Hello all and welcome to our annual, year-end edition of The Beer Connoisseur® magazine! This issue, as always, reflects the past year in beer with our trademark reviews, feature stories and wrap-up lists – showcasing the best breweries, beers and beer styles of 2023.

2023 held notable news across the board for the beer industry, including tragic stories (the shuttering of legendary craft brewery Anchor Brewing Co.), surprising stories (the rise of non-alcoholic beer) and stories of mega-beer boycotts (the Bud Light boycott by conservatives that caused it to fall from its sales throne). All of this and more are featured in our 2024 Beer and Beverage Trends story.

2024 will also see new beer styles rise in popularity while others will fall by the wayside. We collect those brews in our annual story: Top Emerging Beer Styles of 2024.

Beyond all that, brewers continued to push the boundaries of brewing and produced an impressive number of top-flight brews, which we have aimed to highlight in our year-end Beer in Review winter edition, including the Best Beers of 2023 by Style Category.

Hello all and welcome to our annual, year-end edition of The Beer Connoisseur® magazine! This issue, as always, reflects the past year in beer with our trademark reviews, feature stories and wrap-up lists – showcasing the best breweries, beers and beer styles of 2023.

2023 held notable news across the board for the beer industry, including tragic stories (the shuttering of legendary craft brewery Anchor Brewing Co.), surprising stories (the rise of non-alcoholic beer) and stories of mega-beer boycotts (the Bud Light boycott by conservatives that caused it to fall from its sales throne).

Beyond all that, brewers continued to push the boundaries of brewing and produced an impressive number of top-flight brews, which we have aimed to highlight in our year-end Beer in Review winter edition.

Our Official Review saw a striking 12 World Class beers get reviewed, including one of only six scores of 99 that our judges have ever had the privilege to review. This marks two straight years that we have reviewed a beer that reached that lofty score. The beer scene is still thriving, despite near-constant rumblings of potential setbacks due to increased competition, market saturation and more.

There is always something newsworthy taking place in the beer industry. That's why we dedicate Monday of each week to publishing the top stories from the previous week in our Industry News e-newsletter. Here you'll find a compilation of all the news we've covered since the last issue, with links to the full stories.

Industry & People

Sapporo-Stone Brewing Bolsters Leadership with New VP Joel Pipman for Bi-Coastal Brewery Operations

We saddled up with the masterminds behind the highest-rated brews and asked them about the inspiration behind the recipes. Follow the links below to the individual Q & A's, or you may access Q & A's from all editions here.

Winter 2024, Issue 70

Mount Saint Bernard Abbey Head Brewer Ross Adams Talks Tynt Meadow

Judging Process
Our reviews are conducted in a single-blind tasting format. This method provides the best opportunity to rely on facts and to avoid favoritism, insuring a level playing field for all brewers. It serves both the industry and the consumer to have unbiased and objective scores from qualified experts. To best implement this approach, the Judges Review is open to those with established experience as a Master Cicerone® from the Cicerone® Certification Program or as a judge that has accomplished the rank of National or higher from the Beer Judge Certification Program. In the single-blind tasting format, judges are presented with a chilled, properly poured beer and given its style category. Scoring is then done on the following basis using a 100-point scale:

Score Breakdown:
100 to 96: World Class – You need this beer in your life.
95 to 91: Exceptional – Don’t hesitate.
90 to 86: Very Good – A brew to savor.
85 to 75: Average – Somewhat unimpressive.
74 and below: Not Recommended – Just walk away.

Brewery Awards

Each year, we acknowledge the breweries that collectively produced the highest-rated beers as evaluated in our Official Review. 2023 delivered no shortage of high-quality brews ranging from hopped-up hazy IPAs to rich and roasty barrel-aged stouts alongside many other offerings from breweries around the world. Read on to explore 2023’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.

The beer world continued to turn in 2023, and an astonishing number of high-quality brews were produced by thousands upon thousands of breweries this past year.

Each year, we like to produce a list of some of the most interesting and populous style categories that our judges reviewed. Much like last year, IPAs were massive in 2023 – with hazy IPAs fully taking over our Official Review for the first time. Beyond that, barrel-aged beers were still popular, monastic ales such as Belgian dubbels and tripels were hot and various lager styles continued to gain traction.

Read on to discover some of the most flavorful and interesting beer styles from the year that was.