The Best Beers in Dallas

Before you ask, no, we did not drink every beer produced by a North Texas brewery. The goal was to drink as many non-seasonal local beers as we could, to try to find a good cross section of North Texas breweries and styles. We added a few of our own to LUCK’s meticulously curated local-beer selection, bringing the number of beers tasted in one afternoon to 31. (We’ve ranked 30 because we accidentally drank one seasonal, which would’ve finished in the bottom five anyway.)

The beers were tasted on a Wednesday afternoon at LUCK, in Trinity Groves, and were served in four-sample flights, arranged—loosely—by style.

Is this an exhaustive list of every North Texas beer? No. Are you liable to get angry that Lakewood’s The Temptress milk stout ranked surprisingly low or that the top beer is one you’ve likely never tasted? Yes.

D Magazine’s Tim Rogers, Matthew Shelley, and I participated in the tasting, but our scores were not taken into account for the ranking. The judges were given a separate Beer Judge Certification Program scoresheet for each beer, and asked to comment on the following: aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel, and overall impression. (We’ve included a sampling of their comments.) The beers were then scored, with the highest possible total being 50 points.

The panel:

—Máté Hartai, bartender and certified cicerone, the Libertine Bar

—Melissa Monosoff, master sommelier, certified cicerone, and Culinary Institute of America graduate

—Dan Padgett, bartender, Meddlesome Moth

—Josh Yingling, owner, Goodfriend Beer Garden & Burger House and Blind Butcher

If you have an issue with the scoring, please find any of the above four professionals at their places of business.

Other terms you’ll want to know for the chart below: ABV is a measure of the percentage of alcohol by volume. IBU is a measure of the bitterness of the beer on the International Bittering Units scale. Here is an explanation of how it’s measured, but you really just need to know that the higher the number, the bitterer the beer.

Rank	Beer	Brewery	Style	ABV	IBU	Dan	Melissa	Máté	Josh	Overall Score
1	Sir William’s	Grapevine	English brown ale	4.9	21	37	35	40	39	37.75
2	Velvet Hammer	Peticolas	Imperial red ale	9.0	85	45	37	45	21	37
3	Pretzel Stout	Martin House	Stout	6.5	47	35	40	38	33	36.5
4	Trinity Tripel	Community	Belgian-style tripel	9.0	42	39	35	29	32	33.75
5	Block Party	Four Corners	Porter	5.7	40	35	37	35	27	33.5
6	Buffalo Butt	Rahr & Sons	Amber lager	5.0	25	40	37	19	33	32.25
6	Inspiration	Community	Belgian strong ale	9.6	45	30	35	32	32	32.25
8	Mike Modano’s 561	Rabbit Hole	Kölsch	4.7	25	40	35	36	15.75	31.69
9	Mosaic	Community	IPA	7.5	85	37	38	19	30	31
10	Hop Trapp	Lakewood	Belgian IPA	6.4	55	25	38	38	22	30.75
11	Midnight Ninja	Firewheel	Imperial American black ale	6.5	25	29	39	21	32	30.25
12	Lakefire	Grapevine	Rye pale ale	5.5	35	37	35	28	20	30
13	Rapture	Rabbit Hole	Brown ale	5.2	35	35	38	26	20.5	29.88
14	Lakewood Lager	Lakewood	Vienna-style lager	4.6	25	30	10	48	30	29.5
15	Revolver Bock	Revolver	Bock	6.5	28	23	40	32	19.5	28.63
16	Day Break	Martin House	American blonde ale	5.0	20	35	25	39	15	28.5
17	Greenbelt Farmhouse Ale	Armadillo	American-Belgian-Weizen hybrid	5.2	20	45	30	12	21	27
18	Rahr’s Blonde	Rahr & Sons	Blonde lager	5.0	20	30	25	17	35	26.75
19	Deep Ellum IPA	Deep Ellum	IPA	7.0		25	38	20	23	26.5
20	Blood and Honey	Revolver	American wheat	7.0	28	15	30	30	30	26.25
21	10/6	Rabbit Hole	English IPA	6.0	65	30	35	15	23.5	25.88
22	Public Ale	Community	Extra Special Bitter	5.5	38	35	20	25	18.5	24.63
23	Royal Scandal	Peticolas	English pale ale	6.5	36	37	29	12	19.5	24.38
24	Golden Opportunity	Peticolas	Kölsch	4.6	27	30	30	20	16.5	24.13
25	The Temptress	Lakewood	Milk stout	9.0	56	22	29	23	21	23.75
26	Ugly Pug	Rahr & Sons	Black lager	4.5	27	17	40	17	17	22.75
27	Double Brown Stout	Deep Ellum	Baltic porter	7.0	27	17	25	12	8	18.8
28	Dallas Blonde	Deep Ellum	American blonde ale	5.2		10	20	17	17	16
29	Local Buzz	Four Corners	Golden ale	5.2	20	10	15	20	16.75	15.44
30	Koelsch	Franconia	Kölsch	4.8		0	5	9.5	37	12.88