Hop flowers provide balancing spice and bitterness in beer. Most craft beer aficionados know the classic hop notes of flowers, citrus, grapefruit and pine, but what if hops could also provide nuances of coconut, grape, melon, peach, pineapple, chive, berries, vanilla and more? New hop types with unique aroma and flavor profiles fascinate modern craft brewers. This article showcases an exciting collection of established and experimental hop varietals that show extraordinary promise for 2021.

Just 40 years ago, brewers could only choose from less than 50 global hop varieties. These days, almost 200 varieties of hops exist, with another 100 or so experimental hop types currently under development. It takes roughly ten years for a new hop strain to make it to market by proving its worth through disease resistance, vigor and appealing aroma and flavor characteristics. It’s not surprising that only a handful of new hop varieties make it to market each year and end up in brew kettles.

Hop reproduction can involve sexual and asexual processes. In nature, the wind carries pollen from a male hop plant to the cones of a female plant, producing tiny seeds. Hops also spread without seeds by way of root rhizomes that grow horizontally through the soil or are transplanted to new areas by hop farmers. But how do growers develop new varieties of hops through cross-breeding?

All bets were off in 2020 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the beer industry felt it. We saw the absence of beer festivals, large and small. We hit pause on happy hours and beer flights and rare bottle releases. Instead, we applauded breweries who offered curbside pickup or, better yet, home delivery. We stocked up on beers to drink at home, sometimes alone, or at the most with small groups of friends. We started beer delivery subscriptions, growler exchange programs and weekly virtual tastings with friends from all over.

And through it all, breweries never stopped innovating, reimagining, and making great beer. In some ways, 2020 allowed breweries to try new things, whether they were new beer styles or new packaging or new distribution models. And beer fans did their best to support their local breweries, or their favorite breweries, by buying their beers, their merchandise and their gift cards – doing anything they could to help at-risk breweries stay afloat.

So how do we take a year like 2020 and make our best educated guesses for what’s to come in 2021? It’s not impossible, or even difficult. We can look at what beer styles emerged out of the topsy-turvy chaos and what flagships helped breweries weather the storm. We can dive into sales, awards and the online “beer chatter” that replaced in-person, bar-top banter among friends and come up with what will likely be an accurate list of beers to keep an eye out for next year.

BREWERY AWARDS

Each year, we award the breweries that collectively produce the highest-rated beer of the year as evaluated in our Official Review. Though 2020 saw breweries worldwide grapple with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, that didn’t stop them from producing terrific beers of the highest caliber in a variety of styles – including complex, ingredient-packed pastry stouts and a bevy of hazy, juicy IPAs. Read on to explore the best of the best in craft beer with our Best Breweries of 2020.

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.

The craft beer world in 2020, and the world in general, was defined by the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

However, for beer connoisseurs such as those reading this article, the year was highlighted by the continued dominance of hazy New England IPAs and double IPAs -- though a bevy of fascinating beers were produced by brewers all over the world.

This year-end wrap-up will highlight some of the most highly populated styles of beers that were reviewed by our Official Review judging panel.

Unsurprisingly, a raft of different IPA styles are featured including standard American IPAs, specialty IPAs (which covers the omnipresent hazies), double IPAs and a catch-all list including all IPA styles. Beyond that, many other styles are included such as fruit beers, American wild ales, wild specialty beers as well as a surprise appearance for American Lagers and light lagers.

We hope this list piques your interest with its varied styles featured, and each of these beers deserves a special place in your beer fridge due to being some of the best examples of their respective styles.

Each year, we collect the highest-scoring beers of the year from our Official Review in a compendium of the best beers of the year. This year, 150 beers were included ranging from adjunct-filled pastry stouts to light-bodied and elegant craft lagers.

Though 2020 was a year unlike any other due to an unprecedented global pandemic, brewers managed to experiment in a variety of styles – and those styles are represented in our Top 100 Beers of 2020. Hazy, juicy IPAs were at the forefront of the craft beer scene (as expected), but the sheer volume that our judges reviewed was truly staggering.

Beyond those lush and citrusy brews were barrel-aged stouts and other strong styles, which were reviewed in impressively high numbers by our judges. Perhaps it was because everyone was stuck at home for many months of the year that these high-ABV brews came to the forefront.

We sincerely hope you enjoy exploring this list of the Top 100 Beers of 2020 and employ this list as you venture out into the wide world of beer. 

ABOUT
The Official Review is conducted in a single blind tasting format that adheres to the Beer Judge Certification Program 2015 Style Guidelines. This method provides the best opportunity to rely on facts and to avoid favoritism, ensuring a level playing field for all brewers. It serves both the industry and the consumer to have unbiased and objective scores from qualified experts.

Last year we touched on the growing popularity of fast casual dining and zero-waste cooking. This year, the theme is survival. How do businesses predicated on a dine-in model survive in a world where dining in may be a life-and-death situation?

How do restaurants that pride themselves on making you feel like family operate in a world of plexiglass screens, table dividers, mandatory temperature checks and masks? There’s no sense in fighting it – all that can be done is to accept it and move forward. Those businesses that don’t will simply not survive.

On that rosy note, here is The Beer Connoisseur’s 2021 Restaurant Trends report – an idea of what sort of restaurant experience you can expect in the coming year and the foreseeable future.

Less Dining In When Eating Out
Let’s start with the obvious. For now, at least, dine-in is a shell of what it once was. That means that off-premises dining, already a growing trend, has now become the preferred method of ordering from a restaurant. In fact, it is what kept the restaurant industry from falling apart entirely as weeks of lockdown stretched on.

The year 2020 was a bummer. So, let’s move on. But first, there’s the business of craft beer to consider and how it has weathered a pandemic year.

Just looking at the beer headlines and what’s trending about beer on Twitter as the year came to a close could be a perilous pursuit, because the headlines and stories emphasize problems such as a shortage of cans just when they’re needed the most—by everybody from Coca-Cola to craft brewers. There’s more fallout than usual when it comes to closings and bankruptcies. And then there’s the eternal 2020 weirdness such as sales of beer for off-premises consumption, although it increased year-over-year, beginning to lag behind wine and spirits.

When money and jobs are tight and people are drinking far more often at home instead of restaurants, bars or taverns due to a pandemic, one would expect relatively affordable beer sales to be strong. People may be drinking more alcohol in some quarters to cope, but some are drinking less due to job losses, which may be higher among those who often buy beer.

2020 has seen the beer industry jerked around like a starfish in the churning tides of pandemic politics and economics. Shutdowns, lockdowns and massive shifts in public opinion have consistently made it difficult to plan more than a week in advance, and nearly impossible to find balance between what the market wants and what the brewer can provide.

At this point, much of the beer industry is just holding on for dear life. But it’s never too late to look ahead. As of November, the market is showing signs of stabilization, and consumers have spoken with their wallets – demand for beer isn’t going anywhere. The question then becomes – what segments of the marketplace are the dollars flowing to and which ones have dried up? Here is The Beer Connoisseur’s 2021 Consumer Trends report.

Winter 2021, Issue 52 - DOWNLOAD

This is a special edition of The Beer Connoisseur's premium web magazine. It is the only edition of the year that is also offered as a print magazine. You may download the PDF of the print version for offline reading on any device. Download the PDF HERE.

We recommend saving the PDF to a book reader such as iBooks for Apple devices or Aldiko book reader for Android devices. You may then organize the magazine issues into collections. The PDF is equivalent to Digital Magazine formats as experienced on readers such as the Kindle, Nook, Zinio App., iTunes App., Google Play App. and more.

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