State of Craft Beer Map

Especially when the state doesn't have a lot of the most important ingredient/resource - water.

 

Very interesting. Just went to Oklahoma and found some good beer there but no big breweries

 

The numbers are from 2014. CA is listed as having 431.
https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics/by-state/?state=CA

If you look at the find a brewery button, you get 716, as that would be for people looking today.

https://www.brewersassociation.org/directories/breweries/?term=California&searchby=statename

 

Mississippi has a "storied" history, but never discount the place. Oxford is great, and Yazoo City, full of history and very beautiful. The story of Vicksburg is worth studying closely. While not a great beer state by any means, the people are very cool and will get there in time.

 

431 breweries in CA? Damn, I got some work to do.

 

Though it doesn't look great on the map, I'm so proud of VT at 8.6 breweries per capita!

 

As a life-long North Carolinian, I'm still amazed by the great and relatively new beer culture here. Lots of old English, Scottish, and German blood in these parts. And also new blood and money from all over the world. This is a great place to live!

 

Nothing on the statistics is about how much is consumed in each state. Or even sold. It's about the amount being produced...

 

The amount brewed is what the BA tracks. They don't track where it goes as far as I know.

The amount of craft beer consumed in MI is below the national average, according to the Michigan Beer Guide. Bells and Founders are the big guys here, but a large portion of what they brew goes out of state. BMC and Labatts have the big consumption numbers here.

Maybe @jesskidden would have an idea as to Craft Consumed by state, but that would be a tough figure to track.

 

What I was saying. Seemed weird Sixpoint wanted to talk about consumption but these statistics have nothing to do with consumption.

 

One elephant in the room is what is produced, and what the customer purchases. One could think a large amount of production is on the self, not sold.

One warning sign that the auto industry was not doing well, even in the light of high production numbers, were large amounts of new vehicles sitting in storage lots. Short term numbers were good, then reality set in and the metal had to be moved at deep discounts, leading to poor numbers for that quarter.

 

The way I read Sixpoint's post was he wasn't talking specifically about this map's stats (yeah, despite his intro of "It also doesn't consider..." ) but giving other examples of commonly noted brewing industry data, like per capita consumption, which can be imprecise because in-state sales don't always mean in-state consumption due to border-hoppers or the large amounts of buyers (tourists) who are not included in the state population on which the "per capita" figure is based.

 

For those interesred, One report I read about New Mexico is that 95% of what is brewed stays in state. So that's one glimpse. Looking at BA state stats, they rank 31st in barrelage at 77,049 barrels. 73,196 barrels stay in state. Does anyone know of any other states stay in state percentage?

 

Best I could find for MI was 2013 data. 58% of the production was shipped out of state, the big ones were a Bell's and Founders, which is no surprise. As those breweries have grown a lot, and added more states to their distribution, that % has probably gone up a little.

 

^thanks for that. I'm trying to gauge on a per capita type basis how NM ranks among others. For a rough estimate MI produced 825,103 barrels in 2014. If they kept 42% for instate consumption 346,543 barrels got consumed by 9.91 million people (including everyone for both states). I think my math is right in which it says 1.08 gallons/person is what MI consumes of local product, while NM sits at 1.13 gallons/person consumed. Now NM had about 1.7% more people under the age of 18 (couldn't find data for 21+). So thr data may be closer to beijg the same.

I guess my point is BAs gallons per adult is an okay figure. I like the gallons consumed of in state beer figure a bit more. 3.6 vs. 1.6 is what BA says for MI vs. NM on gallons per adult. A rough estimate of what stays in state makes things much closer.

Not sure what I just proved. It's early

 

exactly what @jesskidden said - apologies for taking the thread a bit off-topic

but back on the original topic - the central point here is that these statistics often don't tell the whole story, or sometimes they are entirely misleading.

The reason why certain states' craft beer production is "booming" is because of the opening of a larger facility, and/or a shift in production capacity. And a lot of times this is to service a neighboring state, where there may be logistical and/or tax advantages.

Either way, these figures can be useful, but its more important to know what is driving the data (the why instead of the what).

cheers

 

Number of breweries per population base and within distances of each other matters a little bit. Distribution footprint of the breweries beers matters a little bit (ease to obtain beers).

What matters most in a state by state comparison is the BA beer rating averages of said breweries. You can be in an area with 30 breweries all within a 30 mile radius, but if the there is hardly any beers produced by any of them rated in the mid 4's here on BA and the average beer ratings are in the low to mid 3's....I really don't have much care to beer-cation or mule home any beers from that area at all, even if there are breweries all within walking distance from one another.

 

Yay New York! Seriously though-- lots of good stuff going on with craft brewing and beer culture in general in NY. Even better... a lot of it is happening upstate and there a lot of beer lovers in the hills doing their thing.

 

Are wine sites known for distorting the craft beer industry? If so please tell me about this, I'm honestly interested as I'm a cross-over

 

upon observing this list I'm reminded of an old Alabama saying, passed down from generation to generation, "Hey, at least we're not Mississippi"