The “Best” Beers in Oshkosh

In an effort to avoid everything I really ought to be doing, I’ll sometimes piss away an hour or so browsing the rantings of fellow beer geeks who inhabit Beer Advocate and Rate Beer, the titans of beer review websites. Both sites contain millions of beer reviews and each has its own special formula for aggregating all those reviews into neat lists that attempt to assign a ranking to the beers that get the highest marks. Each site’s top-100 list is loaded with brews that are impossibly obscure and few that are sold here. But if you merge the lists, there are a number of them we can get our hands on without having to leave town. So here they are, the “Best” beers that can currently be purchased in Oshkosh in order of their overall ranking.

1. Bell's Hopslam Ale (BA-18/RB-21)
2. North Coast Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout (RB-48)
3. New Glarus Raspberry Tart(BA-65/RB-62)
4. New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red (BA-62/RB-87)
5. Unibroue La Fin Du Monde (BA-77)
6. Bell's Two Hearted Ale (BA-97/RB-63)
7. Duvel (BA-98)
8. Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (RB-100)

There’s no denying these are all quality beers, but are they really the best beers available to us in Oshkosh? That’s for each beer lover to decide. Off hand, I can think of a few that I’d like to see in there, including Central Waters Brewhouse Coffee Stout (it won’t be available much longer), Chimay Première (the one with the red label), or maybe even Sprecher’s Black Bavarian (if you’re in the mood for something with a bit less alcohol). If nothing else, the list might give you an idea about what to grab the next time your wandering down the beer isle. You could do a lot worse.

Here’s the complete Beer Advocate Top 100 List.
Here’s the complete Rate Beer Top 100 List.