On a more serious note, sometimes I will use other factors to decide. For example, Warwick Farms has a really pleasant outdoor setting, a beer garden on the front lawn: My wife and I (and friends) have had many pleasant Happy Hour visits during the late spring and early fall times of the year. Good beer, good company and we would pack a picnic meal as well. Cheers to lots of great choices!!
It was really bizarre to see. Although the whole of the intermountain/northern rockies area had a ton of new construction. We were all over Idaho, eastern washington, western montana, and down through the salt lake area and there was noticeable construction activity everywhere. That area of north boise was really something else though. Neighborhoods going up so fast that gps wasnt even caught up
Ha! Forgot about that, I’ve driven by Albertson’s Stadium quite a few times but unfortunately haven’t had the opportunity to attend a game there. “The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl” would be a blast to see in person!
Pretty good in SWPA? I feel like the distros here carry a decent mix of quality local stuff, good regional/nationally distributed craft, and overseas imports (love seeing all the German options). Selection is a little IPA-heavy but not wildly so. Farmer's markets have a few booths from local brewers as well with offerings that I don't see at the distros. There are some rarer finds I've seen in a couple specialty bottle shops offering singles, but they charge dearly for them unfortunately.
East-West highway routes all are getting stop lights and widened to 4+ lanes and corporate America building in at all corner locations. There not all from California many are moving from Washington. It's cheaper to live here no doubt. It reminds me of Temecula, Ca. that area 25 years ago no thanks it's an overcrowded traffic nightmare.
Where I'm at in Central CA I wouldn't say that there's anyone locally that's consistently cranking out truly top tier stuff, but I also wouldn't say that we're too diluted with mediocre local beer either. We've got quite a few breweries around where you can reliably get a quality pint; far more that are worth going to than avoiding. Our craft beer bars and bottle shops do a pretty good job of bringing in really good beer from outside the area like Russian River, Alvarado Street, Cellarmaker… As markets have shifted over the years I've seen some of the bigger out of the area/state breweries either stop distributing to us, or cut back to sending just their flagships which tend to collect dust. There are times where it feels like we get passed over. I've been in the Bay Area and found good stuff there that I never see at home and I know the truck it was on just drove right past us without stopping. Overall, I'm pretty happy with our scene and feel like I've got a pretty consistent supply of good beer. I'd love to see a local brewery take that next step and put themselves on the map as a top tier spot. I also wouldn't mind seeing a few things come in through distribution that I think we're missing out on. That being said, I know that there are far worse places to be, even within just a few hours of me with far more mediocre local beer and even less distro to pick up the slack.
