2024 Beer in Review

SOJOURN FERMENTORY

JINSON CHAN (CO-FOUNDER) HIGH SIDE (OWNER)

BEST LOCAL BEERS

Blindhouse’s Just Forever is a 4.2% ABV Farmhouse Pale Ale with a bright, zesty profile complemented by fruity notes, a hint of bitterness, and a refreshingly drinkable finish. Although the brewery has been open since 2023, their beer has only recently become available beyond their taproom.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN beers 

Charles Towne Fermentory’s Tmavé Pivo is a 5.2% ABV Czech dark lager that checks all the boxes for a great dark lager. It offers a smooth texture, light roasted flavors, a crisp finish, and exceptional drinkability – perfect for enjoying in colder weather.

FAVORITE SOJOURN BEER

Sojourn Norbert is a 5% ABV amber lager and the latest addition to Sojourn’s lager lineup. This beer is dry and malty, with a delightful biscuity flavor that pairs perfectly with bold dishes like High Side’s spicy Dan Dan noodles. 

FAVORITE PLACE TO DRINK

Schilling’s Oktoberfest is an annual tradition I never miss. I love the crisp autumn weather, the scenic brewery by the river, and the chance to drink with friends from all over the country. Also, you can drink some of the best lagers in the world at the festival. If you haven’t experienced it yet, it’s an absolute must!

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs

Breweries are placing greater emphasis on hospitality, focusing on creating memorable experiences for their customers. In today’s market, breweries without food options face tougher challenges to thrive. On another note, I’m excited to see the growing availability and popularity of dark lagers – a trend I truly enjoy.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs

I am not too crazy about non-alcoholic beer. I understand the idea but it’s just not something I’d enjoy.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

COVID-19 significantly impacted a generation of young adults who turned 21 in 2020, many of whom missed out on the social experiences of going out to bars, restaurants, and breweries. I hope they’ll begin stepping outside their comfort zones, engaging in social settings, and supporting local establishments as they rebuild community connections.

soul mega

ELLIOTT JOHNSON (CO-FOUNDER & CEO)

BEST LOCAL BEERs

I’ve been digging Lost Generation’s Pilsners. I’ve noticed Port City has been adjusting their line up lately, and everything I’ve tried has been very good. Burnish is new to me – I was introduced to them at Andy’s Pizza, and I’ve definitely enjoyed their brews.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN beers 

I’ve been doing a little field exploring this year.  Some brands that have stuck out to me are Autumn Arch in Delaware, North Park out of San Diego, Kansas City’s Vine Street, Schilling out of New Hampshire, Two Locals in Philly, and Jackie O’s out of Ohio.

FAVORITE soul mega beer

Every Soul Mega beer will always be my favorite, but this year we’ve fine-tuned our production efficiency on our award-winning Worldwide American Pale Ale, and I’ve definitely seen a change. We brought back our Rhythm & Beauty Black Lager – it’s amazing. And we just dropped the third beer in our core line, Metropolis American IPA, and I couldn’t be any prouder of how it turned out. FIRE.

We also had to chance to do some sick collabs, including Berryocracy Black Berry Wheat with Red Bear; the Iron Sims Peach Camomile Saison with Bitter Fruit, Urban Garden, Black Beauty, Black Viking, Joyhound, Liquid Intrusion, and the Black Brew Movement; and an awesome West Coast IPA collab and experience with Stone and Port City called Cosmic Coast. 

FAVORITE PLACE TO DRINK

I’m pretty consistent in my local watering holes. They include The Pub and The People, Lost Generation, Bar Chinois and Bar Japonais, Boundary Stone, Gold Clover Bar, Serenata, Last Call, and Metrobar. When I looked to catch a vibe, Shanklin Hall never misses. For events, I hit The Set R&B parties at Howard Theater, Snallygaster, and, of course, our annual Kegs & Eggs during Howard Homecoming.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs

While many publications depict mostly negative trends in the alcohol industry, I’ve found a few trends that can be seen as positive. I like the fact that beers made with traditional brewing techniques have continued to return to the forefront. I live in DC and may be in some type of bubble, but it appears that the residents are getting back into hanging out and visiting our local establishments more since the years immediately following the pandemic. 

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs

Uhh draft? What’s going on with that? I’m not sure if it’s a regional thing, but a lot of my peers have experienced declining sales and growth in draft beer. It seems like new establishments aren’t even building draft systems on site anymore.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

I hope people continue their love for a great beer on draft. We just expanded into Maryland and Delaware, so I hope in 2025 that many new people experience our brand and enjoy the great beers we’ll be rolling out. MEGAFEST will also be returning next year!

crooked crab brewing

EARL HOLMAN (CO-FOUNDER & GENERAL MANAGER)

BEST LOCAL BEERs

I’m biased, but we did a Double IPA collab at Other Half called DMV – Maryland Edition that was amazing. Really cool experience being able to see their operation behind the scenes and to share some beers and stories with them!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Sapwood Cellars. I was particularly blown away by their Barrel-Aged Welli Vanilli Roastwine – such an interesting concept, and so much complexity and barrel character. Sapwood also constantly hits on their hoppy offerings, and one of the more recent releases I highly enjoyed was their C.I.T.R.A. (Citra Is Truly Really Awesome) DIPA. Just tons of flavor.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERs

We spent some time with the guys out of Spyglass Brewing in New Hampshire this year, and we were lucky enough to brew with them. They’re really doing some awesome hoppy beers, so I was excited to see them send some stuff into the market. Great beers but even greater people. Old Thunder out of Pittsburgh also impressed me a lot. They hit on every style from traditional lagers to hazy IPAs to barrel-aged barleywines. Really cool spot located in an old Post Office building. Worth the trip!

FAVORITE crooked crab BEER

We have been consistently dialing in and improving our hoppy offerings, and we’ve been lucky enough to receive numerous awards in that category. One of my two favorites was Crab Theft Auto New England IPA, an ode to Citra (with a dash of Peacherine and Rakau) that was bursting with ripe tropical fruit notes. The other was Samurai Squirrel West Coast IPA. It’s everything I want in a West Coast: zesty/fruity/piney with the right amount of bite from the hops. I also highly enjoyed our Darth Malt Czech Dark Lager. It was a great beer, but it felt even greater seeing the response from the consumer side. People are really embracing more traditional styles.

FAVORITE PLACE TO DRINK 

The easy answer is always Snallygaster. It’s such a fun time and great catching up with old friends while meeting new ones. The beer list is unparalleled. And it didn’t rain this year! I also enjoyed quite a few beers at Elder Pine. It’s such an amazing venue that my wife and I got married there earlier this year! Plus their EP Pils is so good.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs

I think the most fun thing to emerge from 2024 is consumer education. They’re embracing lagers and more traditional styles while simultaneously rejecting gimmicky and/or overly-adjuncted nonsense. Even as recently as a couple years ago, it would be unheard of for a brewery like us to produce a large batch of Czech dark lager and hope to actually sell some of it. This year, we decided to give it a go, and it ended up being one of our fastest-moving beers. More and more consumers are seemingly gravitating towards not just light lagers and pilsners, but also embracing more unique and maltier lagers, which is awesome.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs

Unfortunately, this one is easy: It’s brewery closings. Not just on a local level, where we have seen a bunch of casualties in the DMV area, but nationally as well. And it’s not just breweries that made subpar product – many breweries that made good if not great product are also shutting their doors. It’s an unfortunate consequence of massive year-over-year growth in the industry, and with so many new breweries continuing to open, a breaking point had to come sooner or later. 

2024 HOPES AND WISHES

I hope more people venture out and drink beer! Patronize your local breweries as well as your local bars and restaurants, drink beer fresh on tap, support the businesses that support your local community.

pen druid fermentation

JENNINGS CARNEY (CO-FOUNDER & BREWER)

BEST LOCAL BEERS

Well, I haven’t had the beers at Blindhouse yet, but I have a special place in my heart for any saison brewers in the Piedmont who are keeping it real, especially during these trying times for Brettanomyces-loving Saison or Spontaneous brewers. So, I’ll throw them some love for sure. 

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERS

I’ve had several beers this past year that have really stood out to me. My dear friend Joey Pepper, who owns Schenker Beer, makes an Italian Pilsner called Che Se Dice, and it is incredible. The guys at Root and Branch made a black raspberry saison that I thought was lit. Brasserie Dunham outside of Montreal made a cherry saison aged in whiskey barrels that knocked me over – it was really something. I had my first Built to Spill IPA from Foam up in Burlington that was ineffable. And Widowmaker in Boston has a dark Czech lager which totally hit the spot. 

FAVORITE pen druid beer and wine

This year I had a couple releases that I was really proud of. 

First was our 2023 Vintage Petit Verdot. The grapes were grown in Linden by my buddy Theo Smith who owns Capstone Vineyards, and his fruit was really incredible. The wine was carbonically macerated and spontaneously fermented. I made a very small amount and bottling it didn’t seem like the way to go, so we put it on draught! It’s a big wine but it still has a fruity and effervescent quality to it – a rustic composure in a way. The second was our 2024 Gueuze-inspired Spontaneous. I’m really proud of that beer because it was the first year I was able to incorporate the carbonation, acid and classic Gueuze nose that has been so elusive for the last nine years I’ve been making spontaneous. That classic Gueuze nose is reminiscent of Boon or Drie Fonteinen – a diesel, burned matchstick aroma that is so cool. These days, most gueuze is 1, 2 and 3 years, but this blend was 1, 2 and 4 years. 

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK 

I don’t go to bars that often. But in 2024 I found myself drinking in parking lots a lot after soccer games, beer festivals, or climbing, and that was fun.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs 

People being awesome and supporting their local breweries. Breweries being awesome and making good, quality beer for their community. I love traveling to different cities and finding how the local breweries have integrated themselves with the community. Each area has its own unique tastes and micro-culture when it comes to their beers, and I love seeing how that evolves. In my humble opinion, it is essential to have economic diversity when it comes to what people eat and drink; box stores and chain franchises are the death of a business community’s life, and the same applies for breweries. I don’t really care about trying to purchase a beer on the West Coast that can be purchased on the East Coast.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES 

I really hope that more brewers and breweries take a chance and specialize. Really specialize. A move away from the “we have it all,” Cheesecake Factory-style menu.

Also, I hope people start really understanding how important water and yeast are to the flavor and mechanics of beer! Hops are cool, malt is cool, but it’s not nearly the driver of flavor that yeast can be, or the deterministic constraint of water and its chemical composition over the course of the beer and its flavor is. Yeast will make a beer a Pale Ale or a Saison. Yeast ties the beer to a place. Water determines if the beer should be light or dark! I mean, yeast and water, guys, c’mon! 

lost generation BREWING

JARED PULLiAm and ANNE CHOE (CO-FOUNDERS)

BEST LOCAL BEER

When we went down to Benchtop Brewing for our Eroica collab earlier in the year, we got to have their Anytime Pivo, a 4.1% Czech Pale Lager and that was absolutely delicious. We were blown away by how much flavor was in such a low-ABV beer. We could drink that beer all day, every day.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEER

The fine folks over at Dovetail in Chicago finally started sending beer this way, and we love what they do with everything, but especially lagers. Their Helles is a perfect beer and we even featured it in an event we did with The Beery Godmother. We love having Dovetail in the area now.

FAVORITE Lost generation BEER

Two years ago, we said we loved seeing the trend towards West Coast beer again. In response, we started consistently carrying a rotating West Coast Pilsner on our draft list this past year. We just love the style as it allows us to marry our love of lagers with our long history of brewing out on the West Coast and being awash in hoppy goodness at all times. Our favorite of the series is Beauty Into Gold, which is 100% Mosaic and 100% the beer we drink whenever we have it on tap. 

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

Honestly, our favorite haunt has always been Quarry House Tavern in Silver Spring. We used to live a block away before we left for California and we would find ourselves there, drinking delicious beers and crushing burgers and wings more times than we probably want to admit. Since we came back, we found that the food, beers, and quality of the vibe has remained the same: frikin’ awesome.

positive 2024 trends

Last year, Jennings from Pen Druid brought up that he was disappointed with beer lists at high-end DC restaurants being mostly filled with flaccid macro-offerings, but this year we’ve found a greater interest from those places for craft local offerings. Lost Gen is currently on beer lists at several Michelin starred and higher-end restaurants throughout the city including a private label beer with Jont, as well as being on the menu at Albi, Reverie, Steven Starr restaurants, etc… I think higher-end places are finally attempting to pay a little attention to their beer lists, just as they do with their wine and spirits lists, which is really awesome to see.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

We are looking at adding some tanks and equipment to increase our capacity and expanding our production quite a bit this year. With this added capacity, we can turn our meager distribution to something a little larger, sharing our love of craft beer to more and more folk in the DMV.

brewer’s art

steve jones (HEAD BREWER)

BEST LOCAL BEER 

I’ll stick with Maryland on this. Despite the state rarely seeming to feature in medal competitions, there are plenty of wonderful beers to be had. I’m a fan of classic styles, and they’ve been well represented by the likes of UNION Craft, Manor Hill, Key, and Monument City, for example. I’ve been impressed with the few beers I’ve had from the likes of Elder Pine too. I have to admit, I don’t get out much, so there are still plenty of breweries around here that I’m not familiar with.It’s a tough choice but I’m going to go with Monument City’s Throwback Pale Ale. Maybe it doesn’t seem like an exciting choice on the face of it, but it’s got a lot going for it for my money. It’s a simple but beautifully crafted pale ale – an agreeable ABV of 5.5%, a nice level of bitterness supported by clean malt backbone and a delicate, yet also assertive hop aroma. Centennial is the key here, and I’m all for it. And you can see through it! Oh, and the can art is awesome. The Pale Ale and India Pale Ale category has become such a muddied style, quite literally, in recent years, but Throwback has reaffirmed my faith that a Pale Ale can still be a thing of beauty. Union’s Duckpin has always been a go to for me, so I’m happy for it to have some company on the taps around town that make me want to drink Pale Ales again.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEER 

I didn’t have to think too much about this one. I make no secret of the fact that Samuel Smith’s Yorkshire Stingo is one of my favorite beers of all time, so to have it back on the shelves – albeit in a limited fashion – after an absence in the U.S. of several years was absolutely joyous news to me. It was like Christmas and Coventry City’s 1987 F.A. Cup win rolled into one! Euphoric! It’s beautiful, everything an Old Ale should be – big and bold (though it hides its 8% ABV shockingly well), plenty of dark fruit notes bursting out with kisses of soft vanilla. Exquisite. Get it while you can. I have brewed my own homage to this wonderful beer at my previous brewery (Oliver Brewing Co) and at The Brewer’s Art, both of which I was very happy with, but it’s nice to finally try the “real thing” again. It’d be remiss of me if I didn’t also give a shout out to an American out-of-town beer that had me drooling so I’ll raise a glass to Sacred Profane’s smoked dark lager.. absolutely delightful, beautifully balanced, I only wish I could get my hands on more!

FAVORITE brewer’s art BEER

As a longtime resident of the Baltimore area, The Brewer’s Art and its beers has always been a favorite of mine. It’s a cornerstone of craft brewing in Maryland and as such, since being given the opportunity to brew here some four years ago, I approach my duties with that in mind. I am more than happy to brew beers that I have enjoyed drinking for many years, and I’m equally happy to be able to contribute my own ideas to our seasonal line up. We only have six draft lines, so each new brew is important to me. I’ve particularly enjoyed the introduction of what you could, I guess, call a “series” of beers: “A Day Trip To …”  They’re linked only by name and a certain aesthetic. I’m aiming to brew what I’d consider a classic but maybe underappreciated style of beer, a challenge to me as a brewer in some cases and an introduction to a style for some of our customers. To that end, we have introduced Day Trip To Yorkshire (Stingo, surprise surprise, as the Cilla Black meme goes), Day Trip To Rotterdam (Dutch Kuitbier), and Day Trip To Düsseldorf (Alt). I’ve been really happy with all of these. It’s about time to consider the next in the series. Day Trip To Burton, perhaps? 

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

If I have the opportunity to pop out to a bar either alone or to meet friends, I’d say Racers Cafe. Spacious, excellent beer garden, live music, great staff, good food, and, most importantly, always a great draft list.

If I’m going to a brewery, it’s Union or Monument locally, but I’m also a big fan of Locust Post out in Western Maryland. My family and I always try to stop there when we travel to Cumberland to visit my wife’s family. It’s a great spot and they make great beer.

It goes without saying, though, the best beer of the day is an end of work day beer at The Brewer’s Art. Having said all of that, in my advancing years, it’s hard to beat a beer on the couch with my wife and a record playing in the background.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs

It’s not really a new trend, but the continued resurgence of lagers and some classic styles and less dependency on hazy IPAs, fruited sours, and adjunct stouts is to be applauded. I noticed a few more British styles popping up local. A lot of the ones I tried weren’t particularly good, but, still, it’s a move in the right direction for this Brit!

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs

The continued decline of the craft beer industry scares the shit out of me. Less people are drinking beer, more breweries are struggling or closing. I’ve never been more pessimistic about the industry.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

I can’t imagine it will happen in 2025, but I’d love to see an upturn in the restaurant/bar industry and people drinking more beer. The increase in operating costs that we have seen over the last few years, combined with what I fear will be further damaging increases next year, will take a toll for sure. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which people will have more disposable income to spend at bars & restaurants but hope springs eternal.

In brewery terms, I’m excited for any opportunity to brew beer and especially to see what else we can put in our Foeder (currently it houses a Russian Imperial Stout, which has been maturing in there for 3 months).

wheatland spring farm + brewery

john and bonnie branding (co-founders)

BEST LOCAL beers

When you have an all-star team, you’ve got to get them on the field. So, we asked our team for their thoughts on the questions this year. Each team member was given different questions, and they answered those questions individually, not seeing other responses until the article will be published. Here we go!

All of the great beer in our area is an embarrassment of riches. With so many excellent options, the most difficult decision is choosing just one beer or one brewery. We’re grateful that we share a community with places like Bluejacket, Crooked Run, and Ocelot, and that they’re run by the warmest people. You can’t go wrong!

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERS

Matt M: Recently I was in Austin for a music festival, and I ordered a bucket of Live Oak Brewing’s Pilz while I waited in line at Franklin Barbecue. There is nothing finer than a well-built pilsner, and Live Oak nailed it. It was light and crisp and had just a hint of malt. It went down ever so smoothly. Reposed in the bucket, glistening with condensation from the hot Texas sun, this humble can of pilsner seemed to scream, “Crush me!” And I obliged. The BBQ was also good.

FAVORITE new wheatland spring BEERS

Joey L: Violetta. This beer is among the truest expressions of local beer that is possible. Our ethos of growing our own beer is at the forefront of this bottling – with water from our source, grain that was grown in a single field here on the farm, open fermented with yeast captured from that same field, locally grown whole-leaf hops, and extended barrel aging. This beer is a perfect representation of the reason I wanted to work at Wheatland in the first place. Not only delicious, it is the truest expression of a farmhouse ale I’ve had, and at the same time it is totally unique. Violetta is a beer that truly represents time and place. Now that it’s available for people to share on the farm or take home it makes me all the more excited for what is to come next.

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

Bonnie B: I loved attending DC Beer’s Women in Beer event held at Birch & Barley last March. Brandy Holder of DC Beer, together with Greg Engert and Tim Liu, hosted a beer dinner featuring Lost Generation and Wheatland Spring. The hospitality shared with us was absolutely top notch, the meal was exceptional, but most importantly, the room was filled with engaged, warm, wonderful people who really cared to hear about the stories behind the beers offered and our intentions at Wheatland Spring. It was a meaningful evening, and I hope to do more of these types of events in 2025 and beyond.

positive 2024 trends

John B: Sustainability is gaining traction. Not the greenwashing that’s been around, but people actually engaged in sustainability. From words to deeds. Even Michelin is recognizing this with green stars for sustainability. (Congrats, Oyster Oyster!) Maybe we’re more aware of it because of our own echo chamber, but it’s more than that. I experience it often. It ranges from focused things like kids asking for the recycling bin to broad conversations about regenerative farming. It’s making the case for renewable energy at the brewery and people asking why keeping a small sourcing footprint makes a big difference. We love these interactions. 

Overall, this is a positive trend for the brewing community since brewing beer is especially resource intensive for most places right now. Currently, nearly all beer is made by shipping tons (literally) of ingredients from all corners of the world. Once it lands at a place, it’s often brewed with fossil fuels and lots of water. Many places are also shipping tons of beer (again, literally) across the country. All of this can add up to a sizable Co2 footprint and significant environmental impact, locally and nationally. There’s a lot of opportunity across the entire beer ecosystem with things like sourcing local ingredients, using natural resources efficiently, and brewing with renewable energy. Even small steps matter and every bit makes a difference because the benefits compound. A big first step in driving more sustainable practices across the industry is consumer awareness. It’s the next step of seeing customers engaged and making informed choices that makes me really happy.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDS

Jeff. R: The relatively low level of interest in rauchbier definitely makes me sad. We need more smokey flavored things in the world.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

Joey L: I have seen a rise in the industry over the past few years of emphasizing the use of high quality, local ingredients. Whether it’s a brewery committing to using only craft malt in their beers to brewers developing relationships with local farmers for high quality options for adjunct ingredients such as fruit or herbs, to brewers taking steps to forage or farm their environment themselves. My wish is for this emphasis to continue to grow, for us to continue to be inspired by others farming, foraging, supporting their local communities and follow suit. I believe the best, most interesting beverages that I’ve had come from producers that are committed to producing something that is representative of the area they live. The concept of terroir is not exclusive to wine, it can be passed through all beverages or really any product or piece of art. To put a part of where you live into a package and be able to share it with someone is a beautiful thing, and my wish is for this emphasis to continue to grow so we can see more people be able to share and experience the joy of truly local goods with one another. 

Matt M: I hope 2025 brings more experimentation.  The world has enough triple-dry-hopped juice bombs. What gets me excited is a beer that pushes boundaries. Oh, you added boysenberry to your lager recipe? Give it to me. Forged local ingredients?  Hit me! Open fermented? Fill me up!! They say the secret to a New York Bagel is the city water – you can make a bagel anywhere, but it won’t be the same. Similarly, beer has historically been a representation of its origin, and I’d like to see more of that expressed in the beers 2025 brings. 

Jeff R: I would definitely like to see breweries focus more on their local community rather than on expansion and capturing more of the market as a whole. Using your product as an expression of your locale and how you fit into your community is what really sets somewhere apart and keeps people wanting to come back. Thankfully the brewery I’m with is already at the forefront of this mindset, so I just look forward to being a part of it and keeping it going in that direction!

bluejacket

GREG ENGERT (NEIGHBORHOOD RESTAURANT GROUP PARTNER & BEVERAGE DIRECTOR)

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERS

2024 saw Drie Fonteinen finally ship draft lambic to the U.S., and both the Kriekenlambic and Oude Lambik made a major impact. I hadn’t had either on draft since visiting the Restaurant 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, outside of Brussels, over the years, and tasting these stateside at The Sovereign was positively transportive. I also loved pouring and drinking rustic, unfiltered lagers from one of my favorite Franconian brewers at Shelter (Knoblach, who also sent draft beer to the US for the first time this year!), and then fresh bottles from Monchsambacher in The Sovereign’s alley with beer fans lined up to enjoy Cantillon’s now biannual Zwanze Day. 

FAVORITE new bluejacket BEERs and churchkey collabs

Two beers really stood out for me this year at Bluejacket, both collabs that urged us to conceive new approaches for styles we already loved brewing. 

Our friend Kelly Young, Velocity Girl bassist/ guitarist and classic beer style aficionado, came to us with an idea to craft something akin to Ayinger Altbairisch-Dunkel for one of their very last shows at the Black Cat. Bluejacket Director of Brewing Operations, Ro Guenzel, was of course up to the task and, along with his talented team, created a dark lager – perfectly named ÜberCopacetic by music maven and co-conspirator, Phil Runco – of immense malt complexity and even more impressive drinkability. 

We also worked with Tim and Ben Jordan of Commonwealth Crush outside of Charlottesville, VA to produce a local wine and beer hybrid called Remain in Light. A sour blond ale base was flooded with 60 gallons of freshly-pressed Petit Manseng juice to once again remind us of the versatility of this grape (for both beer and wine production). And working with Sierra Nevada, Monkish, The Veil, Oxbow, and Schilling on ChurchKey 15th Anniversary brews was a true honor that also yielded many of my favorite beers in 2024. Tim Liu, NRG Beer Director extraordinaire, was vital for shaping these beers and making sure each was uniquely memorable. 

FAVORITE PLACEs TO DRINK 

This year was all about spending time with friends in the brewing industry for me, and my favorite places to drink consistently revolved around beer fests, events, and collaborations. Whether it was revisiting tasty offerings from Pen Druid and Ocelot during brewdays, toasting to the countless brewers who came out in support of Snalllygaster at Bluejacket’s preparty and The Sovereign’s afterparty, crushing Domilise’s Po-Boys with Freigeist and Moor Beer at our very own brewery Saint X in Nola, or one too many bourbon and cokes at the most essential VFW in the U.S. (the nightly hangout spot when in Fargo, ND for Drekker’s Fooler’s Ball) – all of these places, and the company I kept, made the drinks taste even better than they could on their own.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDS

Mindful drinking continued to trend in 2024, with non-alcoholic offerings becoming more and more popular. The NA space reminds me a lot of craft beer in the mid-late 2000s right now: exponential growth, the noticeable increase of quality and consistency (that’s, for now, in-step with that growth), plenty of buzz among established and new drinkers along with the media, etc. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the way that NA offerings have been incorporated into more traditional bar and restaurant experiences. Guests are zebra-striping more and more, alternating between alcoholic offerings and NA beverages throughout their evening, and maximizing a more moderate, and just as fulfilling, social experience. Also, guests are willing to pay proper prices for NA beers, wines, spirits and cocktails, which respects the real costs associated with producing these offerings; it also helps keep check averages up at restaurants, bars, breweries and retail locations as some guests cut back on alcohol consumption. 

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

As people continue to moderate and practice mindful drinking next year, my hope is that beer, particularly lower-ABV beer. returns to prominence in the public imagination. The ascendance of spirits, cocktails, and RTDs is well documented and palpable at this point, but with a shift toward healthier approaches to alcohol consumption, the time is right for beer to make a comeback. As more sub-5% offerings make it onto shelves and menus – and interest in well-made lagers and even British-style cask ales continues to grow – we need to once again tout the singular experience that beer can offer a guest looking to responsibly enjoy alcohol. Beer is uniquely positioned to meet this moment based on its comparative restraint in the alcohol sector, and the noted health benefits of informed consumption should be embraced and promoted (with research continuing to show the benefits of moderate beer drinking for access to key nutrients, antioxidants and more). This seems like the right time and moment to refresh the image of beer consumption in our market.

elder pine BREWING & blending

Paul Davison (head brewer)

BEST LOCAL BEER

This year I drank a ton of Waredaca’s Belgian Blond Ale, Shiloh. There’s just something about classic, bone-dry, yeast-forward styles to quench that intense summer thirst.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERS

I finally got my hands on Heirloom Corn Lager from Bierstadt Lagerhaus, and it blew my socks off. Not many people do lagers quite like Bierstadt. There’s a reason why they’re one of the best in the business.

FAVORITE elder pine BEERs

I’m very partial to our Smoked Helles Lager, Empyreumatic. It’s a very polarizing beer made with 100% smoked malt and Lapsang Souchong, a type of black tea that’s smoked over pine needle fires. It’s unbelievably smokey without being ashy or astringent and still maintains the crispness and drinkability of a Helles lager. 

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

As always, our neighbors Waredaca Brewing Company is where you’ll often find me enjoying a pint. They’re the best neighbors we could possibly imagine having, and I pass it on my way home every day!

POSITIVE 2024 TREND

Lagers are still growing in popularity, and that makes my heart very happy. 

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TREND

Brewery closures. The amount of breweries that closed their doors in 2024 has been disheartening. Additionally, in my personal opinion, gimmicks like ice cream, pastry cream and artificial food dyes still don’t belong in beer.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

I hope the brewery closures halt or at least slow down in 2025. Seeing so many people forced to give up on their brewing dreams is tough to see.

Ocelot brewing

rich and jack snyder (brewer and HEAD BREWER)

favorite new local beer

Rich: During Snallygaster weekend, I had the opportunity to drink Always Wonder, a Schankbier lager from Bluejacket. It was delightful. Then, later on, I found it at The Brew Shop in Arlington. I’m enamored with beers that are sub-4.0% ABV, and at 3.5% this beer is remarkable. Tons of malt character balanced with the appropriate level of bitterness – it’s right in the pocket for me. Such petite beers are not easy to execute, but Bluejacket did it, exceedingly so. 

favorite new OUT-OF-TOWN BEER 

Jack: The DC area has an enviable amount of access to out-of-market beers, and I enjoyed my fair share throughout 2024, but my spotlight ultimately shines on Firestone Walker’s XPA. A 5% golden-hued crusher, hopped with Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, and Citra? Brewed by Firestone Walker and packaged in 12oz cans? Sign me right the hell up.

FAVORITE new and improved ocelot BEERS

Rich: This is tough, but I’d have to go with our West Coast IPA Kings & Queens. At Ocelot, we’ve been trying to make West Coast IPAs that inherit some characteristics of our hazy IPAs. Essentially, IPAs that rest at the interface between these two styles. We switched up some elements of Kings & Queens this year, utilizing the New Zealand hop varietal Superdelic paired with Jasper Yeast’s JY215 Chico Ale strain. I loved the result – a crisp and drinkable IPA, punchy with tropical fruit, berry, and a citrus bitterness and brightness begging for another sip. 

Jack: It was a good year for new Ocelot beers. We were able to challenge ourselves and take plenty of risks throughout. That experimentation produced some memorable results, but I have to highlight Tender Charm. Brewed in collaboration with Emily Brown at Andy’s Pizza, this Franconian-inspired pale lager exceeded all of our expectations. It also served as the inaugural beer poured through our new Lukr faucet at the brewery, so there will forever be a fondness for Tender Charm.

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

Jack: Speaking of Andy’s Pizza, their Shaw location has become a favorite hub for us. It’s certainly the go-to spot when fueling up before a show at 9:30 Club, but it’s way more than just a convenient pregame pit stop. Pizza of the highest order in DC, combined with a dynamic and more-than-reasonably priced beer selection, makes it an ideal spot for any occasion — or no occasion at all.

Rich: My partner and I are a year into moving to Arlington, and we absolutely love Westover Market and Beer Garden. The feeling of community at Westover is strong and it’s hard not to get roped into a conversation you didn’t plan. That’s the kind of medicine we need in our digitally orchestrated age. Aside from Westover, my partner and I like having a few beers at home while baking some bread, probably purchased nearby at The Brew Shop.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs

Jack: It’s a continuation of a trend, but I’ve enjoyed the enduring appreciation for lower-ABV beers that I’ve seen throughout the year. It goes beyond lager, too. We’ve witnessed such a noticeable positive response to our series of English-inspired pub ales, most of which are well below 5% ABV. Hopefully the appreciation for low-ABV beer extends through 2025 – I’d love to not be able to write about it as a trend next year.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs

Rich: Where are all the young craft beer drinkers at? This is something that craft beer really needs to reckon with in the next coming years. I don’t see too many young faces at the brewery these days. I certainly don’t have an off-the-cuff solution to this, but I would love for craft beer to try to focus more on community – this is something we all need, irrespective of generation.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

Rich: I would like to get out to more breweries more often in 2025. Participating in Snallygaster this past year made me realize how important it is for brewers to talk to each other. That social connection can help you, as a brewer, regain focus and passion for the craft.

Jack: Ocelot turns 10 in 2025. Keep your eyes peeled.

andy’s pizza / THE GREEN ZONE

emily brown (andy’s beverage director AND green zone BEER BUYER)

BEST LOCAL BEER 

Lost Generation is still all the buzz right now – and for good reason, amirite?! I’m really into their Dying Moons and Shadows dark lager – it’s fantastic. I’ve also got Sojourn’s Paradise cider on tap at many locations. Mike Pawly is a phenomenal brewer, and he absolutely nails the cider game, too. I am embarrassed (honestly, mortified) that I have not been over to Mieza Blendery yet. I am woefully slacking, but I am very into mixed- and spontaneous-fermentation styles, so I’ll get there stat.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEER

I’m a huge fan of Upstate New York’s Wayward Lane, and I was thrilled to pour their beer in DC. Seeing them invited to Snallygaster this year was a highlight. Their beer is excellent, and I like the people a lot too.

Recently, friends from Asheville told me about DSSOLVR’s incredible community efforts after Hurricane Helene. I’ve always loved Vince’s beer, but hearing about their above-and-beyond response reminded me why this industry is so special. Beer is about people and community, and DSSOLVR embodied that beautifully.All the hype bois are talking about Test… and I guess I am too now.

FAVORITE andy’s pizza COLLAB

I don’t collab often, but when I do, it’s with Ocelot – ha! Our Tender Charm is thirst-quenching and delicious. Collaborating with them strengthened my bond with their team. I spent half a day hanging with Adrien and the crew (Jason Cannon included), drank through a lot of their board, and had a blast. Spending time with Jack and his brother Rich, plus cutting up with Laura (who I adore), made it even better. Ocelot’s beer is excellent, and I am proud to see Andy’s logo on that can. (I am looking forward to their Neil Young tribute night!)

FAVORITE PLACEs TO DRINK 

This is my favorite category of the article, so excuse the longwindedness.

Beer Fest Story: Justin from Allied and Whitney from Drekker convinced me to head to Fargo, ND, for the Foolers’ Ball. The local VFW was what dreams are made of – cheap, strong drinks, a lively dance floor, and a band of old-timers rocking out. Hanging with Greg Engert and Jinson Chan was a DMV moment I did not expect to have in North Dakota. And they didn’t have cash, so I covered their tab – now they’re forever in my debt, which is how I like it.

Family Dive Bar Story: My favorite thing about living in DC is being close to my family. My brother Bill moved here this year, and our go-to spot has become The Tune Inn. We crush mozzarella sticks and “split the G” on our Guinness pints over and over. Our bat signal text is: “Wanna get Tuned Up at the Tune?”

Props to a Homie Story: I’ve been hitting Salt Line more than ever, thanks to April Shettle running the bar. She’s kept the standard crowd-pleasers on the menu but added gems like Schilling’s Alexandr, making it a great spot for beer drinkers. I even ventured out the day after Snallygaster for Oyster Wars. In the past, no one could get me to socialize or have a beer the day after Snally – thanks, April, it was awesome!

Beer Nerd Story: The Brasserie De La Senne tasting at The Sovereign was unforgettable for me. Seeing Yvan De Baets is like meeting a beer world celebrity.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs 

I’ve noticed two unexpected age groups diving into unique beers. Younger guests (21-24) lately have been asking me how to expand their palate and learn more about beer. Meanwhile, much older guests are straying from the status quo, loving the stories behind the beers and why they’re on the list. It’s refreshing to see more diversity in the craft beer crowd. It’s great for the industry and these drinkers alike.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs 

I’m constantly sent articles about the “decline of draft beer” or memes about the state of the beer industry. Someone last week even sent me an article titled “The Slow Decline of Drinking Draft Beer at Bars.” Bro, you know this is my livelihood, right? Not cool.

Yes, wine sales are down too, but no one’s telling vineyard owners to give up or wants winebars to be obsolete. People will always love the magic of a fresh draft beer. Enough with the negativity – “craft beer bars are dead,” “Gen Z doesn’t drink,” blah blah blah. I’m going to keep serving great beer, and people are going to keep enjoying it. There’s no substitute!

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

I’m working on my own project that’s set to open in 2025, and, honestly, I’m both thrilled and terrified. If I disappear, just know I’ve gone belly up and am living in Andy’s basement.

But instead of dwelling on nerves, let’s call it excited. This is something I’ve dreamed about for most of my life, and, in my heart, I believe it’s going to be incredible.

That said, the reality is that rents in DC are sky high and the margins in the bar and restaurant world are razor thin. Success in this business depends on being busy, plain and simple. So, here’s my soapbox moment.

We’re all glued to our phones (me included – I’ve got 12 Slack channels, emails, texts, and the ever-riveting Gram just like the rest of us). In 2025, I hope more people embrace real-life, face-to-face interactions. Supporting small businesses plays a huge part in this – if you love a place, show up!

If you’re a fan of Lost Generation, grab a beer there more often. Swing by your local coffeeshop. Hit up Old Ebbitt for their oyster happy hour. Get out, mingle, and share a pint with someone. Stop by The Brew Shop (those ladies are amazing!) or come say hi to my brother and me at the Tune. Let’s live our lives in the wild.

sapwood cellars

MICHAEL TONSMEIRE (CO-FOUNDER)

BEST LOCAL BEERS

I always enjoy Glass Castle from Silver Branch – really fantastic Pilsner! Whenever we brew a Pils, I try to get something similar that is fresh and delicious, and this is one of my go-tos for a side-by-side tasting.  

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEER

I really enjoyed the two collaborations I tried from Side Project and Hair of the Dog (For Alan and A Long Time Ago). Hair of the Dog’s Adam and Fred were both available 20 years ago in New England when I was first getting into craft beer. I was enthralled by them, and I continued to have an admiration for Alan Sprints’ unique beers. I was very sad to hear they were closing. It’s very cool to taste the blends they came up with of his older vintages of Adam and Fred with similar-style beers from Side Project. 

FAVORITE sapwood cellar BEER

I really enjoyed our second batch of Stallion Cover, a bière de coupage that blended saison and Marylandbic. We’ve put a lot of work into reining in the acidity of our barrel-aged wild ale program, and this is one of the most drinkable, balanced examples without any fruit or anything to hide behind.  

FAVORITE PLACE TO DRINK

On my couch at home next to our dog Leroy. 

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs

It sucks to see the guys I was inspired by when I started out either closing their breweries or passing away. This year alone, two of the “original” sour beer breweries closed (Cascade in Oregon and Cambridge Brewing in Massachusetts) and Ron Jefferies from Jolly Pumpkin passed away. 

2025 Hopes and Wishes

I’m really looking forward to opening the restaurant (Albura Taqueria) at our tasting room after more than two years of work! Interested to see how it changes the demand for different styles as we have people coming in for the food, rather than just the beer!

arlington BREW shop

BETH HELLE & JULIE DREWS (CO-FOUNDERS)

BEST LOCAL BEERS

There weren’t a ton of brand-new local breweries that hit distribution this year in Virginia, but we were so pleased with the debut from Sojourn Fermentory, who sent Midnight (a Dark Czech lager) as their first beer out of the gate. A ton of complexity wrapped in a 5% abv beer that went down very easy.

Lost Generation just owned the West Coast Pilsner category for me this year. Beauty into Gold is consistently solid, and I fell in love with Weather Profit at Snallygaster. So crisp, with a lovely smack of bitterness.We’ve also gotten a bunch of limited releases from Silver Branch this year. Their Coffee Chronicle Stout hit perfectly in the cold snap last week.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEER 

One brewery that really killed the hazy IPA game for us this year was Little Willow out of Northampton, Massachusetts. A couple of lager breweries we’d never seen before also came to town, and they absolutely lived up to the hype. Bierstadt Lagerhaus Slow Pour Pils is everything you’ve heard and more, and Barrique Brewing and Blending sent us some of the best beer we had all year. Pivo Sladek 10 was *chef’s kiss.* Of course, I’m not going to leave this question without mentioning dark beer. I want to shout out KCBC’s Bodega Cat as the best oatmeal stout I’ve had in the past several years, and Frost’s Coffee Porter for nailing the coffee adjunct in the lighter bodied porter (vs. a stout) – not easy to do!

FAVORITE brew shop collab

We’re so excited for the re-release of Crooked Run’s Wonder! Jake Endres initially dreamed up this gorgeous triple decocted pilsner for our 8th anniversary collab brew this past January. Crooked Run just re-brewed and re-released this beer last week, and it’s tasting just as nuanced and lovely as we remember. Those are big shoes to fill for our upcoming ninth anniversary, but we’re feeling very confident as we’ll be heading to Ocelot later this month to brew a West Coast IPA. On opening day of The Brew Shop, back in 2016, we made it a priority to have an Ocelot IPA on tap on our growler station, and we had Profits of Pride on tap at that time. So, this brew is going to be an homage to that beer.

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK 

I’m embarrassed that it took me this long to discover the draft menu at Rocklands in Arlington. Some of my best warm-weather memories this year were on Rocklands’ back patio enjoying brews from Schilling, Lost Generation, Drowned Lands, and Bissell Brothers, among others. Bonus points for the delicious bites you get with each draft purchase – tacos or mini BBQ sandwiches! We also want to say that Wheatland Spring remains one of our favorite places to be. I always tell our customers that it seems like the sky is bluer at Wheatland – that’s really the best way for me to describe the ambiance there. It’s incredibly idyllic and peaceful, and getting to sit in the great wide open with a truly excellent beer in your hand is like nothing else. The setup there does a fantastic job of making you feel like you’re part of that magic – you’re sitting right next to the barley that ends up in the beer, by the barn where the fermenters live, etc.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDS 

Consumers continue to be adventurous. People are still excited to challenge their palates and to try new styles, new beers, and new breweries. Craft beer just keeps getting better and better, and this is allowing people to try something they’ve never seen before without taking a risk that it’s going to be terrible. 

We also saw a huge increase in cider sales in 2024. This held for dry cider, sweet cider, and everything in between. This is a section of the store that we used to expand just for the fall, but demand has kept its presence solid all year.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs

We noticed an unfortunate drop in QA/QC this year, with fewer breweries dating their cans and more leaky cans this year than ever before. Of course, some breweries handle it better than others, and we saw plenty of places show care and concern when these things happened. But there were several breweries that took little-to-no responsibility and were happy to leave anyone else holding the bag, whether that’s the distributor, the retailer, or even the end consumer. 

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

Our hope is that consumers of beer (and everything else!) will understand the greater impact of supporting local businesses up and down the entire supply chain. It’s a great thing to support your local brewery or your local beer store, but it’s an even greater thing to recognize the impact of your dollars on small businesses beyond those physical walls. Does your local sandwich shop also brew coffee with locally roasted beans? Small businesses tend to support other small businesses, which creates a chain reaction. In the beer industry, this includes many pieces from the maltster and the yeast propagator to the brewery and can manufacturer to the distributor and retailer. We love the sense of community and the relationships that come with small business – both ours and the others that we patronize – and we hope others will recognize that as well.

Other half

Haroun Rahman (production staff)

BEST LOCAL BEER 

When I’m drinking outside the context of work, I tend towards lower-ABV styles that just scratch an itch. A couple really stood out to me: Salts from Upweller, and Weather Prophet from Lost Generation. 

I went to the Salts “re-launch” party at Right Proper in October. It was incredible seeing the brewing community coming out in support of Josh and Upweller. Oyster Gose. Sublime. It hits this perfect balance point, almost effortlessly. Quick body, with just enough sweetness to get you started. That quickly gives way to the bright, captivating, but fleeting tartness. When you land, it’s into this wonderful, gentle brine. Back end has a gentle acidity that makes you want another glug.

I don’t find myself buying multiple four-packs of beers often. But I did once I tried Lost Generation’s Weather Prophet, a West Coast Pilsner with Mosaic, Motueka, and Luminosa. Super fun hop combo on a crisp, lightly bready base. For as much as you can say about a beer, sometimes one just hits you and no words are just as powerful as many. The integration of these new school hops and flavors on a classic Pils base is simplicity done well. Everything is dialed up to where it needs to be, without any one component stealing the spotlight. Little bit tropical, little grassy nod to the Noble hops. Quaffable.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERs

Two ends of the lager spectrum. First, Schilling’s Alexandr, a Czech-Pilsner, has been a staple in my fridge all year. Rich, nuanced, with a lovely hop bite and soft carb. You can have it with any food or any situation. And, on the other end would be Florida Avenue Brewing’s Dead Parrot, a Light Lager with fresh lime zest and sea salt. Might have been a right-place, right-time beer, but the drinkability to bright fresh lime flavor is off-the-charts good. If this was available locally, I would get it by the case. A desert island beer.

FAVORITE other half BEERS

We make so many! They end up kind of blending together. I guess the beers that I’m most proud of – both sensory wise and in terms of team execution – would be our 4th Anniversary Triple IPA, Smoothie Sour #7, and our All [Hop] Everything series. 

DC’s 4th Anniversary beer was fun to put together. The hop combo was voted on by members of the DC staff. Almost everyone on our staff loves the newer, super intense varietals coming out of New Zealand, so we elected to use a combo of Citra, Nectaron, Riwaka, Peacharine, and Nectaron Cryo on a 10% ABV base. Really in your face notes of stone fruit, Riesling, lavender, lemonade, and white pepper. Just shows how insane the hops can be together. It needs that rich pillowy body to be able to stand up to the sheer onslaught of flavors.

Other Half’s 10th Anniversary Collaboration #7 Smoothie Sour was just dumb. It was supposed to taste like a strawberry margarita. It did. Without a doubt one of the most on-the-nose, perfectly named Smoothies we’ve ever done. We used Anejo tequila barrel-aged seltzer as a portion of the blend. It made it sing. I hope we never have to make it again, but it was damn good.And I would say that the All [Hop] Everything series has had the most behind-the-scenes work. Two years ago, it was one of our more variable base recipes. Now, it’s one of our most consistent. That allows us to be more confident when we have to execute the recipe with rarer hops – people get the chance to try saturated examples of newer hops, like Peacharine. To me, it shows the hard work that doesn’t really get seen. I’m proud to be part of this team.

FAVORITE PLACEs TO DRINK 

Well, I think the places I drank the most would definitely be Lost Generation and Andy’s Pizza. I go to Lost Gen for the constant new and well-executed beers. And the vibe in there is unmatched. Also, they have the best bar staff ever! I frequent Andy’s because the pizza is amazing – and it’s almost equaled by their taplist! Great options in many styles from all up and down the East Coast. Get the Pepperoni Special, and thank me later.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs 

More exploration into lager! I see it both with brewers tackling older or more complicated styles, and with the innovation happening with newer hops and combinations. People are starting to see the value in the time invested in extended lagering. Also, we stopped trying to put “India” in front of any style that got a hop addition, which I think allows for more nuance in spaces that previously had been occupied by things like “IPL.” It begs a question, rather than a knee jerk away immediately. 

I’m also seeing more near-beer and N/A options, which I think is a helpful addition to bars and taprooms.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs

Lot of resting on laurels, not a big year for huge new things. I hope stagnation doesn’t keep on too long. Also… adjuncts in every style. Just stop.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

More dark lager, less adjuncts. Bring back 12oz cans. Don’t rerelease a banger after, like, two weeks.

THIRD HILL BREWING COMPANY

Matt Cronin (HEAD BREWER)

BEST LOCAL BEER

Brightside American Lager by Ocelot was a standout. It’s wonderfully balanced—light, bright, crisp, and endlessly crushable. It struck the perfect harmony between simplicity and excellence, making it a true local gem.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEER 

Fox Farm in Connecticut continues to crush it. One beer that absolutely blew me away this year was their Roam: Peacharine. I had the 2023 version, which beautifully showcased Peacharine hops from Freestyle Hops in New Zealand. This year’s iteration went even further – vibrant notes of nectarine, grapefruit, and pluots with a bright hop character that was unforgettable. It’s easily one of the best Pale Ales or IPAs I’ve enjoyed in years.

FAVORITE new third hill BEERs

For me, Gesundheit, our German Pilsner, was a major highlight. This beer represents the pinnacle of technical brewing at Third Hill. We pushed the engineering with partial decoctions and multi-step mashes, resulting in a malt complexity we’re incredibly proud of.On the IPA side, Lindervillian hit all the right notes this year. It’s hazy, bright, and boasts a luscious mouthfeel, with our hand-selected 2024 Freestyle Nelson Sauvin hops taking center stage.

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

It doesn’t get better than sipping a beer in the backyard with friends. For an out-of-town experience, sitting on the dock at The Captain Kidd in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, while enjoying Notch’s Session Pils, was pure bliss. The combination of a great beer and a serene waterfront setting was unbeatable.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs

The ongoing rise of lagers! It’s refreshing to see both consumers and brewers diving deeper into the nuances of these styles. Additionally, the availability of lower and better-quality non-alcoholic beers has been a fantastic development, opening the door for more inclusive beer enjoyment. 

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TREND

I’m not trendy enough to answer this one. 

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

For 2025, I hope to see even more emphasis on sustainability in brewing – through ingredient sourcing, energy efficiency, or packaging solutions.

On a personal note, I’m excited to refine our lagers even further and experiment with more New Zealand hop varieties to showcase their unique and diverse flavors.

PORT CITY BREWING COMPANY

Joaquin Llaguno (Brewer & Beer Guide) and John Harahan (Brewer & Social Media Manager)

BEST LOCAL BEERS

Joaquin: Soul Mega! DC-based brand. Check them out! 

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERS

Joaquin: Half Acre’s Daisy Cutter and Russian River’s Pliny for President. 

FAVORITE new port city beers

John: The Brewers’ Cut series continues to impress. We’ve been doing limited 5-barrel batch brews of new stuff including a West Coast IPA, pumpkin beer, and sour red ale. We came out with a coffee porter last week that’s absolutely incredible. 

Joaquin: ALX275. I was able to help our director of brewing with the creation of ALX IPA. Be on the lookout next year as it will be coming back! 

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

John: It continues to be my home and Boundary Stone, with the occasional stop into Lost Generation. 

Joaquin: Snappy’s Small Bar. A close friend opened up a bar last year. and it’s one of the best bars in DC. Feel at home every time I go. 

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs 

Joaquin: Younger generation starting to get into craft beer. Keeping an open mind about certain style beers. 

John: I am a beer drinker. But, I can really appreciate all the new ways our brewing brothers and sisters are trying to survive these days. Whether it’s legal THC drinks in places like Minnesota or local alternatives to beer like seltzers, brewers are branching out into new beverage segments. 

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDs 

John: People are drinking less beer. Post-COVID times have been tough for a lot of breweries big and small. The market went from double digit growth, to seeing more and more breweries closing. Some breweries closed due to poor business decisions and market saturation, while others closed due to the influx of non-beer beverage choices, and the under 25 crowd not drinking as much as the older generations. 

Joaquin: Hazy beers. Personally, I think hazy beers are ugly and lazy. Beers should be clear and you shouldn’t rush perfection. 

2025 HOPES & WISHES

John: My hope is for more innovation from breweries that insures their survival.

Joaquin: Keep making the best beers possible and keep winning awards! 

jailbreak BREWING

rob fink (HEAD BREWER)

BEST LOCAL BEERS

Lost Generation’s Beauty Into Gold (West Coast Pilsner with Mosaic). What I remember most about this beer was not its luscious hop character, pristine clarity, impeccable balance, or the lovely conversation had over it, it was the weather. It was a cloudless, oppressively radiant summer day where three pairs of sunglasses would be necessary, and you slow walk to avoid sweating. I only did one of those things, in addition to also losing my sunglasses during the same visit. I will try again next summer.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEER

Holy Mountain x Brujos Garden Green (Fresh Hop IPA). I had the absolute honor of traveling to Yakima this fall for hop selection, and I maximized my consumption of wet hop IPAs. There is something intrinsically beautiful about wet hop beers made correctly, and Garden Green was a masterpiece in both form and style. Brewed with Krush (formerly HBC 586) and Mosaic, Garden Green somehow avoided excessive polyphenol extraction/chlorophyll-like notes while managing to harness the full spectrum of available hop flavor, providing vivid sensations of pineapple, musky passionfruit, and ruby red grapefruit. Rest assured I will be thinking about this beer for some time.

FAVORITE new or improved jailbreak BEER 

Double Barrel Dusk Till Dusk (Roast Marshmallow –to be released in early 2025). The soon-to-be latest entry in the Jailbreak barrel program began as a poorly constructed excuse to use fancy vanilla beans, that ended up not using any (I blame Mike Tonsmeire for inspiring this idea – his use of vanilla is masterful). I began by tasting through our library to isolate which individual barrels most profoundly exhibited wood-derived vanilla characteristics. While I was in the middle of blending sessions over several weeks, a pair of Russell Reserve 10-year bourbon barrels came into my possession, and because their no. 4 “alligator” char maximizes wood-derived vanillin, I knew they would be a good candidate for further evolving the “vanilla” character I was seeking. 

This double-barrel possibility allowed me to eliminate barrels that did not possess the requisite viscosity to withstand additional maturation in oak. As I began to get close to a final blend to rack into the Russell Reserve casks, I happened upon a podcast called Liquid Liner Notes (go listen, it’s great) that had Marty Scott from Revolution Brewing on, talking about novel methods for incorporating additional oak character into your beer, barrel-aged or not. Fast forward a few days, and I had already ordered a single barrel insert from Creative Oak, a company that specializes in proprietary toasting technology that allows them to mimic certain flavors, especially ones not typically found in oak, like Medium Rare, Butter, or in this case, Roast Marshmallow. Hoping to not overwhelm the blend as it stood, I only added one insert into one barrel and waited 8 months. I am honestly stunned at the result. Without question, this beer is my proudest moment as a maker and blender of spirit barrel-aged clean beers. While my colleague Rossy and I were tasting barrels at Sapwood for our recent barleywine collaboration Turning Truth Tables, I poured some samples of the stout blend for folks. Scott Janish said, “Why would you add vanilla to this?” I did not – and am very glad I did not.

FAVORITE PLACE TO DRINK

AirBnB in Spring Garden, Philadelphia. My brother and I try to travel back to Philly for at least one Phillies home game every year (I’m an obnoxious Philadelphia sports fan, sorry – oh, and GO BIRDS). After seeing the Phillies beat the Braves from three rows back in the right field outfield, the only possible consequence was drinking 24-hour old Human Robot Hallertau Pils, eating two cheesesteaks, a DiNic’s Roast Pork Sandwich, and waking up the next day to eat another cheesesteak at Dalessandro’s for lunch. My top 3 spots for cheesesteaks in Philly are Dalessandro’s, Dalessandro’s, and Dalessandro’s.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDS

The use of lager yeast to ferment beers that have significant hop expression, whether they be West Coast Pilsner, West Coast IPA (this is prevalent), Cold IPA, or something else. These hop-forward lagers can modulate the pleasant sulfur hit from a proper lager fermentation, turning these styles into compelling drinking experiences, especially in conjunction with the use of high free-thiol hops.

India Pale Lager seems to have died a forlorn, agonizing death, and rightfully so; the phrasing is clunky, creating a clear platform for misunderstanding. Alternatively, the advent of West Coast Pilsner, at least to me, has comparative staying power, by virtue of the name conveying a clear idea of what the intended flavor profile is. More West Coast Pilsner please!

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TREND

Of all beer-related things I’ve seen this year, perhaps the most concerning trend has been the outward celebration of drinking for the sake of drinking, and beer marketing as an industry within craft beer (as well as the industry at-large) is the primary culprit. Since the pandemic hit, most craft breweries have done a wonderful job of pivoting, of shifting their business plan or reformulating it altogether, of adapting in general to compensate for additional turbulence in the market – all of those things are true. However, it has often come at the expense of the mental and physical health of consumers, as well as the producers themselves, and there is far too much irresponsibility in beer marketing to also make the claim that these same producers care about the overall health of those whose dollars keep their businesses alive.   

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

Related to my answer regarding less-desirable trends, one of my hopes is that folks make an effort to drink less and be healthier, however that manifests for the individual person. I want the brewery I work for to remain in business so I can continue doing what I love, but I would also like more thoughtful considerations made for how we tell people about the things we make, for how we incentivize folks to patronize our establishments, and to do so with strong underpinnings of conscientiousness.

With respect to clean barrel-aged beers, I would personally appreciate a concerted focus upon blending for a final product without the use of adjuncts. There are still far too many otherwise beautiful beers being ruined by the one-dimensional onslaught of adjuncts, which too often neutralize any semblance of complexity, and nullify the supposed prestige gained from using “year-statement” types of spirit barrels.

right proper brewing company

josh chapman, Right Proper (Brewer) + Upweller Beer Co. (Owner & Brewer)

BEST LOCAL BEERS

Getting to be back in DC consistently has meant I get exposure to so much great beer I’d been shielded from on the Shore. A few stuck out in big ways this year, starting with the impeccable Wheatland Spring. Consequent (a Světlý Ležák) was one of their two offerings at Snallygaster this year. At a fest of over 350 beers, I was absolutely transported by this one. There’s always this je ne sais quois with the best European lagers that I’ve almost never found repeated in American versions. Consequent has it in droves. A testament to the voracious intentionality behind everything John and Bonnie do out at Wheatland, it was a beer that made me feel their care for the land and the people that live off it.  Also, Influence of the Earth (American IPA) from my dear friends at Lost Generation.  It was a collab with my nomad brewing project Upweller Beer, using DC-foraged wild sorrel. I got to spend a couple days with Jared, Anne and Cody both picking sorrel (literally from in front of the brewery!!!) and hanging for brewday. I’m fairly vocal about my lack of preference towards IPAs, and I couldn’t get enough of this one. Getting to be a part of the process of this beer coming to fruition was fueling. The way they love their team and their community radiated the “why” of why I got into beer in the first place.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERS

Easily, it was Botanique (Blend #3) from Tyler at Blindhouse Beer in Roanoke. I got to have this (the first time) at our OktoberForest Fest in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy. It is in construction a blended saison with elderflower, calendula, and citrus blossom. What it actually ends up being is a journey through fields and farms in a glass. Each year at the fest, as we debrief, the brew teams gather and we decide who had the “F You” beer of the fest.  Basically, it’s the beer that makes all the brewers double take and mutter obscenities with mad respect under their breath because of how fantastic it is. Botanique was the unanimous choice, and Tyler is an even better human than the beer he produces.

FAVORITE right proper BEER

This has got to be Over the Garden Wall.  It’s a just-over 6% Belgian dark ale, open-fermented, and full of humanity.  It’s the first in the “Whimsy Beer” series that I’ve gotten to be a part of and reignite in my time at the Right Proper brewpub in Shaw. The whimsy beers are staff-led beers. Beers where the concept is born from a team member, and where the crafting pulls from the Right Proper ethos. Our parameters at Right Proper Shaw are “Wood, Yeast, and Time,” and this beer hits all those marks. This one is our bartender Anna Donahue’s creation. A concept born from the desire for a beer that’s your best friend on a dark and dreary autumn evening. Our buddy Fritz Hahn at WaPo said, “It tastes like Christmas,” and I couldn’t agree more. 

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

The Sovereign is always a Wonka World kind of experience, but for me never so much as the Snallygaster after-party. Snallygaster meant a great deal to me this year. I’ve been a part of all the Snallys, from my time at Bluejacket through every year at Black Narrows out on the Shore.  When Black Narrows closed, one of the first pangs of loss I felt was missing out on Snally for the first time. When Upweller was invited shortly after launching, I was ecstatic. At the after party, standing alongside so many incredible people, watching Greg lift the Abt 12 chalice and speak about the “why” behind all that we do as brewers, it was something I’ll never forget. 

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDS

More realness; less reality TV. We’ve lost a lot of breweries post-COVID. We’ve got a lot of breweries still struggling to stay afloat. I’ve been encouraged with the authenticity of folks about the reality of where they’re at/where they need to be. They say game respects game, but I think real respects real, and for an industry that was built on the idea that we’re all about community, it’s been lovely to see folks pull back the curtain a bit. 

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TRENDS

The continued resistance to the local supply chain. I expound below, but the TL;DR version is: Don’t let your local brewery off the hook if they say the quality is too low or the price is too high. That’s bullshit. 

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

More and more and more folks using locally produced malt. We’re beyond fortunate to have Jeff Bloem of Murphy & Rude Malt in Virginia. I’ve continuously felt indebted to him and his team for the care they put into the backbone of great beer. The way Jeff has poured into relationships with Virginia farmers, how he’s taken wild risks to help forward the brewery agriculture economy in the commonwealth, it’s a thing to behold.  

After COVID, the global brewing supply chain experienced significant increase in cost on this side of the Atlantic, to the point that locally produced grain was almost equal in cost to stuff produced thousands of miles away. There’s just no excuse to not be using malt made locally anymore, especially when: It’s fresher, the dollars stay local, and it produces more expressive beer.  Lastly, I’d love to see #moremandeville trending even more. Brian Mandeville runs brewing ops at Fine Creek Brewing in Powhatan, Virginia, and he’s on my Mount Rushmore of brewers. Yes, he can make any style you can think of exceptionally well. What he does even better? He leans into his local landscape and expresses seasonality in beer in ways I rarely see on the East Coast. You wouldn’t know it because he’s probably the humblest person I’ve ever met. There’s a reason the staff down there started the #moremandeville hashtag, hopefully we can push it along a bit.

denizens brewing

JULIE VERRATTI (CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF BRAND OFFICER)

BEST LOCAL BEER 

I wouldn’t say these beers are new or even new to me, but I did have a lot more Atlas Ponzi IPA and Bullpen Pilsner this year. Those beers are very well balanced and exactly what I am looking for in a West Coast IPA and an easy-drinking pilsner.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN beers

I don’t recall having any out-of-town beers this year. I stuck with my local favorites!

FAVORITE denizens BEER

I think Southside West Coast IPA is at its all-time high. I cannot get enough of this beer. If you like West Coast IPAs or are easing off the hazy IPAs, this beer is perfect for you. It’s got all that malty goodness that West Coast IPAs have and it definitely has that pineyness too, but there’s a ton of citrusy and grapefruity hop characteristics that I think are more desirable for the modern beer drinking palate. To put it bluntly, it is a banger. You can find it in our taproom year round as well as many other bars and restaurants and package stores around the area.

FAVORITE PLACES TO DRINK

I’m a creature of habit and tend to hang out in the same places year round. Pro-tip: I’m gonna be a fan of any place that has pizza and local beer on draft. 

In Maryland, you will usually find me at the 4 Corners Pub, Bear Brick Oven, or the Stained Glass Pub in Silver Spring, or Pizzeria Paradiso in Hyattsville. If I am not there you will find me in Bethesda at Barrel and Crow, Barking Dog, Black’s Bar & Kitchen, or Aventino. I am also a big fan of the package stores that have bars now – check out Whelan’s in Potomac (owned and operated by the same family who owned Astro Lab Brewing), Uncorked in Chevy Chase, Gilly’s in Rockville, Brew Belly in Olney, or Town Center Market in Riverdale Park. 

Those who know me also know that I love to play golf. I like to have beers after my round at Sligo Creek Golf Course, the University of Maryland Golf Course, and Northwest Golf Course. All of these spots have a great local beer selection. Hit me up if you ever want to play and have some beers together!

In DC, you will find me at Brookland’s Finest, Midland’s Beer Garden, or any Duke’s Grocery location. All have great food and a great beer selection.In Virginia, you will find me at Piece Out in Delray, Cork Street Tavern in Winchester, Augie’s in Old Town, or Astro Beer Hall in Shirlington.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDS

Beer drinkers are getting back to the basics, and that makes things a lot easier for planning and production for breweries. Selling core, year-round beers is how small breweries pay their bills. After the craziness of the last five years of everything having to be new all the time, getting back to the regular course of just drinking simple, well-made balanced beers is glorious.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TREND

Can the $20+ packs of beer please go away at some point? Dear lord, I don’t know who is buying or drinking those things but it certainly isn’t me or most consumers anymore. Can we also, please, as an industry, finally start consistently putting date codes on our products? Especially if these products are going out into the market? 

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

I’ve said this before, but it seems like things are finally turning the corner on folks going to their local bar without some sort of song and dance being required. Let’s get back to when having a beer is the least interesting thing you do all day!

mieza blendery

Alex Lynch (FOUNDER and brewer)

BEST LOCAL BEERs

I need to preface that 2024 was probably the least time I’ve had visiting places and trying new beers since 2009 (maybe tied with 2020). That said…

Sapwood Cellars’ Neologism. One would think the tropical fruit of modern hops would pair so well with the acidity of mixed fermentation, but for various reasons it often seems to fail. This beer is the 100% success story.

Pen Druid’s Raspberry Method Spontaneous. For me, this was probably the best American take on spontaneous I’ve been able to try in memory. A beautiful ratio of spontaneous funk and fruit character.Dynasty x Lost Lagers Wales Pale Ale. A strong reminder that historical recipes and techniques can offer flavor experiences that aren’t quite represented in common modern offerings.

BEST OUT-OF-TOWN BEERs 

De Garde’s The Trio (3-year spontaneous blend in gin barrels). Excellent spontaneous characteristics, tons of blood orange, melding seamlessly with the gin botanicals.

3 Fonteinen x Hill Farmstead Resonance: Blend 1 Gueuze Lambic. A lot of weighted names were involved in this, but it was just a really enjoyable blend.

De Cam’s Gueuze. Standard Gueuze and an unknown vintage, but it was some of my favorite funk expressions in a Gueuze for a  long time. A reminder to seek it out more.2011 Victory Old Horizontal. Found behind some cans of paint.  Still very much alive and enjoyed.

FAVORITE mieza beers

Listening to brewers answer this question has made me extremely terrified of a scenario where I have children and then do, in fact, have a favorite.

If pressed, Lyth, a barrel-aged sour with damson plums might be it. Or Drama of the Baobabs, our ode to Jester King’s Petit Prince.

Outside of individual beers, I’m excited about two broader concepts that are coming out really well.

We have a number of what I’m describing as “port-adjacent” beers – big beers that combine aspects of fruit, malt, and spirit barrels that I am happy with. 2025 releases along this line include: an imperial stout base with tannat grapes aged in bourbon and rum barrels; a sour quad base with malbec grapes double barrel aged in rum barrels; and a sauterne inspired El Dorado-hopped blond barleywine base aged in Laird’s apple brandy barrels and put on second use apricots. 

As a brewer, I find it fun to go to a tasting room with seven hazy IPA’s and compare the subtle differences, and I wanted to offer the equivalent of at least having 3-4 Saison variations on tap. I’ve been impressed with how much diversity we’ve pulled off with our Saison blends relying on malt, hops, and mixed culture alone. Their descriptions aren’t interesting to read about, but they are great to drink.

FAVORITE PLACE TO DRINK

I really haven’t gotten out much at all this year, and I owe a lot of friends visits.The Sovereign, however, is on my commute so I have been able to catch their events when I get out early enough. The offerings are great, and the place always feels good to me.

Other minimal highlights include a toddler crawling race in a buddies backyard, and a late 1800’s hotel on Martha’s Vineyard with cocktails on a giant wrap-around porch watching the sunset.

POSITIVE 2024 TRENDs

I’ve roughly divided types of beer enjoyment into those that are contentment or curiosity based. For a while now, I felt everyone was just looking for the equivalent of a hug from their beer. I don’t know to what extent, but with panels discussing historical beer, brewers from Europe leading tastings, and festivals dedicated to local foraged ingredients, the curiosity side of beer enjoyment and discovering new perspectives is maybe on the rebound?  I used to take days off from work to attend San Francisco Beer Week events, and I want to live in a world like that again.

LESS-DESIRABLE 2024 TREND

I believe brewery tasting rooms have provided a unique and critical “3rd place” option that was desperately absent in so many American communities. However, I’m worried that some of these common practices have supplanted and distracted from the beer itself – that, for the general public, corn hole sets and taco trucks are more central to the definition of a craft brewery than whether beer is made onsite, let alone the how or the why of that beer.

2025 HOPES AND WISHES

What we are most hopeful for is our 2025 membership program, which we just opened enrollment for. This will allow us to give the beers and our customers the focus and attention they deserve.

Otherwise, 2025 at Mieza will still very much be a building year. Building our blending stock in quantity and diversity, applying creative human selection to cultures, and further uncovering how best to showcase fruit in beer, through varietal selection, growing practices, or processing. I really like the direction the rambling cohesion is going. A wish is to have enough stock available to pull off some blending collabs.

For the industry as a whole, I’m hoping independent restaurants, bars, and bottle shops are able to find a way to succeed.  The forces underlying distribution and grocery store shelves do not have the best interests of the beer at heart, and I’m trying to be very conscious of that going forward as a consumer and producer.