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RateBeer names Three Floyds the U.S. Best Brewery 2009

RateBeer announced its “Best of” year-end list with Three Floyds Brewing taking top honors for the second straight year and third time in four years.

The Indiana brewery has come either first or second in the annual (and formerly bi-annual) rankings for the past several years. Three Floyds Dark Lord and a couple of its variations take up the #2-#4 slots in the site’s Best Beer rankings.

AleSmith came in second place, its second straight year in the top 3. Like Three Floyds, AleSmith is boosted by its Imperial Stout, AleSmith Speedway Stout and a couple of its highly-ranked variations.

Cigar City Brewing claimed the Rookie of the Year award (I’m making that up), taking the third spot. Their ascent in the rankings is unheard of and a huge surprise considering the brewery launched its operations only a year ago. Cigar City has the #1 ranked beer in the world United States, Cigar City Barrel-Aged Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout and the original is not far behind it.

Noticing a trend? Russian River Pliny the Elder is one of only three beers in the top 20 that is not an Imperial Stout. There were nine Imperial Stouts in the top 20 last year.

Rounding out the top 10 breweries are: Founders, Bell’s, Russian River, Dieu du Ciel, Great Divide, Stone and De Molen. De Molen, based in the Netherlands but available in the U.S., was easily one of the biggest gainers, jumping 45 spots from the 2009 list.

The Bruery, located in Orange County, California, also shot up the charts. Unranked in the 2009 list, the brewery finished 19th in the new rankings.

Boston Beer Co. creeped back onto the list after being left off of it the past two years, aided by the re-release of Samuel Adams Utopias.

Who dropped?
The Lost Abbey dropped from #2 to #29, plagued by bottle conditioning issues for part of the year.

A lot of Midwest breweries got knocked down in the list and some disappeared entirely. This was more apparent in Minnesota than anywhere else. Surly Brewing fell from 9th to 31st and Town Hall Brewery fell 50 spots to 68th. Barley John’s in MN and The Livery out of MI each got bumped out of the top 100 after placing 26th and 27th last year respectively.
Based on the following sources:
http://beernews.org