Well, here we are again. And here you are.

There used to be some consensus, reflected in the power rankings, among DC Beer regarding what Snallygaster was for: out of market beers, one offs, gravity kegs, and other rarities. That’s gone now, though we’re all still trying to predict what we want to drink four or five days in advance. As such, we’ve made some changes to how we rank 450ish beers.

The rankings still take into consideration a great number of related factors, such as:

  • Our relative style preferences (more on that below).
  • Our understanding of a given brewery’s and/or beer’s reputation. It’s almost tragic how much we all like 3 Fonteinen.
  • Shiny, new toys, because we want to try new things, while still rewarding stalwarts from familiar faces we’re going to cheers with on Saturday.
  • Alcohol by volume, because many of us are going to spend 6 or more hours at the festival, so pounding imperial stouts isn’t really in the cards.
  • Relative availability in the DMV.

Our new methodology:

How did we go about doing this? Each beer was ranked 1-10 according to each scorer’s personal preference–there are 11 of us ranking this year–and predilection for ordering. We averaged those scores, then sorted. One round, 1-10.

Obviously this is not scientific, though it might be less idiosyncratic than last year’s rankings. My hope is that with 10 people ranking there’s less “noise” in these results. We’ll see. Note that none of us have had all of these beers, or even half of them, and probably not even a third.

We encourage you to make your own power rankings. Want to chat about what you think we got wrong or under- or over-ranked? Let us know at Snally: the podcast stage is between Mothra (MO) and Gargoyle (G) on Pennsylvania Avenue. We’d love to hear from you. Really.

Us at Snally

A few last things before we finally get to it:

  1. We’ve tried to be sensitive to last-minute changes to the beer list, but exceptions and mistakes will occur. If there’s something on here that doesn’t make it to Snallygaster, remember that it’s just beer, there are at least 450 other options, plus a few off-menu beers. Also remember that while there will be long lines for Cantillon, there probably won’t be for Tilquin. They’ll be pouring pretty much next to each other; you should have a Tilquin while you wait.
  2. No hard feelings, breweries. It’s not that we don’t like you or your beers (generally, at least), this is the nature of the power rankings, which tend to depress the scores of locally available year-round and seasonal beers, many of which are excellent. We hope that moving to a 10-point scale helps here.
  3. The list at Snallygaster really is an embarrassment of beer riches that we shouldn’t take for granted. Yeah, something like 11% of these beers use Citra hops–that’s not 11% of the IPAs, that’s 11% of all beers!–and more than 40 of them use vanilla or vanilla flavoring, but there are also 50+ lagers from at least 5 countries. The average Untappd score of the Snallygaster 2026 list is 4.04. Kudos to Greg, Tim, Bruno, and the Neighborhood Restaurant Group team, and all the volunteers, for putting this together.
  4. Want to join in the fun? Tickets are still available, but don’t count on them being sold at the gates. Also, proceeds go to a good cause.
  5. We are old. We mostly care not for lactose in IPAs, and barely tolerate it in pastry stouts. One of us kinda like smoothie sours, and I’ve accidentally written the definitive article on Xul’s PB&J Mixtape, so there’s that. But still, you won’t see us in line for ill will or Mortalis; that’s just how it goes. We do not “ISO” on Instagram, nor do we trade in Facebook groups or other fora. If you do, and are interested in writing about beer, we are interested in giving you a voice. Really. Let us know.
  6. Untappd: If a beer has less than 10 Untappd check ins, we didn’t list the rating. Thanks to DC Beer Patreon member Jeff, you also get a Bayesian Untappd Rating for the second straight year, which takes into account the number of ratings (above 10) a beer has and uses that to modify the scores. More high ratings means a higher score overall. Pretty cool! But a reminder: Untappd is not the be all-end all of the beer world. Allagash White is a world class witbier and has a 3.7 on that site. Biases abound. If you see an error in the spreadsheet, and we bet you’ll find at least one, blame me.

Phew. All that said, awaaaaaaaay we go! Have fun and be safe at Snally!

The top 25ish

To ensure a variety of breweries, only one beer per brewery in the top 25ish. (Brewery, Beer, Description, ABV, Untappd, Bayesian, Location)

More more more!

Other beers rated between 7.8 and 5.5 by us. (Brewery, Beer, Description, ABV, Untappd, Bayesian, Location)

Ranked 5.2 or above by us:

The rest of the 5s:

Here’s our spreadsheet, with the brewery, beer, ABV, location at the festival, Untappd, Bayesian Untappd, and the DC Beer ranking.

Have fun out there, everyone. Cheers!