Grace Weitz

Every year, we think this list will get harder and harder to make. But then we get off our butts to drink at incredible beer festivals, visit taprooms around the world, and drink beers new to us. And we listen to what our fans are drinking and where our friends in the industry are enjoying spending time at the most. Eventually, when November comes around, and we start putting together this list, we realize we have way more places than we can count that we want to shout out. But somehow, we manage to whittle it down.

Over the last 365ish days, we've enjoyed some serious travel just for beer. Undoubtedly, discovering new places, beer cities, and meccas for craft is one of the best parts of our job.

Here's a fun fact: In 2024, Hop Culture Senior Content Editor Grace Lee-Weitz drank 534 unique beers from 211 different breweries in 117 styles across four countries, two continents, and five states.

Colorful characters, blooming flowers, and sneakers. A cloaked reaper, a giant burrito, and a cat. In 2024, beer labels continue to get simultaneously kookier, crazier, and yet simpler . We drink a lot of beer every year (did you read our piece on “The Best Beers We Drank in 2024”?), whether from a new brewery sending us a care package,

For the first time last year, we actually took a moment from our breakneck pace of drinking, traveling, discovering, and writing, not just to look back on our last 365 days of adventures but also to look ahead. While we always publish a piece on the top trends we expect in the new year (

We went to a lot of top places for beer in 2024— London Manchester , Edinburgh, Czechia Paso Robles, CA Bellevue, WA the Yakima Valley , and Denver , to name a few.

A new year means 365 new days to try new beers and visit breweries new to us. Hopefully, you've already checked out everything from

With 2024 all wrapped up like a holiday present under the tree, let's look back at the most-read articles of the last twelve months.

Non-alcoholic beer is here to stay. That's not a myth. According to NielsenIQ, off-premise non-alc sales from the last fifty-two weeks recorded $740 million, up a little over $175 million from the previous year. The report also stated that searches of non-alcoholic beverages and alternatives on Google reached 51.9 million.

A few years ago, we traveled around the country, hosting a beer festival in a different city almost every month—Oakland; San Diego; Chicago; Portland, ME; New York—the list goes on. Our Juicy Brews festivals became the stuff of legends. If you went, you know. If you never went, you probably heard the lore. We even threw Spooky Brews, a Halloween-themed fest, Beers With(out) Beards featuring all women and femme-identifying-owned breweries and brewers, and Queer Beer. Of course, the pandemic brought all that to a screeching halt. So, for the time being, we're staying grounded. Which has allowed us to consider: What events would we like to attend this year? (If we had unlimited miles and time.)