The Mount Rushmore of Craft Breweries, According to 8 Beer Experts
Now in its seventh decade — can that really be?! — craft beer has been around so long that it’s experienced several significant booms and several subsequent busts. It has been an underground sensation sold only at obscure specialty shops, and something that would eventually necessitate taking over entire aisles of coolers at mainstream supermarkets. From something only bearded hipsters drank, it is now perhaps seen as something only dorky dads consume.
There are around 10,000 craft breweries in America. If craft breweries were once started by people with a pure passion for drinking “better beer,” eventually they started to be seen as easy money by entrepreneurial types. Start a brewery, crank out some IPAs, and you, too, could become a millionaire! (Sell out to some multinational conglomerate and you could become a billionaire!) Now that the industry is flailing, the opposite has happened and people have started to ask who would be crazy enough to get into the brewing game.
But through its ups and down, craft beer has proven that it is here to stay, now a part of the culinary and cultural fabric of not just American life, but life all over the world.
What are the craft breweries that changed the way we think about beer, that ushered in a new era for how we drink beer, and that continue to innovate and change the industry at large?
We asked eight of America’s most insightful beer voices for their Mount Rushmore of craft breweries. And as I’ve been around long enough to recall when we still called them “microbreweries,” I included my selections as well.
The following picks include early-era pioneers, mainstream stalwarts, hyped-up breweries that launched in the 1990s and 2000s, “crafty” breweries and “sellouts,” as well as more modern spots that would define the industry during its most halcyon days of the 2010s.
Note: Some quotes have been edited for clarity.
Aaron Goldfarb
VinePair Writer at Large; author: “Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits”
@aarongoldfarb
Sierra Nevada: A Mount Rushmore needs at least one founding father, and while breweries like Anchor and New Albion are certainly worthy, Ken Grossman’s Chico, Calif., outfit not only got in early (1980), but has continued to change the game for decades. Their Pale Ale might be the most iconic craft beer ever made; their Celebration IPA one of the most seasonally beloved. Recent beers like Hazy Little Thing, Cryo Fresh Torpedo, a Trail Pass NA series, as well as a new-ish 300,000-square-foot outpost in North Carolina, show that, unlike some pioneers, they aren’t resting on their laurels.
Samuel Adams (Boston Beer Co.): This brewery might be most responsible for making craft beer mainstream through their ubiquitous Boston Lager and network television commercials featuring their affable, denim-clad founder Jim Koch. Since 1984, they’ve offered innovation after innovation: barrel-aged beer in Triple Bock (1994), “summer ales” (1995), extremely expensive beer with Millennium (1999), extremely high-proof beer with Utopias (2002). They weren’t all hits, and the fact that Boston Lager eventually became the one craft beer you were most likely to find at the sorts of places that didn’t offer any other craft beer at the time (dives, sports bars, stadiums, airports, your cousin’s house) eventually caused people to take “Sam” for granted and forget just how significant they once were.
Russian River: To call this Santa Rosa, Calif., brewery the country’s first hype brewery is probably true, but it surely downplays its significance and greatness. Co-founder (with his wife Natalie) Vinnie Cilurzo often gets credit for creating the double IPA courtesy of his acclaimed and often hard-to-find Pliny the Elder. But his mastery of wine barrel-aged sour beer seen in offerings like Supplication, Consecration, and Beatification showed that craft beer deserved a place at the table amongst the nearby vinos of the Valleys, both Napa and Sonoma. Even today, Russian River’s annual Pliny the Younger one-week release is said to attract some 25,000 visitors and inject over $6 million into the local economy.
Hill Farmstead: The first time I went to visit Hill Farmstead, circa 2012, a guy advised that I print out Mapquest (Mapquest!) directions as my iPhone’s GPS would no longer work once I got to the rural roads leading to this Vermont hot spot. Did Shaun Hill’s Greensboro Bend brewery spawn the idea of brewery tourism? The fact they didn’t distribute meant you had to actually go to their idyllic tasting room and brewery (right on the property of Hill’s family home that seven generations have lived and worked on) in order to try their magnificent Vermont-style pales and IPAs, farmhouse ales, stouts and barleywines. All were flawless; many, like Society & Solitude #3 and Civil Disobedience #15, were transcendent, befitting the names the philosophy major Hill had given them. RateBeer named Hill Farmstead the top brewery every year from 2013 through 2020, and by the end of the decade, most of the beer world simply took it as an immutable fact that this was the best brewery in the world.
Courtney Iseman
Beer writer and VinePair contributor
@highwaytohops
Sierra Nevada: It’s hard to imagine a Mount Rushmore of craft breweries without Sierra Nevada. It’s hard to imagine American (global?) craft beer without Sierra Nevada. Ken Grossman is one of the trailblazers of modern American hop-forward beer, which has essentially laid the foundation of craft beer as we know it. Unlike other shapers of industries and movements, Sierra Nevada has remained an innovator and has helped keep craft beer relevant and engaging even beyond the beer geek community with the Little Thing brand.
Dogfish Head: Dogfish Head paved the way for boundless creativity in craft beer, embracing experimentation to create quintessential bitter-bomb IPAs alongside explorations of global and historical brewing traditions. Everything about Dogfish Head and [founder] Sam Calagione showing up at tap takeovers and releases screams “early craft beer salad days.” And yet, the brewery has kept up with evolving culture and sustainability within the industry, as well as new categories like non-alcoholic and spirits.
Allagash: Another major, influential force of craft brewing nature that has helped build a bridge from beer geeks to the beer-drinking public, at least to a respectable extent — and they did it not with a hazy, but with a Belgian-style wheat beer, Allagash White. Any American brewery that has remained incredibly relevant and a beloved destination with Belgian-leaning styles and even coolship beers deserves a spot on the industry’s Mount Rushmore.
Bow & Arrow: Personally, I don’t feel craft beer is an industry worth celebrating at this point if its Mount Rushmore looks too much like the actual Mount Rushmore — exclusively white dudes. The industry has been dominated by them for most of its existence, and yes, plenty of them have made amazing beers and shaped important brewing innovations. But craft beer now and going forward (which is the only way it can continue to exist, really) belongs to the people who have been marginalized in the industry for decades. Not only does this finally invite communities in that have never felt welcome within craft beer before, but it means interesting beer is being added to the conversation with more diverse perspectives. Owned by Indigenous couple Shyla Sheppard and Dr. Missy Begay, Bow & Arrow represents this future from its storytelling to its beer with local, often Indigenous farmer-grown ingredients.
Mandy Naglich
VinePair contributor; author: “How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life”
@drinkswithmandy
Samuel Adams (Boston Beer Co.): Jim Koch wasn’t the first post-Prohibition craft brewer (in fact he’s a sixth-generation brewer himself) but he was the first to go toe-to-toe with the macro brewers dominating the market. He insisted that lager made with high-quality, flavorful ingredients was something people would pay for. After about six years of selling his Boston Lager by hand, the general public agreed. From there, Koch started the phenomenon so many craft brewers are still beholden to today: the seasonal release schedule. We have Sam Adams to thank for the Oktoberfests, summer ales, and barleywines that reliably rotate through American shelves each year. And then there is Utopias — IYKYK.
Bell’s Brewery: There’s something to be said for a brewery that’s been making solid American craft beer since 1985. Even as it’s remained a pillar of the beer scene, Bell’s has shifted with the times. Their famous wheat ale is no longer interesting enough for the American palate so it now comes in spicy mango, cherry, and citrus varieties. But they still put out a standard American porter (that’s right, no chocolate, coffee, or vanilla!) and an amber ale (the style craft beer was built on!). The thing that gets Bell’s to my Mount Rushmore is one of America’s all time favorite IPAs: Two Hearted.
Russian River: Vinnie Cilurzo is most famous for his Pliny the Elder IPA as well as its long-line-inspiring variant Pliny the Younger. However, Russian River has contributed much more to the American craft beer scene. Cilurzo’s experiments with Belgian styles and wild yeasts led passionate beer geeks to adore the sharp tang of sour beers, and the funky barnyard notes of farmhouse ales. These intense flavors could have easily been rejected by the American drinking public (and still sometimes are) but careful blending and the trustworthy touch of the guy that made Pliny anointed Belgian beers for huge growth stateside. Those that head to Belgium searching for Cantillon and Tilquin owe at least part of their inspiration to Russian River.
The Bruery: Where Russian River popularized intimidating flavors, The Bruery made putting recognizable culinary flavors into beer a thing. I remember splitting a single bottle of Grey Monday (a barrel-aged stout with hazelnuts and vanilla beans) nine ways because it was so rare. Though the Goose Island barrel-aged releases paved the way for The Bruery, no one combined impeccably brewed styles with quirky added ingredients quite like them. A rum-barrel-aged sour stout, golden ale with pineapple juice and spices, an “Imperial Belgian Style Milk Stout,” I don’t want to blame the smoothie sour trend on them but you can see where brewers got the inspiration.
Brad Japhe
Longtime drinks writer and co-host “The Sipping Point”
@journeys_with_japhe
Sierra Nevada: Founder Ken Grossman literally conceived American craft brewing by hand, forging necessary vessels from discarded dairy equipment in the early ’80s. The brand’s iconic Pale Ale clued domestic drinkers in on the notion that beer can actually be full of flavor.
Samuel Adams (Boston Beer Co.): Truly an OG of the game, ever since they were founded in 1984. But with all the success its parent company has earned since — swelling into one of the largest brewing behemoths on the planet — the brand that started it all has stayed the course and kept the world safe for mass-market beer that still offers ample flavor.
Brooklyn Brewery: Brooklyn Brewery was cool before its home neighborhood of Williamsburg. Seriously. And Garrett Oliver, who just celebrated his 30th year as brewmaster, is as venerated an emissary as anyone in the industry.
Russian River: Russian River is as much responsible for the enduring IPA craze as any single craft brand — via the cultish proliferation of Pliny the Elder. But its impact on a broad range of styles cannot be overstated. Brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo’s masterful deployment of funky yeast strains and fresh-wine-barrel maturation essentially enshrined the American Wild Ale category.
Beth Demmon
VinePair contributor; author: “The Beer Lover’s Guide to Cider”
@thedelightedbite
I might be reading too much into the Mount Rushmore prompt, but apparently the 60-foot-tall sculptures were chosen by Gutzon Borglum to represent the first 150 years of American history: Washington for birth, Jefferson for growth, Roosevelt for development, and Lincoln for preservation.
Yuengling: Birth: George Washington is called the father of the country, so it stands to reason that Yuengling is his beer counterpart. If we’re looking to immortalize the breweries that built the American beer industry as we know it, it would be impossible to leave off America’s oldest.
Sierra Nevada: Growth: Is there a more influential gateway craft beer than Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? I think not. This icon helped convert a huge part of the population from drinking macro lagers into bonafide craft beer fans, or at least hops appreciators. The American craft beer scene would look vastly different if Sierra Nevada hadn’t entered the scene in 1980.
Russian River: Development: Russian River Brewing and Teddy Roosevelt both seem really into nature and keeping busy in their respective fields. They’re also both prolific in a number of different specialties: Roosevelt was a writer, politician, outdoorsman, and rancher, while Russian River makes world-class IPAs as well as spontaneously fermented brews. If they were to carve this face on the side of the mountain, I vote for a bust of Blind Pig.
Bell’s Brewery: Preservation: Craft beer has had its fair share of starts and stops, and plenty of breweries have had a hand in keeping the spark alive. But few breweries manage to nail so many different styles as Bell’s can. From Oberon to Two Hearted to their Porter and Amber Ale, this brewery can unite even the most polarized groups under the banner of beer.
Doug Veliky
Chief Marketing Officer at Revolution Brewing Chicago; BeerCrunchers Substack
@beeraficionado
Port Brewing/Lost Abbey: There’s perhaps no other brewery that sparked my personal interest and passion for this industry more: the every-third-year release of an American spin on Belgian gueuze called Duck Duck Gooze, the mythical Cable Car, and the need to visit [San Francisco bar] Toronado in hopes of scoring a vintage, or the never-to-be-duplicated Track Set, which featured a literal (treasure) chest of 12 innovative specialty beers, each themed after famous rock songs. Funky, barrel-aged sours may not have as much pull in today’s market, but Lost Abbey’s impact cemented their status for me.
Russian River: I made baby announcements for both of my children out of Russian River 3-liter, 750-milliliter, and 375-milliliter bottles, so I think I have to include them. I don’t think of Russian River as having invented the West Coast IPA, but I believe they perfected it and made the style timeless. Their ability to make Pliny the Younger “stay small, stay beautiful” has allowed the annual pilgrimages to Sonoma County for the release to stay as relevant and popular all these years later.
Hill Farmstead: I give Hill Farmstead more credit than most for their role in the creation or at least evolution of what became today’s Hazy IPA style. But it’s not growlers of Double Nelson in swing-top bottles that puts them on my mountain, it’s their endless list of perfect barrel-aged saisons.
Fat Head’s: Having grown up in Pittsburgh, just like Fat Head’s, I have a special affinity for the brand, which reminds me of the uncle that we all have. They may have relocated to the home of the [Cleveland] Browns, but they’ve stayed true to their simple, lovable style while making incredible, clean IPAs.
Dave Infante
VinePair Contributing Editor and columnist; editor/publisher of Fingers
@dinfontay
Anchor: You cannot have a conversation about the most important craft breweries in American history without starting with The House That Steam Beer Built on Potrero Hill. Anchor has so much history that at some point the beer became more or less incidental to the enterprise, a paradigm shift that became painfully obvious when Sapporo-Stone Brewery (then known as Sapporo USA) suddenly shuttered it in summer 2024. Maybe the decision was a matter of dollars and cents, or careless corporate mismanagement, or something else entirely, but one thing was eminently clear from the international outpouring of grief as the news (broken by this reporter for VinePair, thank you very much) hit the wire. San Francisco’s beloved hometown brewery has inspired a global community of drinkers and brewers with a vision of full-flavored, artisanal beer ever since Fritz Maytag rescued it from bankruptcy in 1965. Besides, the beer was good! May it be so once again, and brewed by the passionate union workers that Hamdi Ulukaya, its new billionaire owner, should stop dithering and hire back already.
Blue Moon: Are there troll picks allowed on Mount Rushmore? Was there such a thing as trolling when the sculpture was commissioned in 1925? Regardless: Despite its well-publicized, occasionally sued-over Coors Brewing Company provenance, I think Blue Moon is one of the most important craft beers the American beer aisle has ever known. I have heard all the arguments against this designation; I have also interviewed founding brewer Keith Villa at length about them (see: parts one and two of our episode together on VinePair’s Taplines podcast.) I don’t even particularly like the beer. This is my metaphorical slab of South Dakotan granite, and I get to sculpt it as I see fit. Case for case, Blue Moon’s pie-growing, tide-rising influence on the segment is impossible to ignore. Debate the semantics among yourselves, do not CC me, thank you!
Goose Island: Anheuser-Busch InBev’s acquisition of Clyburn Avenue’s venerable microbrewery in 2011 instantly turned it into a big target for the (often-circular) firing squad that was the American craft brewing industry. Does anybody still care? Who knows! But I know that Goose Island did as much as any brewer, if not more, to mainstream the idea of barrel-aged beer. Check on my Taplines interviews with John Laffler, the one-time head of that program, and Seth Gross, who was there to witness its inception, for more on how that all took shape. That, plus the crucible it passed through as the first major “sellout” to the biggest and baddest Big Beer buyers, makes it singularly historic in my mind.
New Glarus: When the Wisconsin brewer decided to cut bait on the Illinois market and focused exclusively on developing its customer base in the Badger State way back in the early aughts, people thought they were crazy, as Dan Carey recounted in an early Taplines episode. (Are you sensing a theme? Subscribe to Taplines!) Crazy like a fox badger, turns out. New Glarus had the moxie to reject conventional wisdom at the time, which dictated expanding broad instead of deep. Scary stuff. Two decades on, and wisdom dictates… well, doing the opposite, really. In other words: doing what New Glarus did. It’s the 11th-biggest brewer in the country, with near mythic brand recognition from people who have never even set foot in Wisconsin.
Anne Becerra
Beverage director at Treadwell Park; first female-certified cicerone in New York City
@annelikesbeer
Tröegs Independent Brewing: One brewery that I don’t think gets enough credit is Tröegs from Pennsylvania. Their portfolio is super diverse with everything from hefeweizens to tripels to bocks, plus they make two of my favorite seasonals that I look forward to every year: Nugget Nectar and Mad Elf.
Allagash: Without question, Allagash belongs on this Mount Rushmore beer list. Besides the fact that they make one of the best and most iconic beers of all time (Allagash White), their attention to detail and creativity really shows in a handful of smaller-batch beers like their Coolship series, which I absolutely love. In addition to their beers, they’re great educators — their social media page and website provides such a sense of place, and as a Certified B Corp they’re consistently able to raise money and awareness for a handful of wonderful causes.
Maine Beer Co.: One brewery I’m genuinely excited to see every time is Maine Beer Co. Their beer is always delicious and I think it’s the mark of a great brewery that it doesn’t even matter what beer is being served; if it’s made by them you just order it and you know it’ll be good.
Hitachino Brewery: Hitachino absolutely belongs on the “best of” lists. Everything they do is exciting, thought out, balanced and unique, from the simplest lager to sake-inspired ales aged in Sakura barrels, they’re absolutely top notch. And it’s not just the beer that’s delicious. If I see the quintessential Hitachino owl logo on anything — wine, sake, whiskey — I’m all in!
Cumulative List (for those counting)
Russian River – 5
Sierra Nevada – 4
Samuel Adams -3
Allagash – 2
Bell’s Brewery – 2
Hill Farmstead – 2
Anchor – 1
Blue Moon – 1
Bow & Arrow – 1
Brooklyn Brewery – 1
The Bruery – 1
Dogfish Head – 1
Fat Head’s – 1
Goose Island – 1
Hitachino Brewery – 1
Maine Beer Co. – 1
New Glarus – 1
Port Brewing/Lost Abbey – 1
Tröegs Independent Brewing – 1
Yuengling – 1
The article The Mount Rushmore of Craft Breweries, According to 8 Beer Experts appeared first on VinePair.