"Best Beer Cities"

San Diego had to pressure wash their sidewalks because of the hepatitis lol

 

Kansas is literally paying people $15k to come live there. Yeah, I'll take San Diego ANY FREAKING DAY over Kansas.

 

Wow... Cincinnati #1...how nice for us.

I'm happy with the beer options here, but this surprises me.

I'm not too sure about the $4.00 average price of a pint .
Pretty sure I'm calling bullshit on that one.

 

Burlington VT always seems to make one of these lists. Not this time

And what the hell does average number of beers per brewery have to do with anything?

This list is beyond stupid.

 

They didn’t say good breweries- just breweries! Which makes this list worthless in my opinion!

 

Read their method again. It's the "average price for a pint of domestic beer" not "craft" beer.

 

The meaning of true freedom

 

Ahhh, my bad!

 

Can't get behind this list. I've been to many of the cities on this list (and ones that are oddly missing), and the metrics don't line up with what I consider.

San Diego as many pointed out should be very highly ranked. If I were to list a Top 5 based on cities I've been to (and trying to frame it against how they are ranking cities);
1) Asheville NC
2) Portland, OR
3) Denver, CO
4) San Diego, CA
5) Bend, OR

 

Boise >>>> Columbus??

 

Everyone hates the methodology for this list, right?

 

No Chicago = irredeemable list.
Feast on this list's flesh, Nazgûls...

 

Dumb list

 

If I was motivated by the price of a pint or the number of beers a brewery offers, this data would intrigue me. But I'm motivated by the quality of the beer, so not so much on the interest level.

I will say that seeing Indianapolis ranked so highly vs Chicago and Minneapolis (the cities I've beer nerded in the most) made me LOL. That's some funny stuff right there.

 

Chicago is #33 on the list, sneaking in just ahead of Lawrence, KS.

Phew!!!

 

Seems like beer tourism should be a metric...how many people are willing to travel to the city primarily for beer?

 

Including “bars per 100,000” and “price per beer” ensures that tourist areas and cities with large/multiple colleges will score high.

I'd like to see a similar list based on retail availability “50 Best Cities for Bottles and Cans of Beer”.

Almost all “craft beer” is “domestic beer” (not imported). All of the beers in the photo are domestic.

That one really threw me.

 

One last comment - how did Decorah, IA (population: 7,701), with TG and Pulpit Rock, not make this list? That's nearly 26 breweries per 100,000 citizens. And both breweries have 150 or so beers listed

I'm flummoxed.

Wait - KBBS is $100/12 oz (waxed) bottle, so that's $133/pint.

Alas, Decorah is sunk by the $133 pint once again.

 

The thread title is misleading. The article is not ranking "Best Beer Cities", but rather, "Best Cities for Beer Drinkers." and their methodology I would summarize as "Cities with the most breweries, most local beer, with a per capita component, and cheapest beer."

Or, even more succinctly, "The biggest variety of cheap beer per capita."

Kinda puts a different spin on it, right?

 

CA cities always get screwed in lists like these because of factors like "ratio of drinking establishments per capita" (we have HUMONGOUS cities which is like comparing apples to oranges with smaller cities, imo). Not to mention, while "L.A. proper" has only 4 million residents, the endless city sprawl we all consider "LA" has closer to 12 million or more residents, they just live under different city names like Burbank, Long Beach, El Segundo, etc. Sure, those are their own cities but they are, for all intents and purposes, "LA." These lists never consider that.

Another factor we get dinged for in CA is "cost of an average pint" or whatever. If any of us GAF about the cost of living, we wouldn't live in CA. Therefor I feel like that's a dumb metric to measure us against.

I live in an area where I have easy, easy, easy access to enough local, world-class beer that I could never drink another beer made outside of southern California and be completely happy for the rest of my life. I'd never run out of new beers to try, either. Not seeing how some small town with a handful of breweries and cheaper beer has it better than us. I wouldn't trade what we have here for that. No way. Get real.