Click on each question to expand the answer.
How are the Brewery Stars Meta-Ratings determined?
When you’re visiting a brewery, you want good beer and you want a good atmosphere/experience. We take publicly available beer ratings and venue ratings and consolidate them into a Brewery Stars Meta-Rating. If guests consistently like a brewery’s beer and enjoy the experience of visiting the taproom, the brewery will do well in our rankings.
Most ratings nowadays are on a 5-point scale, so we use that scale when displaying a rating for each brewery. Highest rated brewery gets the top ranking.
New breweries are kind of a wildcard. They don’t have very many ratings relative to their competition. As such, a few extremely high/low ratings could send them to the top/bottom of the rankings, when sorted by their raw ratings. We think this is often an overreaction. You should expect a new brewery to be “average” until proven otherwise. As such, the Brewery Stars Meta-Rating takes advantage of Bayesian averages on the raw ratings it uses to ensure that new breweries with few ratings do not dominate the top/bottom of each ranking. In general, you should expect that breweries with very few ratings, relative to the other breweries on the list, will be ranked toward the middle of the rankings. Those who have sufficient ratings and are consistently good will rise to the top of our rankings.
It should be noted that the people who maintain this site do not use their personal opinions to alter any brewery’s rating. While breweries may advertise on this site, their actions do not affect their ratings.
How do you determine which breweries to include in a ranking?
First of all, we strive to be as inclusive as possible. All currently operating brewery taprooms/brewpubs within the city/region of interest are included, no matter how big/small or old/new. However, defining the geographic boundaries for a city/region are sometimes tough, and we have to make judgement calls. We try to err on the side of being too inclusive, as opposed to too exclusive. If you believe we missed a brewery that should be included, let us know.
We include all venues (that we know of) within a city/region that are owned by a beer brewer. We do not include craft beer bars or growler houses whose beer offerings are sourced from a rotating selection of breweries.
Certain venues may be excluded from rankings for one of the following reasons:
- Brewery is permanently closed
- Brewery is in an airport, amusement park, zoo, or other location that requires separate admission
- Brewery is housed in a strip club
- Brewery is not open to customers, i.e., there is no taproom
As of July 2022, we are no longer including cideries and meaderies in rankings.
How often are the rankings updated?
We update the public ratings that go into each brewery roughly once per month, with 1/4 of the breweries being updated each week. These public ratings are fed into our Brewery Stars Meta-Rating algorithm, and updated rankings are posted to this website each week on Thursday.
How should I interpret the Brewery Stars Meta-Rating?
On an absolute scale, the median rating is around 4.0, with most breweries clustering near this average. The Brewery Stars Meta-Rating is the average number of stars (out of 5) we would expect a random visitor to give as a rating to a brewery.
Note the relative differences in the Brewery Stars Meta-Rating as you look at the rankings. If two scores are very close, differing by less than .02, it is likely that the breweries are very similar in overall quality.
[Popular brewery name] is well-known and distributes widely, but has a low Brewery Stars Meta-Rating. What’s up with that?
Certain breweries that distribute widely but focus on low-rated beer styles will be punished by their beer style choice and will fall toward the bottom of our rankings. Beer rating sites are aware of this issue, but do not always adjust raw ratings based on beer style. As we rely on their scores, we cannot correct for such issues on Brewery Stars. If you’ve heard of a brewery and want to try it despite its low ranking on our site, we have no problem with that.
What do you do when there are multiple taprooms owned by the same brewery?
If a brewer has multiple tap rooms or brewpubs, they are all included in the ratings. Generally, multiple locations from the same brewer will share the same raw beer ratings, but one venue may be rated higher than the other based on venue ratings that focus on the atmosphere and experience.
As there are ~10,000 taprooms in the United States alone, we cannot independently verify whether each taproom is brewing on-site. As such, all brewery taprooms are included, regardless of whether they brew on-site or not.
Can Brewery Stars Meta-Ratings be compared across rankings?
Yes. All known breweries, across all rankings on this site, are included in the same Brewery Stars Meta-Rating calculation.
Which brewery should I visit?
Well, we hope our rankings help you! Find the relevant ranking, and start at the top of the list. Work your way down until you find a brewery whose location and beer styles match your needs. Be sure to check the venue’s schedule before visiting, as many breweries are closed early in the week.
Will you do rankings for breweries outside the United States?
Eventually.
I have an idea for a new feature on Brewery Stars. What should I do?