America’s 40 Most Delicious Beers

Fruity, intense, malty, and bittersweet this English-style barley wine (meaning a hearty, potent beer — this one’s 9.6% ABV — with a wine-like intensity of flavor) available seasonally in the winter months, has won numerous beer festival awards.

A bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout with plenty of punch (at 16% ABV) and a dose of coffee, this beer was formerly labeled as Meph Addict and also Coffeestopholes.

The Brooklyn-born brew is pale and lithe, in the Belgian saison style, but also full of flavor, with a bracing, slightly bitter finish.

Described by its makers as the “boldest, most daring, hoppiest beer we could possibly dream up,” this New England IPA is full of tropical fruit and citrus flavors.

This beer justifies borrowing the term “terroir” from wine-tasting jargon (it means the combined environmental factors that give wine grapes their distinctive character) by sourcing its malts, hops, and yeasts in its native state. Low in alcohol (3.7% ABV), it has a lightly fruity character, with some peppery spice.

Very dark and chocolatey, with suggestions of licorice and vanilla and a subtle flavor of sweet whiskey, courtesy of its year-long aging in bourbon barrels.

A dense, heavy Russian imperial stout, weighing in at 13.1% ABV, Fyodor floods the palate with flavors of chocolate, coffee, caramel, and vanilla.

A wintertime stout brewed with molasses and licorice and aged in oak. Smokey and complex.

Cloudy and frothy, but fresh and juicy, with citrusy hops character, plenty of fruit on the palate, and an attractively bitter finish.

A chocolately, high-strength, jet black imperial stout from a one-time independent craft brewery now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, of Budweiser fame. Aged, in its most recent incarnation, is a combination of Wild Turkey, Buffalo Trace, and Heaven Hill bourbon barrels, which add a pronounced whiskey note.