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The 14 Best Beers We Drank in 2025
Cheers!
Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture and Untappd
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Here’s the thing about drinking beer for a living: The deeper we dive into this wild, wonderful world of lagers, lambics, saisons, and everything in between, the harder it gets to pick favorites. In 2025 alone, Hop Culture Senior Content Editor Grace Lee-Weitz clocked 669 unique beers from 323 breweries in 117 styles across 15 countries, three continents, and a handful of states. (Yes, our livers are tired. No, we’re not slowing down.)
From spontaneous road trips to cellar explorations halfway across the world to late-night bottle shares with friends, our team spent the year chasing the next great sip. And the stats don’t lie—we got around. With every new pint, we collected stories: tasting a mixed-fermentation pagan treasure in Latvia’s capital, the ten-year legacy of a sunny beer that still makes us grin, a helles in California that rivals those in Germany.
But here’s the secret: The more beer we drink, the more impossibly difficult this list becomes. Luckily, the standouts always rise to the top.
So once again, we turned to our global Next Glass crew—spanning backgrounds, geographies, and palates—to help us assemble a list that reflects the year in beer.
Below, you’ll find our picks for the best beers we drank in 2025, presented in no particular order. Cheers!
The Best Craft Beers of 2025
Japanese Rice Lager
Helper Beer — Helper, UT
Submitted by: John Gross, Next Glass Director, Strategic Business Development
Photography courtesy of Helper Beer
Japanese Rice Lager – Helper’s Japanese Rice Lager was the beer I had this year that left me wondering “HOW?!” I was shook and wanted more and more.
Helper starts with a super-crisp rice lager made with jasmine rice as the base beer, then keeps going, adding some extra FUN. In the whirlpool, Helper owner and head brewer Jaron Anderson adds Sanshō peppercorns, which come from the Japanese prickly ash tree. I was more familiar with Szechuan peppercorn because I love heat and spice, but Sanshō peppercorns were new to my palette; they are a bit more citrusy and more floral.
On the cold side of the brewhouse, Anderson uses a quasi-dry-hop technique to steep Japanese Sencha green tea. This adds a grassy, herbal balance to the peppercorn. The tea infuses for two or three days, with Anderson tasting it every night until it’s in the perfect spot.
The additions are sparse because of the style’s delicate nature, yielding an art of curious subtlety. The ever-so-slight numbing from the Sanshō dances with the high carbonation and makes you scratch your head, asking HOW?, and order another.
This beer just took a gold medal in the International Beer Awards (where the brewery also won three other golds and a silver). Seek it out while in Utah or at a 2026 lager festival near you!
Kaaterskill IPA
West Kill Brewing — Kingston, NY
Submitted by: Adam Feingold, Brewery Team Lead, Next Glass
Photography courtesy of West Kill Brewing
American IPA – There are a lot of great beers coming out of New York right now, and while there are many in Upstate New York putting out delicious suds, Kaaterskill IPA by West Kill Brewing pleasantly surprised me.
Located about ninety minutes southwest of Albany, NY, West Kill Brewing somehow got a can of this beer in front of me at a share in South Florida.
As far as hazy IPAs go, Kaaterskill nailed it. This beer blended a perfect lemony tangerine gold with an enigmatic but wonderful aroma. The marriage of piney, tropical, and orange brought a delight to my senses.
Kaaterskill IPA had a strong hoppy character that mesmerized my taste buds with its dank, citrus flavors that harmoniously paired with the tropical fruit characters. An excellent mouthfeel made this hazy consistent and very easy to drink.
Of all the IPAs I drank this year, this was definitely one of the best and most memorable. I will certainly attempt to make my way to their brewery if I find myself around Albany, NY.
Sea of Flowers (2025)
Resident Culture Brewing Company — Charlotte, NC
Submitted by: Dustin Jeffers, Vice President, Brewery Product & Experience, Next Glass
Photography courtesy of Resident Culture Brewing Company
Pilsner – It’s finally the “Year of the Lager,” isn’t it? We’ve been saying this for a while, but it seems to be becoming increasingly true each year. LUKR’s side-pull faucets are all the rage, and most hyped breweries have a strong lager lineup. With that being said, I drank a lot of pilsners this year, and Sea of Flowers from Resident Culture was my favorite.
Resident Culture fresh-hopped this 5.5% ABV pilsner with Centennial hops and further dry-hopped with more Centennial, Cascade, and Chinook. As a ’90s kid, this hop combination was a dream come true and perfectly complemented the pilsner’s crispness.
Zilgas Humpalina
Labietis Pagan Brews — Riga, Latvia
Submitted by: Grace Lee-Weitz, Senior Content Editor, Hop Culture
Photography courtesy of Labietis
Mixed Fermentation – Juniper red ale, Bronze Aged Braggot, herbal dark ale—just a few of the terroir-based beers that we tried at Labietis in Riga, Latvia. The “Pagan Pharmacy,” as the brewery was described to us, focuses on making beers with a sense of place and time.
We particularly loved Zilgas Humpalina, a secondhand mixed-fermentation grape saison.
Made with “not your typical grapes, but small, dark ones that typically grow around Latvian lawns,” according to Labietis Bartender Roberts Laķis. “They became quite popular in the Soviet times as a way to add some greenery.”
In Latvian, Humpala is shorthand for secondhand shops. During the ‘90s, “people thought we needed help, so there was a lot of humanitarian aid,” explains Labietis Co-Founder Reinis Pļaviņš. The secondhand reference refers to how Labietis reused Latvian grapes to make a second beer.
Pļaviņš explains how they initially used the grapes to brew a one-off mixed fermentation beer. They had planned to discard the grapes, but a visit from the folks at Garden Path Fermentation in Washington State changed their minds.
“Two or three summers ago, we were pouring off the first mixed fermentation from the berries, and they were like, ‘Oh, cool, now you’ll be able to make another two or three beers out of the berries. … Drop something fresh on it and see what happens.’”
So they did.
Labietis dropped a fully fermented saison on the second-use Latvian grapes to make a stunning yet subtle saison.
“It’s a beautiful, easy-drinking beer that’s a bit dry, a bit sour, and a bit fruity,” says Pļaviņš.
For us, it was one of our favorite beers from Labietis, and truly emblematic of what they do.
Tinned Fresh
St. Elmo Brewing Company — Austin, TX
Submitted by: John Gross, Next Glass Director, Strategic Business Development
Photography courtesy of St. Elmo Brewing Company
American IPA – I’m pretty partial to most fresh-hop beers; I love the timeliness of the practice. The once-a-year rush delivery of precious cargo from the Pacific Northwest during hop harvest to excited breweries immediately putting the greenage into beers is a romantic and exciting tradition. They are all one-and-done adventures. One of my favorites I’ve ever had is from the brewing minds at St. Elmo: Tinned Fresh.
The Austin-based brewery put its entire allocation of fresh hops (80lbs!) into a single 15bbl batch. On the warm side, they took the freshest crop of 2025 Yakima Chief Simcoe cones, threw them into the whirlpool, and let them marinate there for about thirty minutes.
From there, they selected the additional dry hop profile based on what they smelled in the foundation of the brew. Once fermentation did its thing, they added Kohatu, Strata CGX, and Krush—a total banger combination of hops.
Director of Brewery Operations Drew Genitempo recalled the profile as “ocean waves of sticky pine, freshly-cut pineapple, and gummy bears riding on a crisp malt backbone and a soft grip of bitterness.” Hell yeah, brother!
Tinned Fresh was an expertly done fresh-hop IPA that won’t be replicated, but I’m extra jazzed to try what fresh deliciousness they come up with for fresh-hop beers in 2026!
5th Anniversary Triple Barrel Blend
BarrieHaus Beer Co. — Tampa, FL
Submitted by: Adam Feingold, Brewery Team Lead, Next Glass
Submitted by: Dustin Jeffers, Vice President, Brewery Product & Experience, Next Glass
Baltic Porter – Editor’s Note: Two members of our team named this beer as their top of the year! We’ve included both of their comments and thoughts below.
Adam Feingold
I had my first opportunity to visit BarrieHaus while attending the Florida Brewers’ Guild conference in Tampa this summer. I had the pleasure of tasting this Triple Barrel Blend Baltic porter they brewed (and blended) for their fifth anniversary. Without a shadow of doubt, this may be the best beer I’ve tried this year.
Decadent. Chocolately. Smooth. Vanilla. Exquisite. Woody. Those are some of the adjectives I would use to describe this beer. It was an experience. It is a rare occurrence when I come across a 10%+ ABV barrel-aged porter or stout that doesn’t have an adjunct added to it in 2025, even if it’s just vanilla. Anyone who I drink with knows my go-to isn’t stouts or porters, but I have a soft spot for non-adjunct, high-ABV, barrel-aged porters and stouts, and this beer checked all the boxes for me.
Because it wasn’t as thick and sweet as a stout, it really allowed the complexity of their barrel blends to shine while showcasing the base Baltic porter, which marries the balance of malt flavors from an English porter and the restrained roast of a Schwarzbier.
BarrieHaus nailed it with this beer.
Dustin Jeffers
Adam and I drink a lot of beer together, whether it’s at our monthly bottle share, conferences, or random events down in South Florida. Without a doubt, this Triple Barrel Blend Baltic porter was the best beer we drank together this past year.
Luckily, it was on tap at BarrieHaus during the Florida Brewers’ Conference. At 10% ABV, it drinks smooth and decadent, masking the alcohol behind layers of vanilla, dark fruit, and oak.
BarrieHaus Co-Founder Jim Barrie and his team make excellent traditional lagers, but this anniversary release proves they can master bold barrel-aged beers just as well.
Jaguar Shark Deep Search: Breakside Brewery
Breakside Brewery — Portland, OR x Pinthouse Brewing — Austin, TX
Submitted by: John Gross, Next Glass Director, Strategic Business Development
Photography courtesy of Luis Torres | Untappd
Imperial Stout – Austin’s Pinthouse Brewing has been hosting their annual Jaguar Shark Day for more than a decade, and it’s one of the only release events in the state that still commands building-wrapping lines of fans to pick up a bottle of their GABF medal-winning bourbon barrel-aged stout: The Jaguar Shark.
Each year, the release event has grown and evolved in all of the best ways. The past five years, they’ve invited industry homies with significant barrel programs to collaborate under the banner of their “Deep Search Series,” a nod to the name of the submarine in Wes Anderson’s iconic film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Pinthouse barrel whisperer Tom Fischer leads the series of special releases. Every drop I’ve been able to taste has been as beautiful as the red beanie popping against the blue water in Anderson’s film. My favorite was a collaboration from 2025 with Portland’s Breakside Brewing—Jaguar Shark Deep Search: Breakside Brewery—which included a fascinating mushroom-y twist on the BBA stout.
Fisher previously worked at Breakside, so perhaps their professional shorthand helped make the unique Candy Cap mushrooms subtly dance JUST right in my glass.
This toadstool varietal grows in a pocket of Northern California and Southern Oregon and is a trip flavor-wise (that’s a fungi pun for you). The sweet, brown sugar notes the Candy Caps impart result in a curious character, making it unlike anything else and demanding another sip (and another).
The final product is not what you imagine when you think “mushroom”; it’s not overly earthy, but instead, there’s a quasi-Cinnamon Toast Crunch, nutty molasses to the liquid. It absolutely rips in the most interesting ways, and Steve Zissou would be damn impressed.
Wondrous Hell Lagerbier
Wondrous Brewing Company — Emeryville, CA
Submitted by: Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture and Untappd
Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture and Untappd
Helles – My go-to lager for the entire year was Wondrous Hell, a 5.1% ABV helles lager, inspired by Wondrous Founder and Head Brewer Wynn Whisenhunt’s time in Germany. After exploring Germany for over ten days earlier this year and having a chance to drink loads of helles at Oktoberfest, Wondrous Hell seriously stands up to the best versions of this style around the world. Crushable and crisp, Wynn crafts this excellent lager with clinical precision.
Kellerbier Brudi
Entla’s Keller — Erlangen, Germany
Submitted by: Grace Lee-Weitz, Senior Content Editor, Hop Culture
Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture and Untappd
Kellerbier/Zwickelbier – Entla’s Keller is a special place—“the heart and soul of Erlangen,” according to Matze Havel, who showed us around the twenty-one kilometers of tunnels dug to store beer through the Erlanger Burgberg (which translates to Castle Mountain in English).
Heart, soul, and lots of sweat go into everything at Entla’s Keller—that and a little ingenuity. Oval shafts bored into the hill, carved specifically by hand with picks and hammers in the most stable shape: an egg.
Slightly chilly, the keller stays at a cool, constant eight degrees Celsius (about forty-six degrees Fahrenheit). “It doesn’t matter if it’s summer or winter,” says Havel. “The whole year long, the mountain gives us eight degrees.”
Since 2021, the natural beer cellar has also brewed beer, installing a fully automated, emission-free fifteen-hectoliter brewhouse literally into the mountain!
The decision has made Entla’s Keller very unique.
“In Europe for sure and maybe worldwide, we are the only brewery that is fully brewing, storing, and fermenting beer in a mountain,” shares Havel, who considers himself a cellar nerd, even getting married in one of the cellar’s tunnels—what he calls the “heart chamber of the hill.” “So what you drink maybe later on, it’s the only real cellar beer you can have on Earth.”
We had a chance to try some of those beers, including Kellerbier Brudi, a nice, clear, slightly malty lager brewed with a sense of place.
Pro Tip: Grab a fresh pretzel; they’re made slightly differently in Erlangen without the use of lye, so you get a slightly paler, but very crispy, exterior with a fluffy interior. Sit out in the beautiful beer garden, pretzel in one hand, stein of cellar-brewed kellerbier in the other, and just never leave. We almost didn’t. To us, this is why, as a beer drinker, you travel to Germany.
St Walter 2023: Montepulciano
Wildflower Brewing & Blending — Marrickville, New South Wales, Australia
Submitted by: Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture and Untappd
Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture and Untappd
Wild Ale – If you see St Walter 2023: Montepulciano on Wildflower’s handwritten draft list in its taproom in the Marrickville neighborhood of Sydney, Australia…order it. A golden ale that had been barrel-aged and then refermented with an impressive 472 kg of hand-picked Montepulciano red wine grapes from the nearby Ravensworth Winery, this beer had an inspiring mix of tartness and subtle funk, bursting with juicy, vinous flavors. The minerality was a lovely touch, and the dry finish had me reaching for another sip time and again.
Lustra
Dancing Gnome — Pittsburgh, PA
Submitted by: Aaron Keefner, Brewery Solutions Consultant, Next Glass
Hazy Pale Ale – For fans of the hazy IPA, batch after batch Lustra by Dancing Gnome continues to be the best offering, with a blast of tropical and citrus flavors, but mid-body so that one can consume multiple cans in a sitting.
Technically a pale ale at 5.8% ABV, with its mid-level alcohol content, Lustra is an offering for a social setting that can be enjoyed throughout the day. This is a beer I see a strong future for, especially if Dancing Gnome can get its foot in the door of larger music venues and professional sports stadiums. I can definitely see it rivaling Cinderland’s “Squish” for the top hazy pale ale in Pittsburgh.
Smooth Operator
Double Vision Brewing — Wellington, New Zealand
Submitted by: Grace Lee-Weitz, Senior Content Editor, Hop Culture
Photography courtesy of Hop Culture
Cream Ale – I have horrible vision. In fact, I need to get eye surgery to slow the progression of keratoconus in my right eye. Lucky for me, Double Vision sees things very clearly, if not a little insanely.
Double Vision launched eight years ago with an American pale ale (APA) and red IPA called Red Rascal. Yes, you read that right.
But Double Vision Co-Founder Warren Drahota says he and his partners believed in the beer. Courageous might be a word I’d use to describe the brewing at Double Vision.
“We wanted to take the pretentiousness out of beer,” says Drahota, who describes himself and his partners as just a bunch of nerds. “So Double Vision is kind of a smart-ass approach to lighten the mood and take the seriousness out of drinking.”
Like Double Vision’s logo, which reads like an eye chart.
Or Smooth Operator, which will have you doing a double-take when you first hear that it’s a cream ale with vanilla. “We take the boundaries and give them a nudge,” says Drahota.
The beer begins with flaked maize and wheat, lending it a luxurious mouthfeel. “We thought, what goes well with this?” says Drahota. “Oh, you know, a bit of vanilla and honey.”
The first sip immediately reminded me of the cans of Dr. Brown’s cream sodas I’d drink by the poolside during neighborhood barbecues in muggy Minnesota summers.
“I’d watch an older audience try it and go, oh my god, this takes me back to being a kid,” says Drahota. I wonder if I just dated myself, but as I take sip after sip of this cream ale, constantly drawn back to its smooth complexity, I realize I don’t even care.
Would I order double? Every time.
Bright Pale Ale
Bright Brewery — Bright, Victoria, Australia
Submitted by: Grace Lee-Weitz, Senior Content Editor, Hop Culture
Photography courtesy of Hop Culture
Australian Pale Ale – If I had to name one beer I drank more than any other during my time in Australia for the hop harvest in March, that I kept going back to again and again and again, it would be Bright Pale Ale. Hands down.
It’s just that beer I would have on constant rotation in my beer fridge. My old reliable. One that I could turn to again and again, that would always make me happy.
Featuring the area’s majestic Mystic Mountain on the can, Bright Pale Ale is “as refreshing as a dip in our pure Alpine waters,” writes the brewery in the beer’s Untappd description.
“It’s probably one of my favorite beers,” says Bright Brewery Head Brewer Lewis Kerr as he shows us around the brewery. “It’s not fancy. … It’s a 4% [ABV], clean, crisp, very much an Australian-style ale.”
Crisp, easy-drinking, refreshing, Bright Pale Ale is like taking a dip in the Ovens River at 7 in the morning as the sun comes up. I should know, because somehow HPA Australia & New Zealand Sales Manager Michael Capaldo convinced me to do so.
Would I jump in that river every morning as Capaldo did? Hmm. But would I drink Bright Pale Ale every night? Resounding yes.
Sip of Sunshine
Lawson’s Finest Liquids — Waitsfield, VT
Submitted by: Grace Lee-Weitz, Senior Content Editor, Hop Culture
Photography courtesy of Lawson’s Sip of Sunshine
Double IPA – What do you get when you mix a college student reading The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, a Toyota Prius full of beer, and a wild dream that started in a 280-square-foot shed? You get Lawson’s Finest Liquids, whose iconic Sip of Sunshine became one of the juiciest, most dangerously drinkable IPAs in the country. And ten years later, it continues its legacy.
When Lawson’s Finest Liquids launched in 2008, fans swarmed the Green Mountains of Vermont, eager to get a taste of co-founder and co-owner Sean Lawson’s coveted hoppy ales. The brewery became like a secret handshake. If you know, you hop in a car and drive, sometimes hundreds of miles, to a general store at a particular time on a specific day, beating the delivery truck to ensure you can pick up a couple of bottles.
But there’s a lot more to this iconic sunny yellow can than meets the eye (spoiler: yes, there is a hidden sun on the label).
This year, Sip of Sunshine celebrates its tenth anniversary, so we sat down with Lawson’s Finest Liquids Co-Founder Sean Lawson to relive all the memories. From washing dishes in Colorado to brewing Sip of Sunshine in Connecticut, and the entire liquid legacy in between, there are at least ten things you didn’t know about Sip of Sunshine.
That’s our teaser for you to go read our entire article on the iconic history of this iconic beer. It’s pretty tasty.
And ten years later, this beer continues to shine brighter than the sun.
