Coming Home to Local Beer

I too tire of folks assuming everyone likes IPAs. A local brewery just came out with two new beers, both IPAs. And a distributor is bringing in a new major brewery to the area, and all of the initial brews are IPAs and APAs. I suppose IPA/APA drinkers are the majority, particularly in warm weather, but how about some porter/stout love?

 

Do you consider a brewery in Newark "local"?

Cheers!

 

That is certainly the number 1 selling style of craft beer (year-round).

Cheers!

 

Last year during the Craft Brewers Conference in Philly I ran into (talked) to some brewers from RJ Rockers (Spartanburg); do they make good beers?

Cheers!

 

I prefer local fresh beer, But having the selection I have in Norcal makes me pretty lucky.

 

While I love supporting local breweries but I think my beer priorities really are -

1. Quality
2. Opportunity (good reviews, have not had it yet)
3. Vicinity (buy local)
4. Price
5. Convenience (price in disguise)

 

You got me there, friend. Guess I can buy a Budweiser and say "Drink fresh, drink local!"

Aside: I wish ballantine, Schaefer, Rheingold were still brewed in NJ. I still drink the first two (never got to try Rhinegold before they killed it) but I know damn well it's not local anymore. Glad the beer scene in Jersey is finally getting out of the shadow of its former self!

 

For the most part no, a couple of decent seasonals and one offs

 

Local options are exploding here, you can look at the beer wall and it reflects fresh and local. There's so many I'll never get around to a good many. I don't see any 100 score kinda beers, but Buriel comes close with a few, Wicked Weed has a few, Westbrook. Then there's a relatively new Haw River with sour and funk, that's just different.

 

I'd say no too.

 

My drinking decision is as follows:

• Do I want an IPA? Yes --> Local direct from the brewery or local bottle/can bottled within two weeks.
• Nor Cal (include FW)
• All California
• Pacific (Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, Colorado)
• Founders and Cigar City - Wild cards (drink whenever I find it).

I would love to drink local, but the South SF Bay Area is average at best. If i could make it to Cellarmaker more than once every 2-3 months, I would be drinking a lot more local.

 

I am fortunate to have a very strong local brewer as well as outstanding regionals. Price point mostly wins but not always. I won't buy something I dislike even if it's cheap or popular. Quality and style matter.

 

Schaefer Beer was never brewed in NJ, but they had us surrounded - to the east in Brooklyn, west in Allentown, PA, north in Albany and south in Baltimore. Obviously, a huge market for Schaefer, they even self-distributed in North Jersey (NJ license ABC WL-6, w/office in Newark but I suspect the trucks came straight out of Kent Ave brewery in Brooklyn).

From what I saw once legal (early '70s) in central NJ it was the most common "regional" AAL draught choice but that could have been different in northern towns closer to Rheingold's Orange brewery.

Heck, they even offered a map of "Picnic Land New Jersey".



Never bought much bottled/canned Schaefer (I'd pick Rheingold for packaged AAL over it) but I loved Schaefer draught. Of course, the fact that I could throw two bucks* on the bar, get 4 glasses of beer and play 6 games of pinball and still leave a 16% tip (you bet I pocketed the other quarter) adds to the nostalgia.
* $2 = hourly pay. Yes, a few raises put me well above the $1.50 minimum!

 

Back in the day quite a few bars had two draft options; Budweiser and Schaefer. The former was .20 a glass the former .15 cents. We couldn't drink two bucks worth of beer. I'm guessing 1973 or so.

 

I think it obviously depends on what your local options are. I also think the posts about cost are spot on. 4 bucks a can (to-go) for IPAs and 12 bucks a bottle for your local (so-so) BA stout or something off the shelf from someplace like Lagunitas that is better for 1/3 of the price. If there are tons of great local options, then its pretty easy to say drink local.
With that said, I travel a lot and am constantly picking up whatever's local to the area I'm currently visiting.

 

Depends on what you call 'local.'

I live in the Great New England Beer Desert of southwest New Hampshire BUT I can get to Boston, Framingham, Monson, Portland, Portsmouth, Stowe, Greensboro, etc. and be home again before the kids get out of school.

So, if local is within a two and a half hour drive, I probably drink something like 99% local.

 

Doesn't seem fair to be so close yet so far. I'm sure Eastern NC Distro isn't as good as we get here, there's just not the population and then there's distance. Local IPA options are teffiffic, sours and funks galore between WW and Haw River. If you can find TenFidy you about have it covered. Great Pils and Lagers as well.

 

Gotta agree with OP about NY beers and raise my hand as someone who has passed the 50% mark for purchasing beer brewed within 50 miles (more like 35 miles) of here. No sacrifice about it, either. Mid Hudson Valley New York has world class IPA of all types, sours, wilds, stouts, barley wines, and authentically brewed German styles. Going to a local today to pick up some Pilsners at Suarez Family Brewers. Life is good, local is better.

 

All things being equal, I'll choose to support local breweries whenever possible. Unfortunately however, all things are not equal when it comes to breweries.

I have given the limited number of breweries in my area multiple tries over a period of time, and unfortunately they are just not making beer anywhere near the quality of other places. The closest brewery making decent beer is about an hour drive from my home. I visited there yesterday as a matter of fact, but it's just not feasible for me to make a trip there often just to have a couple of beers.

Hopefully one day a good quality brewery will open nearer to me, along with a decent beer store (right now the nearest ok one is about a 45 minute drive from me, hard to believe in southern California) and when they do you can bet I will support them.

 

Insightful as always, @jesskidden . Thanks.

I can't think of why I always thought Schaefer was a Newark brewery. Perhaps it's because my great-uncle was from Newark and drank cases upon cases of Rheingold, Ballantine and Schaefer so I lumped them all together in my head.