The 15 Best Beers We Drank This Year

Needless to say, 2020 was a challenging year for craft beer. Turns out, those early pandemic headlines of skyrocketing alcohol sales didn’t tell the whole picture. While discount and grocery store sales are up, many small breweries at least anecdotally report double-digit cuts in both production and sales, while seeing their most profitable revenue stream—straight to consumers in the taproom—all but snuffed out. Most of us, it seems, enjoy drinking outside the house with friends rather than alone, by ourselves, in our cramped apartments.

Fortunately, most breweries are small and nimble, and are somehow weathering the pandemic for the time being. Perhaps it’s a miracle that the industry hasn’t seen mass closures on the scale of, say, the restaurant or retail industries.