Tally's Beer Universe — the definitive archive of the world's breweries

A testament to survival and purity. It endured raids in 955, plagues, and multiple fires, and was already centuries into the craft when the Duke of Bavaria enacted the Reinheitsgebot purity law in 1516. Today it's both a historic monument and, integrated with the Technical University of Munich, ground zero for modern brewing science — the origin site of the W-34/70 lager yeast now used more than any other on the planet.

The living museum. In the 1960s and 70s, as tastes shifted to artificially sweetened beers, traditional lambic nearly went extinct. Cantillon refused to compromise its tart, spontaneously fermented profiles — and to survive financially, opened its doors as a working public museum in 1978, educating visitors and sparking the global sour-beer revival.

The trout and the ring. Legend says Countess Matilde of Tuscany dropped her golden wedding ring into a spring, and a trout surfaced to return it; she declared the land a 'Valley of Gold.' To this day every Orval cap and label features a trout holding a golden ring. The beer itself is unique among Trappists — dry-hopped and refermented in the bottle with wild Brettanomyces yeast, so it transforms in the cellar over months.