Definitively the Best Beer in America

I wanted to understand beer.

I'm not a big beer drinker myself

but a lot of my good friends are

and I thought if I could learn a lot about beer

by looking at beer data,

I would know what beer to get for them,

you know, next time I throw a party,

it'll be awesome.

[Interviewer] Where do you even start with beer?

There's just so many beers.

People love beer.

[Hilary] So I started by looking at the top 25 styles

and than those pretty easily broke down into light styles

and dark styles.

[Interviewer] So tell me, what's next?

So taking the collection of beers that are labeled

as that type of beer,

you can just say, is this category as a whole,

is it rated higher than this other category,

and through that,

got to the top set of categories.

One thing that came out as a category was the Hefeweizen,

which is on the lighter side.

One of the top beers in that category

was New Glarus's Dancing Man Wheat.

There was a porter,

Hill Farmstead's Everett Porter.

There's a category called Wild Ale,

which had a really high rating

and a beer called The Lost Abbey's Duck-Duck Gooze

came in as the one to try there

and if you haven't noticed already, beers have great names.

[Interviewer] Is there a top best beer?

[Hilary] The top category came up

as the American Double IPA

and in that category,

it was the Alchemist Brewing Company's Heady Topper.

[Interviewer] So that's the best beer?

That would be the best beer.