Lakefront Brewery (link here) is one of my favorite local brewers. Their tasting room is setup as an old school beer hall, with live music and excellent tours that I’d recommend to anyone visiting Milwaukee. So without a doubt, I would be biased in almost any duel that featured Lakefront’s beer. Because of that, I wanted to try doing a blind taste test to confirm that my bias would not factor into the results.
The Lakefront beer chosen for this duel was their immensely popular Riverwest Stein. Up against it, I grabbed an Eliot Ness from Great Lakes Brewing, another popular midwestern brewer out of Cleveland. So let’s see how it turned out.
HopDuel Survey
| Better label | Lakefront Brewery Riverwest Stein |
| Better aroma | Great Lakes Brewing Eliot Ness |
| Better taste | Lakefront Brewery Riverwest Stein |
| Better finish | Lakefront Brewery Riverwest Stein |
| Winner | Lakefront Brewery Riverwest Stein |
Tell us about it
Much to my delight, even in a blind taste test, Lakefront’s Riverwest Stein came out on top. Their label is a great example of minimalist color usage to draw attention to the elements that matter most. Riverwest pours an appealing amber color with a long-lasting white foam head, then drinks as a well-balanced lager with just enough hops to be dangerous, but finishes crisp and delicious.
The Great Lakes Eliot Ness was able to sneak into the win column by taking the aroma category, so all was not lost for them. The Eliot Ness definitely isn’t a bad beer, it just ran into some stiff competition in this one.
HopDuel 