Few occupations have as much insight into contemporary beer culture as the people who actually make the stuff. Throughout their years behind the kettles, brewers have been the first to watch possibly iffy new releases grow into nationwide sales stalwarts, traced the trajectory of overhyped styles as they soared close to the sun before crashing back down to earth, and witnessed personal favorites seek out and eventually find their audiences.
Throughout it all, there are always excellent ales and lagers that clearly deserve more renown, but which are somehow overlooked by the masses. Some of those underrated gems are regional favorites with limited production volumes. Sometimes, they’re high-fliers from a generation ago that have been overshadowed by splashy new releases. And sometimes, these beers are only temporarily underappreciated, cooling their heels for a minute or two until the tastes of the general public finally catch up to them.
To find the best underrated beers of the moment, we asked 12 great brewers from across the county for their personal favorites. Their picks span a gamut of styles and producers, only one of which — a true legend from an earlier craft era — earned two votes. Quite a few names on this list will not be familiar to the vast majority of beer drinkers. But every one of them should be.
The Most Underrated Beers, According to Brewers:
- Blind Pig IPA, Russian River Brewing Company
- Bluebird Bitter, Coniston Brewing Company
- Carl, St. Elmo Brewing
- Goth Beach Party, Bosk Brew Works
- Mittelfrüh, Zillicoah Beer Company
- 90 Minute IPA, Dogfish Head Brewery
- Nugget Nectar, Tröegs Independent Brewing
- Nut Brown Ale, AleSmith Brewing Company
- Old Brown Dog, Smuttynose Brewing Company
- Starlight Wheat Saison, Blindhouse Beer Company
- Westbound Coffee Porter, Westbound & Down Brewing Company
“90 Minute IPA is my favorite beer of all time right now. I can get this beer at my local gas station in a 19.2-ounce can for $3.20. This beer hits all the best West Coast bitter bomb notes. Every time my husband and I plan a date-night expensive steak dinner at home, we swing through and grab a couple cans of these to top it off. It literally makes the night and couldn’t be a more exciting pairing. I remember when there were limits on how many of this beer you could buy at once. What a wild world we live in. Just when you think these beers no longer exist, they’re winking back at you through the glass door while you’re buying some spirits.” —Brienne Allan, owner, Sacred Profane, Biddeford/Portland, Maine
“Westbound Coffee Porter is such a balanced and delicious beer. Not many people know this about me, but I absolutely love coffee beer. Especially dark, reasonable-alcohol, no-lactose ones, which are very hard to find. They picked the perfect coffee pairing from Sweet Bloom Coffee and added it to an exceptional 6.5 percent porter. My favorite time to enjoy it is on a camping trip for breakfast while you wait for the coffee pot to heat up.” —Ashleigh Carter, head brewer/co-owner, Bierstadt Lagerhaus, Denver
“Zillicoah’s Mittelfrüh is one of my favorites. It is refined, subtle, and showcases Mittelfrüh [hops] very well — I can remember fresh wildflowers, a little hay, and some gentle black pepper. They use the landrace variety specifically from Seitzfarm. They release it on a cycle, so I am lucky if I get some. I was absolutely gutted when I heard that one of my favorite breweries in the country took a massive hit from Hurricane Helene. Seeing a place that’s meant so much to the beer community face that level of devastation was heartbreaking. I honestly wasn’t sure if they’d ever be up and running at that location again. They are chipping away to get back online up there, and hopefully they’ll be cycling through their lineup of incredible German-style lagers in the future. People like them give me hope, and I can’t wait to raise a Mittelfrüh to their resilience.” —Shawn Cooper, co-founder, Halfway Crooks Beer, Atlanta
“In an era where dark beers are dominated by gigantic, sweet pastry stouts, it can be hard to find dark beers outside of that realm — especially when you delve into the world of dark lagers, where many brewers simply don’t tread. Goth Beach Party from Bosk Brew Works is a very well-done, easy-to-drink schwarzbier — well balanced, with lots of flavor.” —Julia Davis, head brewer, Burke-Gilman Brewing Company, Seattle
“I miss the ‘old days’ of craft beer when every sampler set looked like a rainbow of rich jewel-tone colors across the beer spectrum. One of the styles I miss the most is the underappreciated brown ale. If you’ve never tasted this whale, its history goes back to the 1700s when malting was done differently. The technology of the day produced brown-colored malt, which gave brown ale a dark amber to brown color and a rich, satisfying toasty flavor without being too heavy. Brown ale was born with a boring name, but it’s such a versatile beer that it can go with a lot of different foods. One of my recent favorites is AleSmith Brewery’s Nut Brown from San Diego. I was pleased to find it at a market where I live in Portland, Ore. After writing this, I am very thirsty for a brown ale!” —Teri Fahrendorf, founder, Pink Boots Society, Portland, Ore.
“Out in Austin there is a brewery that is making waves and the beer they make is something special. Carl is the name of a tasty Kölsch from St. Elmo that is perfect for the long summers we have in Texas — noble hops, crispy mouthfeel that’s full and crisp, and it definitely has that drinkability we enjoy. The nostalgic can is just the cherry on top, and with a name like Carl, well, it just makes it that much easier to crush a few. I live in El Paso, but I make sure the homies bring me back Carls anytime they go by. That’s usually a 10-hour drive!” —Johnathan Gaytan, head brewer, Flix Brewhouse, El Paso, Texas
“Blindhouse Beer Company is owned and operated by Tyler and Nicole Wert, two of the most excellent people doing excellent work in beer and in their local community. I selected their wheat saison, Starlight, because it is the perfect showcase of nuanced fermentation characteristics, barrel blending, conditioning expertise, and is effortlessly fun to drink. Starlight may contain cosmic healing powers! It’s a true gustatory delight. It’s a proper restorative. It’s a beer.” —Ryan Gramlich, co-worker, Lesser-Known Beer Company, Winston-Salem, N.C.
“Although the brown ale era has long passed, every once in a while I find Old Brown Dog in a random restaurant and I always have to get it — or any brown ale I find for that matter. There’s something very comforting about drinking a brown ale. It feels warm and cozy but also like sipping through better times. What I really like about Old Brown Dog is that it has that very robust malty flavor and a balanced roastiness at a lovely 6.5 percent ABV that has a nice hoppy backbone from U.S. hops, feeling true to style. And with a medium body, I can definitely finish the beer without feeling fatigued. I truly believe that it is also a beer that pairs very well with a wide range of foods. We should be eating more meals with beer. I get really excited when I walk into a brewery and there’s a brown ale on draft — I always get it. So please keep brewing them, they’re due a comeback.” —Juleidy Peña, lead brewer, Notch Brewing, Brighton/Salem, Mass.
“Coniston Bluebird Bitter. It’s light and, for lack of a better word, ‘sessionable,’ but still very tasty — candied orange, biscuity, and herbal. It’s kind of the perfect beer for when you get to leave work a couple hours early and find yourself with some time to kill before dinner. I think English-style ales in general tend to be ‘underrated’ by American beer drinkers, as craft beer tastes have historically leaned into more fruit, more ABV, more bitterness, more hoppiness, more barrel character, etc., whereas these types of beers lean the other way. But, it seems like maybe English-style beers are seeing an uptick in interest with the pendulum swinging back towards ‘drinkability,’ or beers that can be enjoyed round after round. It’s also maybe why there’s been more interest in lagers over the past few years.” —Jenny Pfafflin, brewer and creative/marketing manager, Dovetail Brewery, Chicago
“Nugget Nectar is a beautiful hop-forward imperial amber ale. Still coming in at 7.5 percent ABV, it is reminiscent of my early days in the beer industry when aggressively hoppy beers were queen. It comes on the heels of the beloved Celebration Ale by Sierra Nevada Brewing, which can overshadow this limited release. But like other beers with a cult following, when it’s released the clock is officially on to get your hands on it — if you know about it. Its limited release coincides with Dry January, and I know I’ve missed finding it when I’ve participated in the past, unless I give myself a cheat day. It’s like clockwork that there’s a big snowfall and I find myself shoveling snow with a Nugget Nectar in tow.” —Megan Seastedt, lead production brewer, Athletic Brewing Company, New Haven, Conn.
“It’s debatable to describe any of Russian River’s beers as underrated, but I do think Blind Pig IPA flies under a lot of beer fans’ radars, being in the shadow of the more famous and highly sought-after Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger. It’s a genuine old-guard IPA, with tons of piney and citrus hop characters, a beautiful amber-copper color, and a bracing bitterness. It’s a throwback for me: I first tasted this beer in the 1990s when I traveled to San Diego for work and stopped by Pizza Port and Tomme Arthur recommended I try it. Back then I thought it was the hoppiest beer I’d ever had. Later, when I joined Stone and lived in Temecula, Calif., where Blind Pig was first brewed, I could find this beer pretty often, but now, I don’t see it as much. I will always order it if I’m traveling and find it. It’s just a wonderful hoppy, old-school American IPA.” —Mitch Steele, brewmaster and co-founder, New Realm Brewing Company, Atlanta
“When I revisit a formative beer, often I find either my tastes have changed or the beer has, as the result of scaling, cost-cutting, or saleability. I was expecting the same a couple weeks ago from my first Nugget Nectar in a while. With the dominance of juicy/hazy IPAs, there aren’t many ‘malty’ ones around, but that made it all the more unique. Still every bit as toasty-piney-citrusy delicious as my memory of it from 20 years ago!” —Michael Tonsmeire, co-founder, Sapwood Cellars Brewery, Columbia, Md.
*Image retrieved from MG via stock.adobe.com
