Does the Mid Atlantic Region Have a Problem Embracing Local Beer?

In part, it depends how you define "Mid-Atlantic" -- VA is included in the South-Atlantic forum, yet much of the state's beer activity could really be included in the M-A forum. There's a lot of talk about VA beer in the S-A forum that we miss out on here.

 

Bourbon County is today's flavor of the day. Just like the beer **** will have nothing but Bourbon County bottles for the next couple of weeks. Herd mentality rules the day.

 

I think the Mid-Atlantic has a donut hole effect of brewery hype.

A lot of "older" established breweries that are putting out consistent widespread beers, but don't drive the hype machine.
A lot of very new, start ups that haven't established enough rep.

Very few of the middle: still small, hyped, high quality, local-only offerings.

It could be a very good scene in the next couple years or you could see a lot of lightly used brewery equipment changing hands...

 

I love local beer. 75% of the beer I drink is brewed in MD/DC/DE/PA. I tend not to post much here about local brews, because I know where to find them/when they are released/etc. I mostly come to this forum to discuss when beers from elsewhere should be arriving, etc.

 

Given I have been at Other Half probably 75% of the weekends since it opened in June, I have the opposite problem, too much local beer !

 

I don't think that's the case at all, you're just asking the question right as BCBS is released, which is a big deal to a lot of people. It doesn't imply anything about love for local beers though.

 

Anyone know where I can get BCBCS in brooklyn? I'm getting fucking desperate here.

Edit - sorry wrong thread.

 

Ok bad joke aside - I don't think there's a major issue here.

1. It's Black Friday = BCBS release, so threads about it shouldn't be surprising.
2. Mid-Atlantic covers a large and highly populated area - so there's always going to be multiple threads about a specific release - where to find BCBS in Baltimore is no use to people from NYC and vice versa.

The other half thread is one of the longest running threads that have existed in this forum, and there are always new threads popping up about breweries and events in the area. Lots of great new breweries are opening up. Things look good to me.

 

I don't think it's the Mid Atlantic region. It's new york......But then again the Other Half thread gets a lot of traffic and rightfully so. So what am i saying? I think you're wrong. I don't know, I'm on my second BCBS.

 

I would love to drink mostly local...but, the brewerries need to step up. My favorite style is IPA....who in MD/DC/VA makes a great or even really good IPA that is widely available? Nada. Great Return is the best but there is nothing else that compares to offerings from Stone/SN/Lagunitas/Green Flash/Victory and many others that you can find fresh everywhere. Locals should step up in quality if they want to do well compared to those guys...and there is a big quality gap. Stone and Green Flash coming to VA will help immensely IMO.

 

I have tried in the past to post about local beers and events in this column, I think it isn't so much true that we lack that here. But, OTOH, I just tried my finest beer of the year from this area and I admit I didn't post a thing about it. Also it was only 300 bottles so what would have been the point?

But why not be proud to post in praise of "ourselves" more? I think we have as fine a beer culture anymore in Mid Atlantic as anywhere around. Especially as Virginia and Connecticut are more properly mid Atlantic.

 

I don't think so. I think the local PA breweries are well represented in the usual topics. If anything, Tired Hands maybe too much....

 

Good beer at every hand here in SE PA

 

I had the same thought as OP, as I'm home for holidays in central NJ...looking for good local beer ideas. Thankful for the Carton thread in the midst of all this BC

 

Well I'm thinking at least part of it is a lot like something I once read. Some years back there was a book/radio/TV series based around the "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy." In one of the books one of the characters describes three stages of civilization in the something like the following way:

In the beginning we humans started off asking something like, "where can we find any to eat?"
The second stage of civilzation involved us asking something like, "what will we eat today?"
In our current stage of civilization began we ask something like, "where should we go for lunch today?"

As @BeerIsland points out, SE PA has no shortage of good beer. (This is also true for a surprisingly large number of other areas in the Mid-Atlantic region.) So the excitement here is generally not generated by finding a good local beer because they are pretty much everywhere. Rather it is generated when something new becomes available that wasn't before because those are the things that are not part of the normal background.

For example, I'm not going to spend time in this forum praising the virtues of Stoudts Pils, Sly Fox Pikeland Pils, Troeg's Sunshine Pils, or even the newer Neshaminy Creek's Trauger Pilsner, because they've been praised before and are pretty much everywhere I look or easy enough to find and I figure most everyone already knows about them. However, if somebody succeeds in getting Traumer Pilsner brought into PA, that's news I want to know about or intend to spread.

 

Tom,

Years ago (10 years?) I used to satisfy my Trumer Pils fix by traveling down to Total Wine & More in Claymont, DE to buy a six pack (or two). Unfortunately Trumer stopped distributing to Delaware. I was bummed out for a while but the fact that we can readily purchase other fine Pilsners in SEPA cheered me up.

Cheers!

Jack

 

My experience from the New England forum is that there's almost always something to discuss about good breweries......be it various releases, distribution issues, etc. Its the meh breweries that basically don't come up in conversation.

 

Maryland threads consist of trying to find a specific non-local beer or a Max's event. Sometimes there is talk of local stuff, but we really only got a few places when it comes to good bottles/cans: Flying Dog (killing it in comparison to the other local big boys), Heavy Seas (doing something new in 2015, for the first time in years), DuClaw (love to hate), Union (great cans, and good but rare bottles), Brewer's Art (same old bottles) and Burley Oak (expensive bottles and starting to can soon).

Maryland is a bit reclusive when it comes to beer on here. It doesn't help that breweries distribute around us in a lot of cases, like Founders, Bell's, and GL. Hell, you take Max's out of the equation and we'd have almost zero presence on this sub-forum.