India pale ale (IPA) is the most sought-after craft beer style in America today. This style of beer has been popularized by small breweries, which have been popping up since the 1980s. Other native American beer styles include amber ale, cream ale, and California common. Newer craft styles include American Pale Ale, American IPA, India Pale Lager, Black IPA and American Double or Imperial IPA. The Brewers Association, a not-for-profit trade group representing more than 4,800 breweries, publishes two lists of the top brewers in the United States each year.
One list includes companies in general, while the other concentrates on craft breweries. This list is based on the latter. The original Stevens Point brewery was established in 1857 and provided beer to Union soldiers during the Civil War. Craft beer artists have been working hard to develop unique practices ever since. They add new ingredients, ferment in different ways with different yeasts, experiment with new hop combinations, and much more.
Belgian Dark Ale is a broad term for all Belgian black beers that fall between a Belgian-style Dubbel and the Belgian Strong Dark Ale. The lager beer brewed by large-scale companies was originally based on several different styles from Central Europe, but the Pilsener style gradually gained popularity. This style uses soft Czech hops, pale and lightly roasted six-row barley, and often complements such as rice and corn. The Belgian Witbier has a pale and cloudy appearance due to the fact that it does not leak out and the high amounts of wheat or oats used in the beer. Some of the most popular craft beers include Ommegang Abbey Dubbel (a trappist style dark beer), Firestone Parabola (an imperial Russian dark beer) and Boulevard Radler (a seasonal citrus beer made with ginger and lemon). Frozen beer is an example that has been partially distilled by freezing with the intention of concentrating flavor and alcohol.
Stone Brewing Company said that this style of beer started accidentally by making a Pale Ale with an overload of desired ingredients. Every year Zymurgy readers are asked about favorite beers and breweries that are commercially available in the United States. Brewing these beers involves significant risks and upfront costs because they require aging (sometimes three years or more) and specialized equipment. The vast majority of the country's most popular craft beers are produced by large-scale companies such as Molson Coors and Heineken, or by independent brewers in which those companies have invested and acquired. Victory took on the front style and ended up giving the craft beer movement its distinctive pils. American Stout beer is the American brewer's reinvention of the original dark beer from Europe, more specifically from Ireland.
Restaurants, bars, taverns and breweries have traditionally been an important source of income for smaller breweries. American Wild Ale beers are beers introduced into yeasts or wild bacteria, which gives it an extremely unique taste and a funky aroma. This changed when the styles of long-life lager beer brought by German immigrants turned out to be more cost-effective for large-scale manufacturing and transportation.
