What Brewery Has The Best Wings In Cincinnati?

Written By: The Gnarly Gnome
Photography By: The Gnarly Gnome

7/29/25

When you’re like me, the question asked by a friend, “What are the best wings in any Cincinnati brewery?” is more than just a simple question. It’s a call forth for an epic quest. If you haven’t really tried all the wings and put them up against each other in some brutal spreadsheet-fueled competition, can you really answer the question?

I hadn’t, I couldn’t, so I made a decision to dedicate however much time was needed to make that happen.

Nine months and 428 wings later (that’s the final count – after recording the video), I can now, without a doubt, honestly tell you that I know who makes the best wings in this city. With anything this size, however, I need to show you how we arrived at the answer.

The Method To The Madness

Figuring out how to rate the best wings in the city was part of the problem. Before I even started down this path, I had to figure out what makes a great buffalo wing in the first place. It took me a long time and several trial attempts at a rough spreadsheet before I figured out my method.

It started out with the base criteria – price, meatiness, sauce, and overall enjoyment and started breaking that down into sub-categories.

The price is straightforward. I took the smallest serving of wings they offer, noted how much it cost, and calculated the cost per wing.

Meatiness, though… was a huge one. Meat to skin ratio, texture, moistness… all of these get scores, and all of them factor into the meatiness of a wing… and it’s probably the most important category for me, too.

Sauce was based on the closest sauce that the brewery had to traditional buffalo sauce, which might have been the most debated category for me. I could have scored this several different ways: variety of sauces, creativity of sauces, heat of the sauce… all of these definitely factor into the enjoyment of your wings. That’s where that final category came into play, though.

Consider overall enjoyment a catch-all category for how much you liked your wings. You’re basing this on how much you liked your wings, but bonuses can also be awarded for things like sauce variety and presentation.

When you put it all into a way-too-complicated spreadsheet formula, shake it up… out spits a score from 1-100. Our breweries rated anywhere from a 41.5 on the low end (they were really bad) to the highest, which came in at an 88.7. The average score was a 71.5, and I was tough with my grading on these.

The Struggles

There are many hurdles I discovered with this competition. Some I have since figured out how I WOULD have handled to make my life easier, and some… well, it’s just the nature of a “competition” like this.

Things like the mix of flats to drums, the “only-buffalo” rule, and consistency all cropped up as things that can derail things very quickly, and all of them were easy to adapt to.

I rated wings without anyone in the kitchen knowing that I was doing this. Had they prepared, I’m sure that some places would have scored higher, but that’s the nature of the beast. There were also a couple of opportunities where a brewery or their food partner offered to buy my lunch or dinner – NO ONE bought my wings that I was rating, ever. Once during my competition, my food was comped, and I didn’t know it until I got my check. While I normally really appreciate it when people go out of their way to show their appreciation, I went back the next week and ate again so I could buy my wings.

This is nerdy stuff… and I understand that. I know why you’re here… let’s cut to the chase.

The Best Wings In Any Cincinnati Brewery – Alexandria

Alexandria Brewing Company blew away the competition. They finished a full five points ahead of the number two finisher, and I have had their wings plenty of times to confirm that the score is dead on where it should be.

These wings hit on all the things that I’m craving. Full flavor, meaty (but not too meaty) wings, excellent sauce, and most of all an affordable price, even through the constant fluctuations of what I know their kitchen is paying for their wings.

There are two very important things to note about the wings at Alexandria: first, Alexandria is a client of mine, and we work together every single month. That said, not only were they unaware that I was doing this, but their food partner is a separate business, with which I have no financial arrangement. I take my integrity as a blogger extremely seriously… I will never, and have never, let the money side of running ‘The Gnome’ ever affect the things that I make content about. If anything, sometimes I feel like I write less about the places I work with, in some weird attempt to avoid showing preferential treatment. You’ll always know when a place I am writing about, or mentioning, is someone I’m currently working with… ALWAYS.

The “Almost Best” Wings – Mt Carmel and Dead Low

If you watched the video (you should), you already know this, but coming in second was Mt. Carmel Brewing Company. Their smoked wings are so good that they will literally get me in a car to drive the 40 or so minutes it takes me to get to the brewery, just so I can get some for lunch. They’re insane. So, so freaking good.

Number three goes to the folks down at Dead Low. If you haven’t heard people talking about the incredibly crispy and delicious fried wings at Dead Low, then I’m convinced you just haven’t been listening. They are nailing these wings, and if they ever change a thing about what they’re doing, I might be the first one to chain myself to their deck in some kind of protest. If you haven’t been to Dead Low, let this be your call-to-action.

Honorable Mentions

There were some places during this competition that I couldn’t believe my own score. I’d go home, take a look at my spreadsheet, and be convinced that I had made a mistake. I’d head back out a month later to “fix my mistake” and be disappointed, again, at what I came up with. There were also some places that I really thought were going to have terrible wings, or mediocre wings at least, that caught me off guard with how good they were.

All of those spots deserve your attention.

West Side
West Side fans were obviously excited when the news hit that Catch-A-Fire Pizza was moving into the taproom. You can’t deny that the place knows how to whip up a great pizza. The real secret that I’ll happily tell anyone is that their wings are phenomenal. I am not sure how often I’ll ever be able to order anything else on the menu at this point. They’re that good.

Bad Tom Smith
This one really caught me off guard… I didn’t expect a lot from their wings. I hadn’t heard anyone talking about what they were doing in the food realm, either. I actually had to stop here three different times trying to get their wings, because they’re so good that they sell out of them pretty fast. Smoked, great sauce… trust me.

MadTree
Both MadTree’s Oakley location and their Parks and Rec location have wings that deserve a loud mention. I stopped into Parks and Rec to try them so many times that the daytime bartender actually made a comment the last time I was in there that “you get the wings a lot, don’t you?” – yes, I do. They’re great.

HighGrain
Two, very distinctly different types of wings at HighGrain were what made me realize that if I wanted this competition to be the best it could be, I’d have to rank every location in town, even if they were multiple taprooms owned by the same brewery. What’s even cooler about HighGrain is that both their locations have incredible wings, even as different as they happen to be from each other. For the record, I lean towards Silverton’s wings… but not by much. .01 points separate them in my ranking… that’s pretty fun.

Fretboard
In both their Blue Ash and Harrison taprooms, you’ll find incredible wings. They recently rolled out a Grippos rub that I’m sort of in love with… and almost alone makes this a stop that you have to make if you’re on your own wings quest. The wings are slow-smoked before being quickly fried to crisp them up… my preferred method of preparation. They’re delicious, affordable, and have the perfect serving size. Just go see for yourself!

The Others
I could go on and on about every wing, and what I liked and didn’t. I fully recognize that none of us has the time for that today (although… maybe next year). Instead, I’ll point out a few more places that you should be aware of. Wandering Monsters have insanely great wings; they lost a few points because of price… but I’d be curious to see how they rank next time. Fifty West is known for its burgers, but the wings at both its Mariemont location and its newer Deerfield spot kind of caught me off guard with how much I enjoyed them. I never think to order wings there, but I probably should be more often. Nine Giant rounds out the top 15 and needs a mention, too. I don’t think it comes as a shock to anyone that the food at Nine Giant is great, but if it’s been a while since you stopped, maybe a little wings quest is enough to get you off the couch to make it happen!

What I Learned

Throughout this journey, I learned that I REALLY love wings. Despite what you might think, it’s still my go-to order when I snag some food at a brewery. I am not sick of eating them by any stretch. I also learned that we’ve got great wings in our brewery scene. I think that maybe I should have assumed this going into the competition, considering how highly I hold most of the breweries in town in regards to the beer quality. I was still surprised, over and over about how good my food was. In fact, if you really want to analyze my data, there was just a little more than a handful of wings that I’d call “bad”… and it really needs to be pointed out that of the bottom five places on my list, three of them have since closed their doors.

How You Can Help

I’m not done with Wings competitions, other food competitions, and numerous other big projects that will help you navigate our exciting world of drinking here in Cincinnati – beer and beyond. The biggest way that you can help with any of this is by sharing your favorite content with your friends. That’s 100% how all of this has grown to what it is, and definitely how it will continue to keep growing from here. With that said, if you REALLY like what I do, you can always support by going to TheGnarlyGnome.com/Support and doing it that way. You get early access to content, exclusive sneak peeks, and insider information. You also get to be part of a community of like-minded individuals called ‘The Gnomies’, a group of friends who love this city’s drinking scene. It’s pretty awesome.

As you share this post or the video (which can be found below), I encourage you to let me know where you think I’m wrong. Tell me what YOUR favorite wings in any brewery are. Tell me why you love them. Tell me what bar has the best wings… I’ve been working on that list, too, but am convinced it will take more than ten years to finish.

As always – Be Gnarly, Eat Wings (eat BETTER wings!)