A local experiment

I kind of am right now. I am on a quest to try at least one beer from every brewer that bottles in Ohio, so my last half dozen beers have been "local"- and I only drink about one beer a week. There are more than enough fine brewers in Ohio that it would keep me happy for a while. And it would probably be a beer from "that state up north" that knocked me off, because I couldn't go too long without some Two Hearted.

 

I agree more with drink whats best, but you could just drink the best local stuff most of the time.

If I get a 100 mile radius rather then all of California it would still work.

My favorites Bear Republic, Lagunitas, speakesy, Russian River, uncommon brewers, 21st Admendment, Magnolia's, Moonlight, Drake's, anderson valley, Anchor, etc

 

Truly drinking local in western PA would require consumption of a lot of mediocre to downright shitty beer. The usual breweries associated with PA (Troegs, Victory, Weyerbacher, etc.) are all in cetral and eastern PA. If you're a hophead like me then no PA breweries are all that great so I sure as hell wouldn't want to drink local at all.

Plus I homebrew. Can't get more local than your own home.

 

I'm in the same boat as yemenmocha. There is a brewpub about 45 miles from my house that serves mediocre beer currently. That's "local" for me. There are some good breweries in Albuquerque and Santa Fe but a 5 or 6 hour drive makes them not very local, and we only get smatterings of their bottled beers down here. I like Marble Brewery and Santa Fe Brewing but I'm not gonna just drink their beers all the time,especially since they only sell a limited selection of what they brew.

 

Hello. To play a little devil's advocate and agree with yemenmocha, if people drink the best they can get their hands on as opposed to what's 'local', then by definition the local economies will benefit. In other words, if your local brewer makes great beer, then people outside of that community will want them and the community will benefit. The good 'local' brewers around the country will flourish and the mediocre or bad ones will not benefit from their mediocrity just because people are drinking local to the exclusion of others. The cream will rise to the top.

It's a little bit like saying your city's pizza is the best, even if you live in a one traffic light town in Montana, and ignore that Chicago, New York, etc will have far superior products. Obviously in this example you can't pick up fresh pizza from NY if you live in Montana, but you get the idea. This also ties in a little bit with the thread about Beer City USA. Most people choose their local scene, because it's their local scene, regardless of what may be in other parts of the country.

Just because it's local doesn't mean it's good.

 

I could easily do a month for NH as well with just Smutty. Open 'local' up to the rest of New England and I could go several months probably.