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The best breweries to watch in 2024

05 January 2024 By Jessica Mason

A new list identifying the best breweries to watch in 2024 has been created summarising which beer businesses have the potential to shake things up this year.

The list, which has been compiled by HopCulture, showcases 13 breweries and illustrates not just the breadth of potential globally, but also the reasons why each brewery is turning heads. Read on for the full rundown of ones to watch.

Vine Street Brewing
Kansas City, Missouri
Known as Missouri’s first Black-owned brewery, Vine Street Brewing Co co-founders Kemet Coleman, Elliott Ivory, and Woodie Bonds opened their two-story taproom, brewhouse and beer garden on 30 June. The brewery’s flagship beer is a dark lager named Jazzman and well worth your consideration.

Uchu Brewing
Hokuto, Yamanashi, Japan
Uchu Brewing’s head brewer and co-founder Masahiro Kusunose has been travelling around the world, visiting breweries like Trillium, Tree House, Hill Farmstead, and Lawson’s Finest Liquids and also collaborating with breweries such as Other Half, Green Cheek, and Humble Sea. As such, the consensus is that Uchu was likely to be learning a lot from the best as well as making great acquaintances in the industry that could help push it to the forefront of the beer scene.

Brewery Ardennes
Geneva, New York
Notably the 2023 International Beer Competition gold medal limited-release Grand Cru Barrel-Aged Tripel along with Brewery Ardennes’ bronze-winning Speciale Belge and silver-winning Grand Cru Dubbel are making people take notice. The Belgian-inspired brewery in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York has also won Belgian-style Brewery of the Year for New York in 2022. Stacey and Derek Edinger opened the brewery in May 2020 turning Derek’s “out-of-control hobby” of homebrewing and Belgian beer fandom into a viable business.

Strange Brewing
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Strange Brewing In Buenos Aires, which was founded by Norwegian Torstein Hoset and his college roomate Ramiro Galperin, began by seeing the friends turn their uni homebrewing skills that they had honed in California in the early 2010s into a business. After a couple of internships at local breweries and graduating in 2015, HopCulture identifies how the pair bought a car, and drove it down to Argentina, opening Strange Brewing two years later. The brewery itself serves mixed-fermentation and sour beers alongside hazy beers as well as festbiers and doppelbocks.

New Belgium San Francisco
San Francisco, California
New Belgium opened its San Francisco taproom in the spring of 2021 and the business is run by head brewer Ramon Tamayo. Award-winning beers include Cloudy Joose, which won a gold in the 2023 GABF. Also worth seeking out is its hazy collaboration with Olfactory named Cloud Factory.

Garage Project
Wellington City, Wellington, New Zealand
Remember Phantasm, a product derived from Marlborough grape skins that contain a high amount of thiols, well, that was developed by Jos Ruffell, co-founder of Garage Project based in the Aro Valley of Wellington. Ruffell and Garage Project have similarly been turning heads stateside and many people are keeping an eye out for Garage Project beers in other parts of the world. Now is the time to pay attention to this NZ brewery.

Ten Eyck Brewing Company
Queenstown, Maryland
Ten Eyck Brewing Company is a craft brewery owned by a team of seven queer women veterans, and first responders. The brewery’s Betsy blueberry grisette is a favourite among beer fans. The brewery is dedicated to promoting inclusivity and equality in craft beer and is set to continue to grow in popularity well into 2024.

Bastet Brewing
Tampa, Florida
Bastet Brewing co-founder Huston Lett incorporated Bastet Brewing in 2014 with his business partner Tom Ross and, since then, Bastet, which takes its name from the Egyptian protector of Ra, has made a name for itself in South Florida. The taproom opened in 2019 and offers 24 beers on tap.

Burning Barrel Brewing Company
Rancho Cordova, California
Burning Barrel brews at least one new beer every week. On tap, next to eight sours, brewery visitors can also find a nitro English pub ale, a German helles lager, and a Vienna lager next to West Coast, triple West Coast, and hazy IPAs. The brewery’s flagship pilsner Side Pull Pillows recently won gold at the 2023 Craft Brewers Cup of California and the team is also opening a distillery two buildings away from the brewery in 2024 which aims to offer vodka, gin, brandy and a small-batch whiskey.

Goldfinger Brewing Company
Downers Grove, Illinois
Goldfinger Brewing Company recently showed up on the list of “Untappd’s All-Time Top-Rated Märzens” and “Untappd’s All-Time Top-Rated Czech Pilsners,” and its co-founder and brewer Thomas Beckmann has, according to many reports, been brewing some of the best lagers in the US. Beckmann attended the World Brewing Academy and has brewed in Munich, Germany, along with Lagunitas and Emmett’s Brewing in the US before opening Goldfinger in 2020. The focus is mainly on European-style lagers.

New Glory Craft Brewery
Sacramento, California
Founded in 2013 by Julien Lux, New Glory Craft Brewery focuses on experimental beers and has created beers like the Gummy Worms chewy pale ale and Hop Craze (Revolution #3) and seasonals like the kettle sour Powerthirst, hazy IPA Loud Mouth, and the hazy DIPA Splitting Atoms.

Bingo Beer Co
Richmond, Virginia
Bingo Beer Co brews beers including the amber lager Costa Chico and the pils Rail Pass along with a couple of hazy beers and sours. Rumour has it that the team also produces cider from time to time and likes to remind its visitors that beer brings people together, one of the core reasons why Bingo is considered one of the best places to drink on the Richmond Beer Trail.

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