What’s the Best Beer in McHenry County?
Analyzing data from Untappd for breweries in McHenry County
McHenry County is home to some great microbreweries, and I wanted to know: What’s the best beer in McHenry County?
I used a web scraper to collect data from Untappd for breweries in McHenry County. I removed non-beers (barleywine, hard seltzers, malt liquor, etc) and beers with fewer than 10 ratings (almost 400 beers) since Untappd does not reveal the rating for beers with fewer than 10 ratings. That still left me with a whopping 825 beers from nine breweries.
It is important to note that this data includes beers that might not be available anymore, so make sure you check before you run to your local microbrewery for a pour.
Without further adieu: here are the top 10 beers from McHenry County:
You’ll notice that Scorched Earth has six of the 10 top-rated beers, but Scorched Earth also had six of the 10 lowest-ranked beer in the county. The lowest-ranked beer? A red ale brewed with Zatarain's Jambalaya rice and shrimp shells. When you’re that creative, you’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some.
You’ll also notice that seven out of the 10 top-rated beers are stouts and the rest porters. And the top-rated beers are a boozy bunch, with an average ABV of 9.14%.
So it comes as no surprise that the top-rated types of beer include Porter, Scotch Ale and Stout.
To calculate this, I only included beer types with more than one beer. At the bottom of the list? Rye Beer. (Side note: I’ll be looking at the most popular types of beer brewed in McHenry County in a future post.)
I also wanted to look at which breweries had the highest-rated beers for some popular types of beer.
Again, I included only breweries that had more than one beer of each type.
For my final analysis, I looked at the highest-rated type of beer for each brewery in McHenry County.
Stay tuned for analyses of the most popular beer in McHenry County, the alcohol content of beers in McHenry County and the bitterness (IBU) of beers in McHenry County.