, just like its namesake.
Upland Prim
Upland Prim is a barrel-aged sour brewed with cardamom and plums, and it’s a spectacular exploration of flavor. It balances tart and sweet throughout the sip, with layers of icebox plums and candied plum tinted with gin-like prickles from the cardamom. It’s a very cocktail-like beer, like a brighter but also somehow cooler twist on a Dark & Stormy with the fruit and spice playing off each other.
Primitive Frosted in Moss
I knew Primitive Beer by name and nothing else going into PorchDrinking’s 10th anniversary festival, and left a bit shook by how stunningly good their Belgian-style Lambic styles were. They had one of the best Oude Krieks I’ve tasted in a long time (Room to Grow), but the highlight was Frosted in Moss, a young (6 month) Méthode Traditionelle (straight Lambic) aged on Colorado spruce tips. I filled a page of my pocket tasting journal with descriptors, but finished it out with “Like snow melted through a bed of pine needles, earth, and stone.”
Denver Beer Digital Snow Day
I didn’t try many IPAs at GABF—I never really do when I’m at a beer event. It’s not out of snobbery or because I don’t love a good IPA, it’s just that there are an embarrassment of great IPAs from breweries near me and all over the place, so I’m more interested in seeking out more unique beers and compelling stories when I travel. One exception while I was at the country’s biggest beer festival was Denver Beer Co. Digital Snow Day, a Spruce IPA made with Colorado spruce tips. This beer ended up being one of probably my 5 favorite beers of the entire trip. It tastes like if you candied pine needles and orange peels together. You get a beautiful contrast of sweet impressions with briskly bitter realities here, like a more playful, Day-Glo version of Celebration Ale. Love it.
Left Hand St. Vrain Tripel
After tasting Left Hand St Vrain Tripel the first night of GABF, I texted the other PorchDrinking writers at GABF that I knew it maybe wasn't a sexy pick for our best of the fest guide, but it was damn near perfect and we needed to include it. I only wish it were available here in Ohio.
Avery 2010 Mephistopholes
One of my favorite beers at the Denver Rare Beer Tasting was, on the surface, one of the simplest. This 2010 Avery Mephistopheles is a big (15.6%) Imperial Stout with no barrels or adjuncts involved, and time has treated it well. The hops still offer a punch of piney bitterness, but it’s tempered just enough by the beer’s quiet sweetness and an assertive baker’s chocolate roast.
Cerveceria Colorado Pozolito Lindo
Cerveceria Colorado Pozolito Lindo brewed in collaboration with Mexican brewery Cielito Lindo is a 5.5% ABV Porter inspired by Pozol, a pre-Colombian Mexican beverage made with fermented corn dough and roasted cacao. The beer is brewed with unfermented cacao nibs, cacao husks, and nixtamalized corn, all from Denver’s Cultura Chocolate. The beer offers roasty, nutty coffee notes with a light kiss of sweetness and a subtle roast acidity with gentle earthiness. This was poured at the Great American Beer Festival as well as at Cerveceria Colorado’s Great Mexican Beer Fiesta, always one of the highlights of GABF week for me.
Scratch Sycamore
Scratch’s beers are always complex, intriguing, but delicious unassuming explorations. Sycamore is an amber lager brewed with sycamore bark, and while it introduces itself like an oak-aged Vienna Lager, it quickly reveals young leather, birch, and licorice root, with a bit of a drying mouthfeel from the bark and counterpoints of gentle sweetness and bitterness on the finish.
Pretentious Indigenous
Pretentious Barrel House Indigenous is a sour ale brewed with corn grown and malted at Rustic Brew Farm and aged in oak for 11 months, and the result is one of my favorite sours I’ve had this year. The effusive aroma reads as yeasty bread dough with a touch of white grape and some stony acidity. The mouth brings some candy-like fruitiness that softens into peach and nondescript berry with a moderate but not aggressive acidity. Light but brisk, complex but not challenging.
The Bruery Shegöat
Weizenbock is such a delightful style, in all its spicy, boozy banana bread glory. Unfortunately, next to nobody brews one. Fortunately The Bruery brews a fine one and sent a bottle my way (with no obligation for coverage or positive review). Shegöat pours with a thick, moussy head with a puff of cocoa on the nose that quickly gives way to plum and overripe banana, dark banana bread, and a splash of grassy rum. The palate lends color to those impressions and brings in a touch of acidity on the finish from the wheat and a dry body, despite the indulgent flavors. Spice is minimal. I’m very pleased with this. Now put it in 12 oz cans and distribute it!