The BeerMenus Blog

A scaled down (5.1%) tropical pale ale brewed with opinions and aptness, Integrity is Rare is the perfect summer crusher. Follow it here to get notified when it arrives at a bar near you.

_{Image courtesy of CraftBeer.com}

In case you haven’t heard, the line between craft beer and big beer just got blurrier.

To get notified when Needle in a Hopstack hits taps near you, follow it here.

Update: here's a list of the places that will be tapping Needle In A Hop Stack

• Covenhoven

• Brouwerij Lane

• Gun Hill Tavern

• Malt & Mold - LES

• Malt & Mold - Gramercy

• Forest Hills Station House

• Earl's Beer & Cheese

When they started BeerMenus back in 2008, our co-founders Will and Eric had a simple goal: they wanted to be able to find their favorite beers whenever they wanted. But while the goal is simple, the execution is not—there are so many places selling so many beers. Getting every beer seller to keep an updated list is, simply, impossible.

In the context of Will and Eric's goal, the take home is straightforward: no matter how hard we work to make updating on BeerMenus easy, no matter how engrained real-time beer updates become in our maturing market, not every beer seller will update their beer list. No beer can be perfectly findable.

Enter Needle in a Hopstack, a beer we brewed with Rockaway Brewing Company. Because it will only show up at places who update their BeerMenus list in real time, it's the world's first-ever perfectly findable beer.

Here's how it came together.

_{This April legend hit the shelves just in time for National Beer Day.}

Happy National Beer Day, world!

_{Our co-founder, Will, proudly displays his Chicago haul from Marz, Maplewood, and Spiteful.}

We've been buying, packing, and flying with beer for years, so we thought we'd pull together our experience and tips into a single article. Call it a public service, and our co-founder Will is your public servant. I recently followed him around as he packed for an upcoming trip. His tips are below.

8 team members, a cherry red VW Beetle, 6 brewery visits, pig wrangling at the Oxbow Farmhouse, and an awesome VIP tour of Allagash. Could a winter weekend be any better?

_{Four grown men were in that Beetle.}

Here it is, our fourth and final piece of the BeerMenus 2016 Roundup series.

We think we saved the best for last. Below are the most popular beers of 2016, broken out by where in the US the beer was brewed: East, Midwest, or West.

How?

Full disclosure: we love a lot of these beers. But our palates didn't make any decisions in regards to the list. We determined the rankings by looking at unique BeerMenus page views for each beer.

While we weren't too surprised by most beers on the list, there were a couple that left us flabbergasted. There was one big ol' Stunner in particular.

Congrats to all breweries on the list, and thanks for making these awesome beers part of 2016.

I hesitate to think how many beers the BeerMenus team consumed in 2016.

• We had a heck of a lot of local stuff from the many great NYC breweries.
  
• We made a few collaboration brews.
• We went down to Philly for the Craft Brewer's Conference.
• We flew to Chicago for Craft Beer Week.
• Our co-founder Will went to Belgium and brought back some Cantillon.
• We attended Ommegang's Belgium Comes to Cooperstown.
• We had a company retreat in Maine in December.

But despite the one or two beers all that entailed, everybody here at BeerMenus had one single beer that spoke to them more than the rest. Below you'll find everyone's top beer from 2016.

If you're one of the breweries who make these great beers, thank you! And if you agree with our choices, then cheers to you!

We were busy in 2016. 25 million people visited BeerMenus to find great beer. 50,000 new beers were added to our database. 9,000 new businesses joined the BeerMenus community. These numbers are bananas!

Yet through it all, a number of businesses stood out for the insane amount of traffic driven to their page. Below you'll find the 10 businesses on BeerMenus that received the most page views in 2016.

These businesses are not in any particular order, nor are they all clustered in one geographic area. From Manhattan to Wichita, sports bars to liquor stores, this list proves that craft beer is, truly, a national game.

In fact, the only consistent fact about these businesses is that update their BeerMenus page often.

Congrats to the businesses below on an awesome year, and good luck to all in 2017!