Brewery Stars capabilities have been upgraded! We now have the ability to update ALL rankings on the site each week. Every Thursday, updated rankings are pushed to the site. Check back often to see the updated rankings!
We currently rank 9,794 US brewery venues.
New Features
- California has finally been added! Having over 1100 brewery venues, it was a beast to properly manage, but California rankings are ready to go! With that, all 50 states and Washington DC are available on Brewery Stars. New additions will come from US territories and other countries. North Carolina and Washington had a hiccup in the update process and will be converted to the new format next week.
- We’ll have a weekly update post go live each Thursday. Starting next week, these posts will show which breweries have been added or removed from the rankings in the last week.
- Each statewide ranking links to the city/region rankings in the state. Each city/region ranking now links to 5 nearby rankings, including the relevant statewide rankings.
- Ads suck, but they help pay the bills. On mobile, there are anchor ads (that stick to the top or bottom of the screen) and vignette ads (that show up after a link is clicked before the new page is shown). On desktops, there are side rail ads that show up to the left and right of the main content. We’ll eventually role out a membership level that will allow you to go ad-free. If we ever have ads sponsored by breweries, know that these ads will not affect our rankings.
- All rankings are now comparable, meaning the Brewery Stars Meta-Rating for Brewery A in Ranking B can be directly compared to the Brewery Stars Meta-Rating of Brewery C in Ranking D. This was previously not true. It will allow us to roll out, for example, Best in the Midwest or Best in the USA rankings in the near future.
- As mentioned at the top, rankings are now updated every Thursday. 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.
- The FAQ has been updated.
- Social media policy: If you follow us on Instagram or Twitter, you will see one state highlighted each Friday and one state highlighted each Tuesday. On any given Friday/Tuesday, Instagram and Twitter will highlight the same state. On Instagram, there will be visual rankings for each state and each city/region in the state with at least 25 breweries. On Twitter, you will see text based highlights of each city/region in the state, regardless of number of breweries.
If you follow us on Facebook or Pinterest, you will see statewide rankings posted for one state each Friday and one state each Tuesday. Facebook and Pinterest will highlight the same state on any given day, but this state will differ from the state on Instagram/Twitter.
On any given platform, you’ll see each state highlighted roughly once every 6 months.
Upcoming Features
We want to roll more features over time. Here are the ones we’re currently developing:
- We want greater involvement on our site by the breweries themselves. We’re looking to have brewery profiles developed, to let each brewery describe their beer styles, venue atmosphere, food options, etc.
- We will also start to offer personalized brewery services soon. More on these later.
- We’ll build a static homepage to orient visitors better.
- We want to roll out membership options on Brewery Stars. There will be membership categories for breweries and for consumers. Look for more details in the near future.
- More countries ranked! Canada is the likely first addition, due to geographic proximity and similarity to the US beer culture.
- 2024 Brewery Stars Guide, available in physical book or ebook, in time for end of the year gift-giving to other craft beer aficionados.
- Some rankings nuances need to be addressed. If multiple breweries are housed in the same physical location, how should they be ranked when our rankings are partially based on venue ratings? If a brewery spins off some of their beers to a subsidiary brand, how should that be handled? We’re working through the details, wanting to be as fair to all breweries as possible in our rankings.
- We want to roll out rankings of each county in the US.
- And more!