So which region of America has the highest concentration of top class breweries?

Didn't the thread title include the words "top class breweries"? Why all this talk of total breweries as it has nothing to do with this thread? For an IPA nut the San Diego region and the VT region are tops right now, midwest has some great stouts, Northeast has more of a variety pack of styles. As long as I get good beer I could care less where it is brewed.

 

Depends on how you define region, but if we are talking top class breweries in a small area, what about Portland? Let alone the state of Oregon.

Portland you have Cascade, HotD, Upright, Deschuttes (kind of), then a whole slew of other top notch places, lompoc, alameda, breakside, commons...

 

As far as accessibility I will take Colorado (Yeah, am being a homer)
The FTC breweries and pubs are easy to get to by foot and bike.
Same with the Boulder area, Durango and Denver CBD area. Only a 20 minute drive from Great Divide to Dry Dock.
Probably Portland rivals Denver but taking Denver.

 

My answer is Oregon, but if our next door neighbor Vt. is added in with NY ya gotta admit we are trying for the top spot.

Adirondack Pub & Brewery - Lake George
C.H. Evans/Albany Pump Station - Albany
Bacchus Brewing Co. - Dryden - NEW!
Bandwagon Brew Pub - Ithaca
Barrier Brewing Co. - Oceanside
Black Forest Brew Haus & Restaurant - Farmingdale
Black Heart Brewery - Binghamton - NEW!
Blue Point Brewing Co. - Patchogue
Brewery Ommegang - Cooperstown
Brick House Brewing Co. - Patchogue
Jonas Bronck's Beer Co. - The Bronx - NEW!
The Bronx Brewery - The Bronx - NEW!
Brooklyn Brewery - Brooklyn
Brown's Brewing Co. - Troy
Butternuts Beer & Ale Co. - Garrattsville
Captain Lawrence Brewing - Pleasantville
Cave Mountain Brewing - Windham
Chatham Brewing Co. - Chatham
Chelsea Brewing Co. - Manhattan
Cooper's Cave Ale Co. - Glens Falls
Cooperstown Brewing Co. - Cooperstown
Cortland Beer Co. - Cortland
Crossroads Brewing Co. - Athens
Custom BrewCrafters - Honeoye Falls
Davidson Bros. - Glens Falls
Defiant Brewing Co. - Pearl River
Doc's Draft Hard Ciders - Warwick
Dundee Brewing Co. - Rochester
Ellicottville Brewing Co. - Ellicottville
Empire Brewing Co. - Syracuse
Finger Lakes Beer Co. - Hammondsport - NEW!
Fire Island Beer Co. - Fire Island
Flying Bison Brewing Co. - Buffalo
Gilded Otter - New Paltz
Great Adirondack Brewing - Lake Placid
Great South Bay Brewery - Bay Shore
Greenport Harbor Brewery - Greenport
John Harvard's Brew House - Lake Grove
Heartland Brewery - Manhattan
High Point Brewing Co. - Butler, NJ
Horseheads Brewing Co. - Horseheads
Hyde Park Brewing - Hyde Park
Ithaca Beer Co. - Ithaca
Keegan Ales - Kingston
Keuka Brewing Co. - Hammondsport - NEW!
Kelso of Brooklyn - Brooklyn
Lake Placid Pub & Brewery - Lake Placid
Landmark Beer Co. - Syracuse
Long Ireland Brewing - Port Jefferson Station
Market Street Brewing - Corning
Middle Ages Brewing - Syracuse
Naked Dove Brewing - Canandaigua
Newburgh Brewing Co. - Newburgh - NEW!
Olde Saratoga Brewing Co. - Saratoga Springs
Port Jeff Brewing Co. - Port Jefferson - NEW!
Pearl Street Grill & Brewery - Buffalo
The Peekskill Brewery - Peekskill
Ramapo Valley Brewing Co. - Hillburn - BREWING AGAIN!
Roc Brewing Co. - Rochester - NEW!
Rohrbach Brewing Co. - Rochester
Rooster Fish Brewing Co. - Watkins Glen
Sackets Harbor Brewing Co. - Sackets Harbor
Saranac/Matt Brewing Co. - Utica
Shmaltz Brewing Co. - Saratoga Spgs. & Bklyn.
Sixpoint Craft Ales - Brooklyn
Southampton Ales and Lagers - Southampton
Southern Tier Brewing - Lakewood
Spider Bite Brewing Co. - Holbrook - NEW!
Three Heads Brewing - Rochester - NEW!
Tundra Brewery - Stamford - NEW!
Two Goats Brewing - Hector - NEW!
Upstate Brewing Co. - Elmira - UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Wagner Valley Brewing Co. - Lodi
War Horse Brewing Co. - Geneva - NEW!
Water Street Brewing Co. - Binghamton

 

Whichever region I happen to be drinking in at the moment is my favorite.

 

Best breweries? So Cal, no doubt.
Best area to visit breweries is not So Cal, the distance between places, drive times, and all that you have to deal with here is not as fun as say, Portland where you walk around and can hit 15 great places over a weekend.

 

San Diego, sorry, you all lose.

 

There are really only 4 areas in the US (speaking of larger areas) that produce top notch beer:

West Coast
Colorado
Upper Midwest (From Minnesota to Ohio)
New England/Northeast

All 4 of these regions have badass breweries. But for concentration wise (talking distance between breweries and not even taking into account, population), California wins. To be more specific, southern California wins.

Just my 2 cents tho

 

If you want to compare apples to apples then you have to compare Colorado with only about 1/3 of California (Area AND population) in which case Colorado crushes nothing. Which is also why using the "regions" listed here (on BA) produces no useful information with respect to the "West Coast" A "region" that includes about 1/3 of the globe when you stick Alaska and Hawaii into the mix.

 

Per capita yes, however the question was per region. Colorado is doing a great job regardless of how you measure it. I go there every summer and will be bringing back a major haul again this year. However, my vote goes to California based not only on quantity but also the prevalence of world class breweries whose beers are sought after by BAs everywhere. If you include Oregon in this region then it's a slam dunk, as someone already said.

 

Cali, Midwest (Chicago for GI, Michigan for Founders and Bell's, FFF, others) and possibly the north east like New England area

 

As a former Upstater, I'd love to agree with you but I can't. It's a long way from Plattsburgh to Jamestown. NYS can be divided into at least 9 regions on it's own: Long Island (and you could probably split that in 2, it's a loong island), NYC, Catskills, Mohawk/Hudson Valley, Adirondacks, Central, Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Western. Arguments could also be made for Tug Hill/Watertown, North Country and Thousand Islands. The beer scene in NY was decent when I moved 12 years ago and has only improved since. Cheers to the Empire state. Excelsior!

 

Given the above, note that the entire state of Vermont has about 500,000 people. California has, by my last count, eleventy kajillion people.

It doesn't suck to live in Vermont.

 

And while typing that someone else replied with that point, stated more elegantly. Ah well.

 

Yeah it's a long way around the state, no doubt. The OP was for regions, not cities. I chose Oregon.

I guess you are okay with Midwest as a region but somehow think Long Island, 85 mi. long, 30 mi. wide, should be 2 regions? Is Seattle a region? Or is Washington? To me Seattle is a city, Washington and Oregon both are regions. I bet if you split Washington into sub-regions with your knife there would be almost no breweries outside of the big cities. There are breweries every place here now. New fine ones opening every day

And I was pointing to the 17 new breweries just opened on the list, as well as the total, and personally know of four local ones that haven't even made that list, and the same is true everywhere here now, upstate and downstate, we are really coming along. Vermont OTOH, has much smaller size, and many fantastic breweries, and also many new ones opening.

I didn't say we were there, I said we were getting there. And we are. Fast.

 

Not to take away from you on this one, but when I was living in San Diego, I went surfing in the morning, then skiing in the evening and could have gotten in 9 holes if I hadn't been so damn worn out from all the fun. Along the way, I could have stopped and gotten growlers at The Bruery, Stone, Lost Abbey, Pizza Port (any of the 4), Green Flash, Alesmith and Ballast Point without even going out of my way to do so. Goddamn do I miss living there.

 

It was mostly the native Upstater in me coming out. We get tired of people thinking anything North of the 5 Boroughs as being Upstate. I'd probably divide WA into 6-7 regions, Puget Sound (Olympia -Everett), Northwest (Everett - Border), Olympic Peninsula, Southwest, Cascades, and Eastern Washington (which is pretty big, you could probably slice that one up). And with over 150 breweries we have them in the cities and in small towns (Deming http://www.northforkbrewery.com/ and Odessa http://www.rockycouleebrewingco.com/ among them). I voted for Cascadia, which covers from the CA/OR border to the US/Canada border, so clearly I'm OK with large regions. Long Island sure seemed like it was more than 85 miles long when I had to drive out Riverhead/Mattituck. No doubt, my old home is making some great beer.

 

hmmm. last week or maybe the week before someone tried to innocently point out Pliny was finally de-throwned by some east coast IPA. and the argument began - you can set your watch to this same bullshit.

while my west coast brethren probably should just laugh, but often tend to over react/respond to these threads, one thing seems to be a reoccurring theme, the *innocent* OPs seem to drop some lug suggesting the east coast has it better. maybe they do - long as i have great beer, the rest is irrelevant, but my guess is if it were really that good or superior, they'd be too busy enjoying it to talk about it. as OP put it, the topic is about "thinking" when it ought to be about drinking. to me what's becoming more obvious is which region has the most beards ...with bra straps.

 

there's a reasonable argument, i think, to make regarding the northeast "having it better" than the west coast, in that we seem to get a lot of the west coast and middle america goodies distributed to us, while the west doesn't. that said, we have some huge gaps (e.g. deschutes), and despite places like alchemist and cambridge brewing company, we're probably behind cali, oregon, and colorado when it comes to brewpubs / really small but amazing breweries.

distro-wise, the MA / VT / CT / NY spread is probably #1 unless the big ones we lack (deschutes, bell's, three floyds, whatever) are too big a deal. world class brewery concentration-wise, i don't think california has come close to dipping below #1 since before the "craft beer boom" even really took off.

 

I think the East/West distribution disparity is an important fact to keep in mind when talking about all this. As I understand it, the East Coast and Midwest get a lot more West Coast beers than vice versa, right? (I can probably count on the fingers of two hands the breweries that distribute in my area.) Add to that SN's future brewery in Asheville, Lagunitas in Chicago, maybe other examples I can't think of.

So if supply follows demand, then isn't it a logical conclusion that the demand for West Coast beers in the Midwest/East Coast is higher than the demand for Midwest/East Coast beer in the West? I realize relative population density plays a role too, but I don't think that's the only factor at work.