This post contains affiliate links. When clicked, I may receive a commission at no cost to you. Please see our disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting RA and keeping it free!
Are you curious to know which Georgia brewery is the best? If so, you are in the right place. We compiled the data so you don’t have to.
While I am on a mission to visit every Atlanta brewery, I wanted to see which are the best Georgia breweries, using data from the beer community.
I was curious to know what the consumers think is the best brewery in Georgia.
I started by asking friends. As you probably are thinking, I received very different answers from every person I talked to. Some people love IPA’s and some love sours. I even have one friend who only loves the brewery that he can walk home from. Proximity becomes the biggest factor.
This subjective data from a few individuals was not what I was looking for.
I took to the internet, unfortunately, I only found sites offering up opinions on who was the best.
There had to be a better way.
The Best Breweries Data Set
First I had to find out all of the breweries in the state of Georgia. I compiled a list with data from the brewers association, but it included brewpubs, meaderies and cideries. It even included breweries in planning. I filtered the list from about 200 down to 99 microbreweries and nanobreweries.
I removed brewpubs. My thought on removing brewpubs is because the focus becomes more on the restaurant experience and less on the beer. My plan is to let the data decide the best brewpubs in a subsequent post.
Next, I gathered rating data from multiple sites. This gave me multiple data sets. The ratings were based on a 1 to 5 scale.
Finally, I calculated the weighted average score for each brewery from each of the rating websites like Google reviews and Untapped.
Too be fair, I eliminated any brewery with less than 2,000 reviews. Anything less that 2,000, I felt, was open for manipulation. One could argue you need more than 10,000, but for this ranking, I left it at 2,000.
If you disagree, leave a comment and let me know why.
The Top 5 Best Breweries In Georgia
These are the highest rated breweries with at least 2,000 reviews in the state of Georgia. Congrats to the winners.
| Little Cottage Brewery |
| Variant Brewing Co. |
| Outrun Brewing* |
| Wild Leap Brew Company |
| Halfway Crooks Beer |
*Outrun brewery only had a little over 2500 reviews
**Creature Comforts came in 6th place and has well over 300,000 reviews.
The Best Atlanta Breweries
For those that follow this blog, you know I am trying to visit every Atlanta brewery. Based on the data, these are the top 5 breweries that officially have an Atlanta address.
| Halfway Crooks Beer |
| Scofflaw Brewing Co. |
| Orpheus Brewing |
| Monday Night Brewing |
| Fire Maker Brewing Co, |
The Best Breweries in the Suburbs of Atlanta
For this competition, I considered an “Atlanta suburb” as a reasonable commute into Atlanta. Not trying to spit hairs here, but if you were over an hour away, I considered the brewery in the next section, ”outside metro Atlanta.”
| Little Cottage Brewery |
| Variant Brewing Co. |
| Outrun Brewing |
| Hixtown Brewing Co. |
| Contrast Artisan Ales |
The Best Breweries Outside the Metro Atlanta Area In Georgia
| Wild Leap Brew Company |
| Creature Comforts Downtown |
| Two Tides Brewing |
| Rock Solid Brewing* |
| Cartecay River Brewing |
*Rock Solid Brewing barely made the cut of 2000 reviews. Silver Bluff Brewing was in position 6.
The Best Big Breweries in Georgia
For this ranking, the brewery needed at least 100,000 ratings. These are the biggest breweries with the furthest distribution, able to reach to most beer connoisseurs.
| Wild Leap Brew Company |
| Creature Comforts |
| Three Taverns |
| Scofflaw Brewing Co. |
| Pontoon Brewing |
Hopefully this provides you with some new idea’s on brews to try or breweries to visit while staying in Atlanta, North Georgia or at our wonderful Georgia beaches.
Please tell me what you think. Which brewery is your favorite in Georgia, and why?
Also, please follow along on my journey, as I am visiting all the breweries in and around Atlanta.