Best beer drinking area in the US.

You're one of those fellas with a "Native" sticker on your Jeep, aren't you?

 

Out of curiosity, what is your definition of "smaller city"? Asheville, Bend, and my town, Bellingham WA, are all around 80k population, and handily hold our own quality wise against any city in America.

 

Where city in PA are you. My mom lives in mountain top and it's a wasteland for beer.

 

New England is the best area. Mass is killing it but Maine is doing pretty BIG things too if I do say so myself.

 

Portland, OR, and not just because I live there. Some great breweries in the area: Culmination, Breakside, Upright, Cascade, Gigantic, Stormbreaker, Great Notion, Occidental, Zoiglhaus, Ecliptic, Baerlic, Laurelwood, Burnside, Labrewatory, and Wayfinder all make really good beer. I'd even say a handful of those breweries are some of the best of their style in the U.S. (Upright for Saisons, Cascade for sours, Occidental for German lagers) and I'd put Breakside up against any brewery in the U.S.

 

I'd argue that they can be tougher to find in larger cities (like NY, LA, SF, etc.) than most of the smaller "best beer cities" people tend to always name. You might find a couple good to great beer bars in one large Chicago suburb or large section of a NY borough, while if you're used to Ft. Collins, Asheville, or Albuquerque that's going to seem laughable or a pain in the ass. Hence I wouldn't include (m)any large cities on any best of list. If you count ALL of Chicago or NYC, you might as well count the entire CO front range or the whole OR coast, or even a large chunk of New England as single areas. IMO it's about concentration and how integrated it is into the culture.

 

I'd certainly agree on this. Cities with great public transportation, though, make the city seem smaller, IMO, and if you Uber that can help as well.

 

Though I've never been to any of those places, that's what I hear. There are always exceptions on both ends of the spectrum. Small cities that have great beer scenes and large ones that are craft beer deserts.

 

I don't think that I have enough time to type out a list of the 100+ breweries that are within 45 minutes of San Diego. We're definitely a little spoiled.

 

To use my town as an example: Chuckanut is arguably the best lager brewery in America (certainly top 5), Structures is making MurkBroBombs, and Saisons that people across the country seek out, Wander makes a wide variety of styles, all very well done, with an excellent foeder, puncheon, and barrel aging programs, Kulshan and Boundary Bay have the classic NW styles on lockdown, Aslan makes exclusively certified organic brews in pretty much every style (including NA!). These are all in or within a 15-20 minute walk of the downtown core.

Out in the county, Atwood makes great locally sourced brews, and North Fork does English styles and wilds/sours. These two are within a 30 minute drive. 45 minutes, depending on traffic on I-5, gets us to all the breweries in Skagit county, and down to Snohomish, where there's another nest of worthy breweries, highlighted by Skookum in Arlington.

 

In my opinion the best place to drink beer in the US is in Big Mikes barn. I get home from working at the hospital about the same time he finishes welding. The beer is always great, the chairs are comfy and the conversion is always good. We get together every Thursday and maybe once on the weekend. Plus it's only 1/4 mile from my house.

 

I need a week night drinking buddy. The afternoon shift sucks, especially when you're in the country. Sounds like good times in big mikes barn.

 

I would suggest that distribution contributes to a region's beer culture, which is one of the attributes you mentioned in your original post.

Distribution could also affect the quality of the region's beer festivals, which is another of the criteria you mentioned.

As for your original question, Portland, OR is the best beer drinking area in the United States. Here's why:

I can think of a couple barbershops that offer beer. And a couple laundromats. And several coffee shops. And a bike shop. And a record store.

The local minor league baseball team is named after an ingredient in beer: the Hillsboro Hops. (Yes, their mascot is a giant hop cone, perversely named "Barley." Ah well.)

To quote a food-and-drink writer at the weekly newspaper Willamette Week, you can find “...Pfriem Pilsner or Breakside IPA at half the dive bars in town. Mirror Pond and Black Butte at even the crustiest.”

According to the Oregon Brewers Guild, there are 105 breweries in the Portland metro area as of last year. I don't have numbers for bars, bottle shops, and growler stations, but here's a link to this season's "Visiting Portland" thread in the Northwest forum. It's a good list of Portland's highlights, but it's nowhere close to exhaustive.

Festivals? Portland hosts dozens of them each year, for just about every kind of beer you like. The Oregon Beer Festival is the biggest, but my favorite is the Holiday Ale Fest, held in big tents around the giant Christmas tree in Pioneer Square.

One of the best beer events in town is the annual Brews for New Avenues, which raises money for local charities by auctioning rare beer. Last year they raised almost $240,000.

When you're ready to leave Portland, there are multiple bottle shops and growler fill stations past security at PDX. Along with 3 brewpubs and several restaurants with excellent beer options.

As I wrote in another thread not long ago, the beer culture in Portland is damn near pervasive, and is as much a part of the city as trees, bridges, and rain.

Best of all? You don't need to drive. Portland has good public transit. In the warmer/drier months (yes, we do have them), the best way to get around town is on a bike. And of course there's Lyft and Uber.

 

Some folks just don't know.

 

Mt Top you say? I grew up 5 minutes from there.

 

My wife and I always comment that if our "local" pub was actually local and not 30 minutes away, we'd both be in trouble.

 

I'm going with Harrisburg. Many breweries very close and even some in York. Tröegs is only about 20-25 minutes away.

 

I live in a suburb of Philly. Very different from Mountain Top: beer wise and otherwise.

I am sure that your mother lives in a pretty area.

Cheers!