Best Brewery for American Styles

What brewery do you think brews the best examples of standard American styles, such as APA, Amber, IPA, Porter, and Stout? There are many that brew great IPA's but bad stouts or porters. Who's the best across the board?

I'm going with Deschutes

Sierra Nevada.

As much as I like to inject new though and debate, I doubt you will have a better widely available example than Sierra Nevada. I think they are the commercial example for all styles you listed except amber in the BJCP.

Ryan_PA said:

As much as I like to inject new though and debate, I doubt you will have a better widely available example than Sierra Nevada. I think they are the commercial example for all styles you listed except amber in the BJCP.

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Yeah SN stout is good and it's in the BJCP, but there is no roasted barley in it and it doesn't seem to epitomize the American stout. I feel their dark beers are lacking. You can't think of another brewery that does it better than them, across the board?

I like O'dells brewery but I don't think they have a Stout available on a regular basis.

Perhaps I am worn out from my Monday, but off hand I cannot. I think Brooklyn Makes some real nice beers, and they do not quite get the recognition they deserve, but SN really to me seems to nail the styles. Now that is not to say they are my favorite examples of the styles, I would have to pick and choose for each style to answer that, and SN would not be tops on any one style for me.

jmo88 said:

Yeah SN stout is good and it's in the BJCP, but there is no roasted barley in it and it doesn't seem to epitomize the American stout. I feel their dark beers are lacking. You can't think of another brewery that does it better than them, across the board?

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I think their porter is a style example.

i've never had their stout.

actually Deschutes is looking pretty good,

They are in the examples for:

10A APA (mirror pond)
10B Amber/Red (Deschutes Cinder Cone Red)
12B robust porter (Black Butte)
13E american stout (obsedian stout)
13F RIS (abyss)

The only thing is they are missing in the IPA category although their inversion IPA is relatively new.

I was looking through the BJCP list, and Deschutes is consistently on almost every classic example list. I've never had their beer before, so I can't really comment on it.

As far as Sierra Nevada, they have the quintessential examples of a lot of styles, but not the best IMO. I'd list Bells as personal favorites in IPA (Two Hearted), Brown (Best Brown), Wheat (Oberon). They also make some damn fine Stouts, although I'm not sure if they would really be considered American Stouts.

For the five styles listed, Rogue. They are listed as a classic example in 3. Juniper Pale Ale (formerly Yellow Snow Ale) is a subtle variation on pale ale and is very good. They have two Amber ales (one a BJCP classic example). They make more IPA like beers than anybody, it is not even close, and Yellow Snow IPA is clearly a classic example though too new to have been listed in the last revision.

Their stout is pretty much the American Stout.

True. Rogue is a good example and I agree with their stout. They are probably the most prolific brewery.

I can agree with Rogue

I agree with Sierra Nevada...

Edcculus said:

As far as Sierra Nevada, they have the quintessential examples of a lot of styles, but not the best IMO. I'd list Bells as personal favorites in IPA (Two Hearted), Brown (Best Brown), Wheat (Oberon). They also make some damn fine Stouts, although I'm not sure if they would really be considered American Stouts.

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I'm of the opinion that Bells makes a better beer than SNA in pretty much every category.

I thought this was an interesting question, and since Bell's is a brewery that is close to me and because I've liked their beers a lot, I thought I'd take a look at the BJCP.

I looked for styles that have American in the name or an allusion to them being an American style in the description, and this is what I came up with:

1A, 1B, 1C, 2C, 4A, 6A, 6B, 6D, 7B, 10A, 10B, 10C, 12B, 13E, 14B, 14C, and 19C.

Of these 17 styles here are the number of times that some of the more mentioned breweries were listed as examples:

Bell's: 7
Sierra Nevada: 6
Rogue: 5
Deschutes: 4
Anchor:5 (Not really mentioned here, but when I noticed it kept showing up I started counting them)

Also worth mentioning is the fact that you can remove the first 9 categories and Bell's and SN each lose only one example.

Obviously this is not really prove anything one way or another, but I thought it was interesting information that I'd share so other people didn't have to spend as much time on it as I did.

EDIT: I was torn about including RIS, since it's not a classic American style, but the BJCP does acknowledge that the American craft brewers have taken over the style recently. However, if you think it should be included Bell's, Deschutes, and Rogue each gain one more.

Seems like Bell's is getting a lot of positive feedback here. I did qualify my answer by saying widely distributed. The only Bell's beer I can seem to find (without looking hard) is Two Hearted. I cannot go into any beer spot without falling over SN products, and they are on the other coast. I need to seek out more Bells beers.

Ryan_PA said:

Seems like Bell's is getting a lot of positive feedback here. I did qualify my answer by saying widely distributed. The only Bell's beer I can seem to find (without looking hard) is Two Hearted. I cannot go into any beer spot without falling over SN products, and they are on the other coast. I need to seek out more Bells beers.

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If you go here you can find contact information for your distributor to help you find out where to find more Bell's beers. In addition to that, this page shows all of their beers and what states they're available in. It seems like most of them are available somewhere in PA.