Our Top 6 Beer Resolutions for 2025

For the first time last year, we actually took a moment from our breakneck pace of drinking, traveling, discovering, and writing, not just to look back on our last 365 days of adventures but also to look ahead. While we always publish a piece on the top trends we expect in the new year (shameless plug: Look for that piece publishing on Jan. 13, 2025), we’ve rarely taken time to set our own intentions for the year. That all changed in 2024. Curious how we did? So were we. And we were equally excited to set some new beer resolutions for 2025.

A Quick Look Back at 2024

Honestly, we’ll give ourselves a little self-appreciating pat on the back. Let’s look at the list of our beer resolutions for 2024…

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Study For The Beer Judge Certification Program

– Well, I guess we’ll start with a failure. Hey, we’re not perfect. But it only gets better from here.

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Go to a Hop Harvest

– ICYMI, Hop Culture Senior Content Editor Grace Lee-Weitz and Social Media Manager Magic Muncie traveled to the Yakima Valley for their first-ever hop harvest. Highlights included drinking one of “The 19 Best Beers We Drank in 2024” while literally sitting next to vines of fresh Mosaic and chomping on tacos, walking around the only Hispanic-owned commercial hop farm in the country, and finding one of our “Best Hidden Gem Places to Drink.”

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Vist 10 New Breweries in Our Home State

– Actually, we went to thirty-five. Yup, that’s right. From our farthest visited brewery in the north—Moonlight in Santa Rosa, CA, to ones in our own neighborhood, such as East Brother Beer Co. and Armistice—to as far south as Green Cheek at their new location in the old Bagby Beer space, and everywhere in between, we crushed California breweries this year. Do we get a triple check for that?

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Drink and Write About Five Beer Styles New to Us

– Let’s see: rauchbier, fonio ale, Umqombothi, XPA, and Altbier. Mission accomplished!

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Take One Beer Trip Outside the U.S.

– Heck yes! We traveled to London, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Czechia.

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Drink a Hladinka, Nadvakrát, Šnyt, and Mlíko

– Too many to count while we were in Czechia, but we also snagged a Mlíko here in the States at some of our favorite breweries such as Tenma Beer Project and Cohesion, one of our favorite breweries in Denver.

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Experience Kölsch Service in Cologne, Germany

– Sadly, we did not make this one happen, so you can bet it is going to the top of the list for 2025!

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Drink Real Ale, Ideally in England

– Oh, how we enjoyed pint after pint of cask ale during our time in the U.K., including at CAMRA’s two-time pub of the year—The Tamworth Tap (among many, many others).

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Make a Collab Beer

– Okay, while we technically didn’t make a collab beer with anyone…(seriously, want to make a beer with us!? Hit us up @hopculturemag or at [email protected])…Lee-Weitz spent a sixteen-hour brew day with the fine folks at Hanabi Lager during their brew season in the spring. Read about the entire story here. Definitely not a collab and Lee-Weitz did about a tenth of the work of everyone else at the brewery because she didn’t want to completely break things, but we did feel pretty accomplished and honored to take part in this brew day. Not many people can say they have. And if you haven’t heard of Hanabi, we named them one of “The 11 Best Breweries of 2024,” so go read all about them; they are one of the most incredible breweries in the entire world despite being only a “side project” for Screaming Eagle’s winemaker-by-day.

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Have a Beer With One of Our Brewing Idols

– We got to have some pretty cool conversations this year and meet some really cool people. We chatted with Schlenkerla sixth-generation brewer Matthias Trum, discovered the history of the West Coast pils with Highland Park, drank a Kimchi Sour with the owner of the Korean-inspired Dokkaebier, met the hop whisperer at John I. Haas (story to come in 2025), drank an XPA with the Aussie master of the style himself at the Firestone Walker Invitational, wandered off the blustery London streets to drink a little ol’ beer rivaling Guinness, had former Pilsner Urquell Brewmaster Vaclav Berka sing us happy birthday in the cellars of Pilsner Urquell, met the incredible man behind one of the rarest beer festivals in the country, saving people with prostates one pint at a time, drank a beer made with a 5,000-year-old-grain with a thirty-year brewmaster, met the head brewer behind this seventeen-time award-winning brewery, drank beers with the NB2A’s executive director, and, we almost forgot, talked to the very family that inspired the Sound of Music…and they opened a brewery. We really love our job.

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Drink More Bourbon, Whiskey, and Scotch

– You know, we just drank so much beer that we didn’t quite get around to this one.

Hop Culture’s New Beer Resolutions for 2025

On to the good stuff! We feel very inspired from 2024 and can’t wait to tackle the challenges and adventures ahead in 2025.

Just like last year, to hammer out our new beer resolutions, we contemplated ourselves as drinkers. We looked inward, searching for the gaps missing in our knowledge, education, and culture. And we introspectively evaluated how we can bring you better, richer, more engaging content, stay valuable and top of mind, and go even further to bring you stories that matter.

Experience Kölsch Service in Cologne, Rauchbier in Bamberg, and Altbier in Dusseldorf

We don’t think we need to elaborate on this one too much. Last year, our good friend and beer writer Ryan Pachmayer shared with us all his adventures enjoying kölsch service—the custom of small glasses of fresh kölsch continually served to you until you’ve had your fill—around Cologne. He wrote an incredible piece for Craft Beer & Brewing called “Where Kölsch Night Is Every Night,” which won a silver medal from the North American Beer Writers Guild about this historic German tradition.

His journey inspired us to write a piece on the phenomenon of American brewers bringing their own interpretations of kölsch service to the U.S.

While we had the chance to participate in a kölsch service at home in San Francisco, we wanted to get a taste of the real thing in its birthplace.

We also dove deep into the somewhat mysterious style of Altbier and rauchbier. Again, we whet our appetite to try these styles right from the source.

Out of all the resolutions we missed in the last 365 days, this one probably sticks out to us the most. Overall, Germany is a place we’ve only spent twenty-four hours in…over five years ago. 😱 As beer lovers, we absolutely need to make it a priority to plan an entire trip to Germany, hitting Munich, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bamberg, and other areas in the Franconia region. We have trip notes from a few friends who have gone before us, and if you all have any suggestions, please let us know. Consider this a top priority for our team in 2025.

Visit 2-3 of Our Favorite Beer Festivals

Stick with us on this one. We had the opportunity to attend the coveted Firestone Walker Invitational for the second year in a row, the uber-hard-to-get-into Denver Rare Beer Tasting, and the Yakima Valley Fresh Hop Ale Fest. Wow, if this were one of our beer resolutions in 2024, we would have ticked it off. But it wasn’t, so that’s what’s inspiring us here.

That and the fact that we wrote about gems like Schilling’s Oktoberfest, Human Robot’s Log Jammin’, and Green Bench’s Foeder for Thought, which all sounded amazing, but we didn’t have the time to get to this year.

While we don’t typically go to just any old festival anymore, we do feel that expertly curated ones with a defined mission and a sense of almost terroir deserve a trip.

The last three we named are definitely on our radar, as is Barrel & Flow and perhaps even Munich’s official Oktoberfest. Either way, we’d love to hit two to three of the best festivals in the world next year.

Go to a Hop Harvest Outside of the U.S.

Well, we’ve caught hop harvest fever. During the Pacific Northwest hop harvest this year, we had such a great time that we’re setting our sights further abroad. After all, you know countries all around the world grow hops, right?

According to this 2023/2024 BarthHaas Hop Report, Germany produced the second-highest amount of hops in 2023 (20,629 acreage ha), followed by Czechia with 4,860 acreage ha. And while numbers in Australia and New Zealand might be smaller—951 and 1,480, respectively—the hops coming out of these two countries have excited brewers for the last few years (read: Superdelic, Nectaron, Riwaka, Galaxy, Vic Secret, Enigma, etc.).

Off the tops of our heads, we can think of Australia and New Zealand as a top target, along with Germany (feed three birds with one scone…hop harvest + drinking kölsch + Oktoberfest! That would be the ultimate trifecta).

Produce More Award-Winning Content

Earlier this year, Lee-Weitz picked up an award from the North American Guild of Beer Writers in the “Best Beer and Food Writing” category for her piece, Stumbling Into the Hot Pink Restaurant With the Most Pleasurable Food in France.

She was also one of seven journalists chosen for the 2024 Diversity in Beer Writing Grant, exploring what it’s like to search for gender-affirming care in the beer industry.

Hop Culture Freelancer Ruvani de Silva also nabbed an award from the British Guild of Beer Writers for her article on Patagonia Provisions Launches First National Regenerative Organic Certified® Kernza® Brewing Project.

So yes, this resolution may sound cheesy, but it’s a very valuable goal to us. The more comprehensive, thoughtful, knowledgeable, and well-written content we can create, the better the magazine will be in the long run. This may be our most challenging and yet rewarding resolution on the list.

Visit 10 New Breweries in States Outside of Our Own

We felt so accomplished with this goal in 2024 that we’re getting even more audacious in 2025. Instead of staying close to home, we’re challenging ourselves to visit ten breweries new to us in any state outside of California. Think we can do it? We’ll get back to you in 365 days.

Travel to a New Continent…Just for Beer

If you can’t tell, our beer resolution list does have a theme: travel, travel, travel. We feel it’s the best way to experience new places and beers. So far, we can count North America, Asia, and Europe as continents we’ve traveled to just for beer. But there are four more out there (albeit Antarctica might be difficult). South America, Australia, or Africa, here we come? Let’s see!

Now that we’ve shown you ours, it’s only fair that you have a chance to share yours. What are your new beer resolutions? Drop us a line @hopculturemag or at [email protected].