America is now home to 5,000 breweries, each making dozens of new beers per year. While you might be impressed that I tried a little over 1,000 different brews in 2016, those 16,000 fluid ounces are really only a small fraction of what was released—making the task of compiling an all-encompassing "Best Beers of The Year" list that much harder.

Still, my background affords me some unique opportunities. I am a hard-drinking writer who lives in Brooklyn; who travels “for work” quite a bit; who keeps tabs on what other people are decrying great, and then tries to try those beers; who is fortunate enough to be mailed countless “samples” from countless breweries; who is able to attend many of the country’s best beer festivals; and who just so happens to be friends with the kind of dudes who mule whales out of breweries like it’s their job (which, sometimes, it actually is). What I’m saying is, TL;DR, I have access to a lot of great stuff.

This was the year in which I fell in love with the Hudson Valley’s emerging beer scene. A year in which I learned to quit worrying and love the classic, old-world styles that have fallen out of favor. A year in which barrel-aged sours became a lot more interesting than barrel-aged stouts. A year in which breweries tried to cram as many adjuncts and as much fruit as they could into each and every beer, many of which didn't need a freakin' mango in them. And a year that we reached the IPA monoculture, making the industry's most important style boring (wow, where’d you come up with the idea to make it Citra dry-hopped?). 

Even if you're adamant that my list lacks something specific, I think if you taste the following ten beers, you too will find something truly magnificent about each of them. These are all ambitious and intriguing beers, made by true craftsman who've hit the sweet spot with their product: brews that appeal to both the geeks and Average Joes. 

With that, here is a countdown of the ten best beers of 2016. 

Brewery: Plan Bee Farm Brewery (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Style: Wild ale
Released: September

A pickled beer sounds like some hipster bullshit worthy of mockery, huh? But not in Evan Watson’s hands. The farmhouse brewmaster takes this sour ale and ages it for eight months in his house solera barrel, which contains a three-year-old collection of local microflora. Then he adds local cucumbers and dill, creating a vegetal, mineral-y, and acidic offering reminiscent of a damn deli pickle. It’s ridiculous and remarkable, and I couldn’t stop thinking about after I first had it at Sour’d in September.

Brewery: Hill Farmstead Brewery (Greensboro Bend, VT)
Style: Saison
Released: July

Every year, I almost feel guilty for not having a top-10 list solely dedicated Hill Farmstead beers. Shaun Hill is still the country’s best brewer, and every time you’re lucky enough to have one of his brews, it’s hard to find a single flaw. I had plenty of great Hill Farmstead beers this year, but this was the most memorable—his flagship saison Dorothy, aged in white wine barrels, then dry-hopped. The result was something extraordinarily complex, funky and zesty, yet still tropical and fruity, all wrapped into a delicately carbonated package.

Brewery: de Garde Brewing (Tillamook, OR)
Style: Wild ale
Released: January

No American brewery capitalizes on terroir and the unexpected magic of their local environs more than de Garde. Located on Oregon’s northern coast, the brewery does not use any lab-cultured yeast, instead relying 100% on the yeast and microflora in the air to both ferment and flavor their beers. Grand Blanc was the best beer I had from de Garde this year, a golden rye ale aged in an oak foeder, then re-fermented with late-harvest Riesling grapes from the Willamette Valley. Like Three’s Eternal Return, the beer straddles the line between wine and beer, creating a singularly unique beverage all on its own.

Brewery: J. Wakefield Brewing (Miami, FL)
Style: Berliner Weissbier
Released: May

Miami’s J. Wakefield is making the best uber-low ABV crushers in the game right now. This Berlinerweiss, brewed with vanilla beans and oranges, was their standout offering. Glowing orange like a street cone, the 3.5% sour ale was obviously drinkable, but still retained a remarkable complexity and heft that made it also worthy of slow, thoughtful consideration.

Brewery: Threes Brewing (Brooklyn, NY)
Style: Saison
Released: May

While all the geeks were busy lining up some 30 blocks away at Other Half, Threes Brewing quietly began releasing some truly outstanding canned and bottled offerings this year. Their barrel-aged saison series Eternal Return was the most noteworthy, and the chardonnay version was the best of a bunch that also included ones made with apricots, cherries, and raspberries. Eternal Return: Chardonnay takes a Brett farmhouse ale and throws it into chardonnay barrels alongside chardonnay grape must. The result is an incredibly vinous and fruity offering that still remains dry and elegant.

Brewery: Hardywood Park Craft Brewery (Richmond, VA)
Style: Imperial stout
Released: December ’15

Technically released in the last few weeks of 2015, like most folks, I didn’t even have access to it until 2016. Thus, it makes this year’s list. Gingerbread Stout is Hardywood’s most famous offering, a tasty-enough, once-a-year winter beer made with fresh local ginger and wildflower honey, alongside whole Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans, Vietnamese cinnamon, and lactose. Several barrel-aged versions are likewise released each December (Bourbon, Rum, etc.) and all are quite good, but this first-ever release of an Apple Brandy GBS was truly extraordinary. Decadent and dessert-like, apple and cinnamon notes explode on the palate in this quintessential holiday beer.

Brewery: Other Half Brewing Co. (Brooklyn, NY)
Style: Double IPA
Released: April

We’ve hit #peakIPA, where countless breweries are now releasing hazy, fruity, canned IPAs to queued-up beer geeks every weekend. Brooklyn’s Other Half has some of the country’s most dedicated IPA-loving line-waiters, perhaps because the brewery does so many collaborations with other IPA icons (Trillium, Monkish, The Veil, etc.). Their best collab in 2016, and the best IPA overall I had this year, was with our aforementioned friends at The Answer. An 8% double IPA brewed with Motueka, Galaxy and Wai-iti hops, No Lay Ups was the fruitiest and softest juice-bomb of the year.

Brewery: The Answer Brewpub (Richmond, VA) 
Style: Imperial stout
Released: March

Aside from IPAs, we are in an era of adjuncts, where every imperial stout needs to be packed with a bouillabaisse of ingredients. But An Bui thinks those breweries aren’t getting enough flavor out of these adjuncts, and thus masterminded what he calls the Andall system. Simply put, fresh tap beer flows from its original keg through another sixtel filled with ingredients (fruits, coffee beans, nuts, even Reece’s cups) that Bui has loaded into them in the wee hours of the morning before closing The Answer for the night. King Kahuna is the best of the Andalls, a luscious and oily slick imperial stout with Kona coffee beans, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, and toasted Hawaiian coconut.

Brewery: Suarez Family Brewery (Livingston, NY)
Style: German pilsner
Released: June

If you told me back in 2010 that I would one day rank a meager pilsner as my 2nd best beer of the year, I would have thought you were insane. Back then, I believed I was a badass, and thus I only liked badass beers—extremely hoppy, extremely boozy. I’ve mostly grown bored with those beers now, and have come to appreciate technical skills and brewing execution. Palatine Pils is a stripped-down, unfiltered German pilsner, melon-y and grassy with a crisp, clean finish. The beer comes courtesy of Dan Suarez, Hill Farmstead’s first ever employee, and the genius behind this new Hudson Valley brewery.

Brewery: The Brewery at Bacchus (New Paltz, NY)/Hudson Valley Brewery (Beacon, NY)
Style: Wild ale
Released: February

When I first encountered this beer back in February, it was being brewed by some place called The Brewery at Bacchus. By the end of the year, it was now in the hands of Hudson Valley Brewery. Whatever the case, it was remarkable—a wine-barrel-aged saison, made with pineapple, rose petals, marigold, and cornflowers. A seemingly ridiculous recipe that somehow worked. Conceived by brewers Jason Synan and Michael Renganeschi while at Bacchus, mid-year they jumped 25 miles south to the new start-up Hudson Valley Brewery, bringing their recipes with them. While Hudson Valley won’t open to the public until January, Synan and Renganeschi’s ambitious recipes, like Soleil, are already beginning to get released at beer festivals and New York-state bars.

These beers didn't make the cut, but you'd be foolish to not have them on your radar: