The Best Beers of 2025 (By the Numbers)

Welcome to the end of 2025.  There was a lot of movement in the Central Texas craft beer industry this year, and it’s looking pretty good – our comprehensive openings and closings list counts fifteen brewery openings (plus one cidery, two meaderies), and six brewery closings.  Compare that to 2024’s seven openings, and the closings to 2024’s twelve.  That’s a pretty sizable increase!  Most of the new breweries are outside of Austin proper, so those of you that are willing to travel a bit for new experiences likely had a fun year.  I know I did.  Here’s to more newcomers soon!

And now for the data.  Standard disclaimer: This data comes from Untappd and is not our personal opinions.  Click here to find out more about how this data is gathered.  Also remember that a beer must get ten check-ins to be ranked, so many of the aforementioned new breweries are still too obscure to pop up.  That doesn’t mean their beers aren’t amazing, it just means you need to go try them for yourself and help spread the word.

Here are the top beers released in Central Texas in 2025!

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Lager:

Pilsner:

Pale Ale:

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IPA (New England / Hazy):

IPA (West Coast / Other):

Porter (Standard):

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Stout (Standard):

Porter/Stout (Imperial):

This category has so many highly ranked beers that I’ve decided to make it a double sized table.  Here’s the top 10!

Strong Ale:

On the contrary – there are only four breweries that released a new barleywine or strong ale all year in Central Texas.  How wild is that?  You’ll only see three below; the fourth is Frontyard, but it doesn’t have 10 ratings so it’s not eligible for the table.  This is why the quarterly articles combine barleywines and imperial stouts together…

Sour:

Farmhouse:

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Belgian:

Wheat:

Ale (Other):

There are three recently released beers in this particular category that may make the top 5 if they get a few more check-ins before the year ends.  Them’s the breaks of publishing this article a week early.  They are:
Society Series #13 – Acopon Brewing Company
Pecan Pie Porter – 602 Brewing Company
Cold Beer, Hot Nuts – Hold Out Brewing

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Specialty:

Not Beer:

I’d love to publish a table here, but… not a single newly produced cider or mead from any cidery or meadery in Central Texas reached 10 check-ins over the entire year (Austin Eastciders is excluded as they are no longer local).  There were new releases from places like Texas Keeper and Moontower Cideries, but they don’t seem to be frequent stops for Untappd users.  Moontower even temporarily shifted to to-go only amid low foot traffic.  Let’s all visit these spots more often!  Have y’all considered trying Bee Immortal Meadery, one of our favorite new taprooms of the year?

Here’s to 2026: The Year of Exploration!  I’m branding it now.