Published: November 12, 2024
Owning and operating a brewery is like a chess match or a cat-and-mouse game. You try to anticipate what consumers will likely drink now and into the short-term future, but sometimes it’s more of a reaction to a shift in beer trends. Whether you are a booming brewery so busy you can’t carve out time to research these trends or a small, fledgling brewery spread so thin you can’t squeeze in any additional tasks, we have a tool that can help without adding another person to the staff.
Learning about recent trends is essential to setting your brew schedule and deciding which beers to put on tap or package. Untappd Insights makes life easier for any brewery of any size, providing the integral data needed in mere clicks. The tool shares precise consumers’ drinking patterns that can benefit your taproom and your brewery’s distribution channels.
Untappd Insights, a part of the Next Glass family of brands that includes Ollie, Untappd for Business, Hop Culture, and BeerAdvocate, compiles countless distribution, trend, and sales data and can be set as narrow as a singular town or as broad as the whole world.
It’s a crucial time of year for many breweries, whether brewing beers around events or seasonal offerings or just sprinting to the finish line of the calendar year. With things heightened, getting laser-focused on what to brew is more critical. Untappd Insights data can help your brewery navigate through this season and set you up for success in the new year.
We’ve previously covered the most popular beers in Pennsylvania, New York, California, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Virginia.
In this piece, we’ll head to the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, home of the region that grows the most hops. We’ll let the Untappd Insights’ data speak for itself by breaking down the most checked-in beers over the past ninety days.
(Above photography courtesy of Magic Muncie | Next Glass)
What We’ll Cover in This Piece:
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Washington: The Fourteenth Most Checked-in State Over the Past Half Decade
Graphic courtesy of Untappd Insights
According to the latest census data, Washington is the thirteenth most populous state, with 7.8 million people. The state is home to 459 craft breweries, which ranks fifth in the country. The state’s 7.8 breweries per capita—per 100,000 drinking-aged adults—ranks ninth nationally. Despite those high ranks, Washington peaks at fourteenth nationally in terms of check-ins.
Untappd Insights data goes back as far as Jan. 1, 2019. In nearly six years, Washington State racked up 9,838,052 check-ins at just over 62,000 venues. The average rating of those 9.8 million check-ins is 3.91. The check-ins are heavily saturated in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue areas, accounting for seventy-two percent (7,044,492) of those check-ins.
In the past year, Washington had 1,100,309 check-ins—a hair behind fourteenth-ranked Colorado. Again, the Seattle area dominates with 761,432 check-ins.
The trends look similar over the last three months, where the state had 279,486 check-ins at nearly 11,000 venues, with the Seattle area accounting for sixty-nine percent (192,626) of the check-ins. This past month, Untappd users have distributed an average 3.94 rating on 87,211 check-ins at about 5,400 venues.
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The Top 10 Beers in Washington – Last 90 Days
Photography courtesy of Elysian Brewing Company
Since Washington is the mecca of hops in the U.S., it’s no surprise that IPAs appeared the most in the top ten check-ins over the past three months, including the top spot. If you include pale ale, eight of the ten are hop-forward beers. A light lager and amber beer also appeared in the top ten.
With the hop harvest recently finishing, Bale Breaker, home to a brewery and hop farm, showed up on the list twice with two different fresh-hop IPA offerings. Georgetown Brewing had the top beer on the list, and Fremont Brewing also showed up on the list multiple times.
- Bodhizafa (IPA-American) – Georgetown Brewing Company
- Rainier (Lager-American) – Pabst Brewing Company
- Green Rush Fresh Hop IPA (IPA-Other) – Bale Breaker Brewing Company
- African Amber (Red Ale-American Amber/Red) – Mac & Jack’s Brewing Company
- Manny’s Pale Ale (Pale Ale-American) – Georgetown Brewing Company
- Space Dust IPA (IPA-American) – Elysian Brewing Company
- Lush IPA (IPA-American) – Fremont Brewing
- Haze Harvest Fresh Hop Hazy IPA (IPA-Other) – Bale Breaker Brewing Company
- Tropic Haze India Pale Ale (IPA-American) – Silver City Brewing
- Sky Kraken (Pale Ale-New England/Hazy) – Fremont Brewing
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About The Author
Giovanni Albanese
Giovanni is a content writer for Next Glass, contributing to the Ollie blog. He is a writer by day and a brewer/business owner by night, owning and operating Settle Down Brewery & Taproom in Gilroy, California.
Giovanni is passionate about a number of things, including history, documentaries and sports, but none more than reporting/writing and brewing beer. After receiving a radio broadcasting degree then a journalism degree from Salem State College in his home state of Massachusetts, he relocated to California in 2008.
Then, his writing career kicked off – covering sports, business, politics and more along the way – while concurrently dabbling in home brewing. The home brewing turned pro in 2021 when he launched SDB Brewing Company. Settle Down Beer officially opened in February.
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