The Best Breweries of 2022

BREWERY AWARDS

Each year, we acknowledge the breweries that collectively produced the highest-rated beers as evaluated in our Official Review. 2022’s top breweries produced a plethora of stunning brews that showcased passion for craft beer with styles ranging from fruit lambics to pastry stouts to fruited double IPAs with many more styles represented. Read on to discover 2022’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 in point total, 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!

Stone Brewing Co.

2 World Class Beers
1 Exceptional Beers
Total Score: 285

Highest-scoring beers:
Stone IPA – Rated 96
Arrogant Bastard Ale – Rated 96
Ruination 2.0 – Rated 93

Stone Brewing in Escondido, California is the second runner-up for Brewery of the Year in 2022. Stone has long been a top-tier craft brewery and its myriad notable brands pique the interests of consumers all over the world.

The brewery’s top-scoring beer this year was an absolute classic: Stone IPA. While this beer has been in existence since 1997, when it was brewed to celebrate Stone’s first anniversary, our judge reviewed it this year and came to the conclusion that it still holds up as a paragon of hoppy beers over 25 years later. This dark gold, crystal-clear beer features an influx of hop notes in the aroma and flavor, including tangerines, mangos and pineapples with some mild peppery notes and slight maltiness near the end. According to our judge: “this beer is everything an IPA should be: bitter, dank and flavorful.” Fitting for one of the most notable IPAs in craft brewing history.

Stone’s next highest-scoring beer was yet another classic brew: Arrogant Bastard Ale. This beer’s marketing still turns heads (as even its name has a mildly naughty word in it), and it is such a major brand in Stone’s portfolio that it merits its own website – arrogantconsortia.com. While the branding and hagiography of the beer are impressive, the beer itself is also brilliant. Stunning to look at with cherry and bread crust aromas pouring forth, this beer’s bitterness and massive hop quotient somehow offset each other perfectly. As our judge said: “In today’s beer culture where beers have wanted to soften bitterness, this is a reminder to the beers of 20 years ago when I began drinking craft beer. “

The final high-scoring beer for Stone was Ruination 2.0, a rerelease of the brewery’s classic Ruination Double IPA but featuring a different recipe. While not quite as thunderously bitter as its progenitor, this brew will still smack you in the face with hoppiness.

American IPA
Stone IPA is a standard-bearer for American IPAs, and it delivers all the elements required of its style with verve and panache.

American Strong Ale
A classic American strong ale with supremely rich aromas and flavors and a terrific slogan: “Hated by many. Loved by few.”

Double IPA
Rereleased in late 2021, this wonderful DIPA provides a modern twist on the brewery’s famed original Ruination DIPA. 

Gnarly Barley Brewing Co.

2 World Class Beers
1 Exceptional Beers
Total Score: 287

Highest-scoring beers:
Bad Abbot – Rated 96
Hell & High Water – Rated 96
SoGnar Double IPA – Rated 95

Gnarly Barley Brewing Co. is our first runner-up this year, making it three straight years that the Hammond, Louisiana-based brewery finds a spot on our Breweries of the Year list.

Gnarly Barley’s top-scoring beer was a supremely strong Belgian-style Quadrupel, clocking in at a whopping 14% ABV. It wasn’t just a booze bomb, however, as the aroma and flavor are both immensely complex and hugely rewarding as caramel, raisins, prunes, plums and cherries swirl around one another as you bring the glass to your nose. Light cinnamon, vanilla and bread crusts round out the flavor profile. Moderate residual sweetness leads into a creamy finish, making it easy to immediately want another sip of this World Class creation – but this beer is better if savored, especially due to its hefty alcohol strength.

The brewery’s next high-scoring beer was Hell & High Water, an interesting barrel-aged oatmeal stout that spent a staggering 18 months in bourbon barrels – resulting in a beer with a developed and dynamic body. Oatmeal stouts are known for being extremely quaffable, and despite this beer’s time spent in barrels, it is not at all hot or harsh. Our judge marveled at the how perfectly blended this beer was between its specialty malts and subtle barrel characteristics. The oatmeal is most apparent in this beer’s silky-smooth mouthfeel, making it another easy-drinker – despite its burly booze quotient.

SoGnar Double IPA was the brewery’s final highest-scoring beer and, as its name would suggest, it is a high-quality double IPA. Tropical hop flavors and aromas of pineapples and mangos join in with a symphony of citrusy elements headlined by grapefruit. A lightly bready maltiness punctuates the beer’s mouthfeel as it is only lightly carbonated in keeping with modern-day hazier examples of the style.

Belgian Dark Strong Ale
This beer puts the “strong” in Belgian dark strong ale at 14% ABV, but you’d never know it due to its unexpected quaffability.

Specialty Wood-Aged Beer
A lovely combination of an oatmeal stout’s creaminess with a bourbon barrel-aged beer’s alcohol heat and complex aromas and flavors.

Double IPA
El Dorado and Strata hops provide the requisite tropical aromas and flavors alongside a delicate waft of dankness. 

Lawson’s Finest Liquids

155 Carroll Rd
Waitsfield, VT 05673

Tel.: (802) 496-4677
www.lawsonsfinest.com

Congratulations to Lawson’s Finest Liquids of Waitsfield, Vermont for being named The Beer Connoisseur’s 2022 Brewery of the Year!

There was stiff competition this year for our Brewery of the Year crown, and Lawson’s Finest Liquids fended off the competition with two amazing brews that achieved World Class ratings in our Official Review. Just like 2021, we reviewed a staggering 13 beers that achieved ratings of 96 or above. However, unlike last year, there were three beers that achieved near-perfect ratings of 98 or above including one beer that notched a stunning score of 99 – one of only five beers in our history that has achieved such high marks from our judges. Despite it all, Lawson’s elevated itself from the pack due to submitting three incredible beers that will surely stand the test of time. Wonderful work from the Waitsfield brewery!

The story of Lawson’s Finest Liquids is one of a dream made reality. Sean Lawson, CEO and Founding Brewer at Lawson’s, started with a 1-barrel brewhouse in a self-made brewery on the grounds of his own home. At first, sales were limited to bottles and draft in the neighboring Mad River Valley. Quickly though, word of extremely well-crafted brews made in a tiny brewhouse in Warren started to make the rounds on message boards and various sites online – leading to increased demand and massive hype for Lawson’s terrific brews.

In 2010, keeping up the brewery’s momentum, Lawson’s Maple Tripple Ale received a Bronze Medal at the World Beer Cup and the following year, the brewery expanded to a still-meager 7-barrel brewhouse. More awards followed in the intervening years and demand grew to spectacular levels, leading to Lawson’s partnering with Two Roads Brewing Co. in Connecticut in 2014 to expand distribution in its home state of Vermont and neighboring Connecticut. 2014 also saw the debut of the brewery’s famed Sip of Sunshine IPA. In 2016, the company hired its first employee, and in 2018, the brewery opened its Waitsfield taproom to wide acclaim.

Through it all, the vision of Sean Lawson and his wife, Co-Owner Karen Lawson, shines through. As we have seen, other brewers would have been satisfied to partner up with a big brewer in order to quickly get their beers in front of many people as possible – perhaps at the expense of the quality of their own product.

Not Lawson. He has cut no corners and made no sacrifices to his brewery’s excellence for the sake of expediency. Now, nearly 15 years on from brewing in a 1-barrel system next to his own home, Lawson’s Finest Liquids distributes its beers to nine states in the Northeast – and has been named our Brewery of the Year in 2022, adding to its laundry list of awards over the years.

Cheers to a true craft beer success story!

Lawson’s Finest Liquids
2 World Class Beers
1 Exceptional Beer
Total Score: 287

Highest-scoring beers:
Double Sunshine Ruby Red Grapefruit – Rated 97
Hopzilla – Rated 96
Super Session #3 (Comet) – Rated 94

Lawson’s Finest submitted three top-tier IPAs in the 2022 Official Reviews, each of which are their own perfect representation of the mission of the brewery: to “craft and deliver the finest and freshest beer possible to delight our fans and to cultivate healthy, vibrant communities.”

The brewery’s top-scoring beer was one that was highly sought out by connoisseurs: Double Sunshine Ruby Red Grapefruit. For a time, the original Double Sunshine by Lawson’s was among the mostly highly user-rated beers online across multiple sites. In 2022, the brewery debuted a version of the beer infused with ruby red grapefruit – leading to a mouthwatering creation imbued with lush, juicy fruit character and eminently enjoyable dank tropical notes. Our judge noted that this beer’s fruit flavors meld flawlessly with its hoppy backbone – a fitting feat for our Brewery of the Year.

Lawson’s next highest-scoring beer was Hopzilla. This is a well-named double IPA that perfectly encapsulates what it is all about: hops, hops and more hops. Unlike many modern-day DIPAs, this beer actually lets bitterness gain a firm foothold before wave upon wave of hops hits your palate. While that might sound like a bit much, our judge states that there is no harshness or sharpness to this ultra-hopped brew, and it is one “that hopheads will fill their fridge with and neophytes will find quite approachable.” A testament to the brewing acumen of Sean Lawson and the Lawson’s brewing team.

Last but far from least was one of the brewery’s famed members of its Super Session series. In this case, our judges reviewed Super Session #3 (Comet). As its name suggests, this session IPA is eminently quaffable, and it only features one hop varietal: Comet. This unusual hop provides zesty notes of grapefruit and tangerines with unique grassy and herbal components with minor tinges of lemongrass, black currant, apricot and pineapple. All of those elements and more can be found in this beer’s small 4.8% ABV.

Double IPA
A fruited take on the brewery’s famed Double Sunshine DIPA, this brew is an unforgettably lush and juicy pint.

Double IPA
Big enough to dwarf skyscrapers, this burly double IPA works well for seasoned hopheads and craft beer neophytes alike.

Session IPA
The unusual Comet hop is in the spotlight in this eminently quaffable session IPA replete with unique hop aromas and flavors.