What’s the best brewery in Maryland?

Impossible to say, right? Everyone has an opinion. But in the age of social media, it is possible to identify which brewery—or ten—people seem to enjoy the most. To produce this Top Ten list, we averaged the brewery scores from the three most popular beer-rating sites (Untappd, BeerAdvocate, and BeerRater), then weighted them to reflect the taphouse experience as much as the quality of the beer.

How useful are these social media ratings? Is there value in documenting popular consensus? Do they point to some objective truth? Will they influence where I take my next vacation?

Taphouse Guide is a subjective quest to validate or perhaps repudiate the objective consensus. For example, does Idiom Brewing Co. (#10) really deserve to be in the Top Ten? Is a visit to Midnight Run Brewing (#9) more fun than spending a few hours at Idiom? Let’s find out.

Over the next several weeks, our team will visit Maryland’s highest-rated taphouses and assess how deserving they are of their social media rankings. We invite you to join us and share your opinions on this site.

Cheers!