ISO : Recommendation for my winter beer trip.

Denver! You can find great stuff there as well as take advantage of the snow in the mtns if you desire. Then, why not drive across interstate 70 to St Louis for perennial,sp, and narrow gauge, then they have a fine international airport to leave for home.

 

Burlington, Vermont, with a side trip to Hill Farmstead. The only bad thing here is it would be winter, but if you're looking for a great experience, you can't go wrong.

 

With your admitted driving inexperience, and since you will be here in the winter, you'll want to choose your routes carefully.

 

I love Michigan and it is beautiful in the Winter with plenty of great beers and great winter sporting activities, as well as big city life in Detroit, Grand Rapids etc....

But if I were travelling from Asia, I'd pick Denver out of what you listed.

 

An easy answer would be Asheville.

You wouldn't need to drive at all if you didn't want to. Tons of breweries within walking distance of each other. Although, you would probably want to find a way to get out to the Sierra Nevada establishment that is a bit out of town.

I was there in 2016 for 4 days and had a ton of fun. Great beer, great restaurants and lots of other things to check out while in the area.

If you didn't mention your driving concern I would say Burlington/Waterbury/Hill Farmstead would be worth a trip. Winter is awesome in the North East, so many fun activities. Things are just a little spread out and public transportation is always possible. (although you may be able to find a nice BA that would help you out).

 

Colorado is awesome but it'll be cold in the winter. Do you ski or snowboard? If so, it's great for that. Beer wise, you could pretty feasibly hit Crooked Stave, Casey, and Avery on the same trip, but it'll require some driving. Beautiful part of the country but peak coldness January-February. It sounds like you travel a lot, so maybe hold off on this until you can go some time between May and September. Rocky Mountain National Park is worth working into your plans as well.

San Diego is absolutely beautiful. One of the nicest cities in the country, in my opinion. Even in January, the weather will typically hover between 50 and 60 F. I personally was not blown away by the beers I had there but I was only there for 4 days. I'm East Coast biased, probably, as San Diego is known for its beer. You can take day trips to places like La Jolla as well. Amazing beaches. It'll be nicer May-September, but tolerable year-round.

 

The obvious answer for that time of year would be warm and sunny Tampa. I'm not sure what the options for including Miami would be without driving, but you should be easily able to Uber or cab to a number of breweries in and around Tampa, plus it'll be warm.

 

You will get the most enjoyment from Colorado. Plus weed is recreational which only amps up the fun.

 

I have gotten sun tans in february in Denver. I have shoveled feet of snow off my driveway as well. It's a crap shoot as to what Colorado weather will do. That being said, nobody is doing what Casey is doing right now.
Also, we have several fallout shelters in case North Korea sends us one of those special packages.

 

The weather in the Midwest is pretty bad in the winter, but there's quite a few really good beer cities fairly close together. Maybe a summer trip sometime? Chicago has tons of great breweries, so do Minneapolis, and decorah and Des Moines. You better like driving though, Chicago to Des Moines is close to 6 hours.

 

Cross off Miami for now. Major hurricane will make landfall or nearby in 2 days. 1 more behind. Check option for it next month.

 

I vote Wisconsin. I've been several places for "Beercations" and Wisconsin is easy to navigate, home to New Glarus (you can only get it within state lines, and some beers are brewery only), and a short 2 hour drive south will get you into the outer suburbs of Chicago where you'll find a whole mess of great breweries.

New England area is also a great place to go. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont.

Both of those will likely be having some snow around that time though. Just rent a vehicle with 4WD, and stay at the hotel and imbibe your purchases during any snowstorms.

 

Just be advised that I70 can get shut down due to storms along long stretches in Kansas. Denver is a solid option just on its own though! Lots of good stuff going on over there.


St. Louis is a strong option in itself. SP and Perennial are both cranking out excellent stouts and sours. Then you have Narrow Gauge which is producing world class NE IPAs under the radar. No distribution for two of those three breweries, but you can grab bottles at SP, and crowlers at Narrow Gauge. Suppose the awkward part is getting around that city. At least I found it a bit strange to drive between those breweries which have a surprising amount of distance between them.

There is, or was (this was this past March), a cheap airbnb right around the corner from Side Project. Think I spent $40 a night to stay there, drinking SP every afternoon into the night for a couple days. Schlafly Bottleworks is right there, along with lots of local restaurants.

SP was serving up a Casey's collaboration on my visit. Absolutely delicious. It was pretty darn limited though, with no to-go options, so I don't know if that is still an option in their taproom. That delicious nectar certainly made me want to visit Casey's sometime soon.

 

Of course everybody chooses their home state. Minnasota in the winter. Seriously? My father went to college on Lake Superior in Northern Wisconsin. He said it didn't snow that much but when it did it didn't stop for a week lol. Let's not even the discuss the average January low temperature of 8 degrees in Minneapolis....anyway, on to the question at hand:

Since you are making it a winter trip I would absolutely choose San Diego + Los Angeles. Personally though, I'd skip over LA entirely and just spend more time in San Diego. It's a wonderful city.

Are you taking a car? If so, I'd suggest driving to/from California over to Las Vegas, then down into Arizona. You could hit up the Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon and finish off in Phoenix (or if you REALLY want to make a road trip of it, keep going south to Tucson and perhaps Tombstone if you are really feeling adventureous). If you do end up in Phoenix I suggest driving up to South Mountain. It's a fun drive but it's certainly no Mt. Lemmon (that's down in Tucson....snow storms shut down the summit on occasion. ~9,100 feet of elevation tends to do that).

If you aren't taking a car, I'd suggest you just hang out in San Diego, stuff your face with Mexican food and enjoy all the excellent bars/breweries. That's what I'd do. Either way, you'll have a blast.

 

Austin, Texas

get yourself to Jester King somehow

spend the rest of the winter (enjoy the warmth *and* the beer)

 

If you get to St. Louis (well worth it for Perennial, Side Project, Narrow Gauge, and others), take the ~1.5 hour trip to southern Illinois for Scratch and White Rooster. Scratch is beautiful, out in the middle of nowhere in the woods and the majority of their beers are completely unlike any other you'll find. They usually have ~5 bottles available, all fantastic and only available at the brewery (or Chicago, if you're lucky). You won't find any brewery in the world quite like Scratch. White Rooster is in the same general area as Scratch. It's in a tiny town, not in the woods like Scratch, but their beers are fantastic (doing a couple NEIPAs these days) and they always have several bottled BA sours available. Two fantastic breweries that are well worth the trip from St. Louis and a great change of pace from the city atmosphere.

And St. Louis is a day's drive from Colorado, with KC and other breweries in between, so you could easily fly in/out of St. Louis if you're in Colorado.