It's an easy subject to debate. Being in the Midwest I am close to several great craft beer markets. But if you had to make a list of the top 10-20 areas to get great craft beer what would it be? What makes a great craft beer city? Variety? Quality / Excellence? Competition? Experimental Brews? Let's discuss.
One thing is the people. I live in Philadelphia, a town which has always been a beer town, and it's always been a draft beer city as well. That leads to a bar culture unlike what you'll find in many other places. You might have as many bars somewhere else but it's somehow different. That led to variety. And, the love of draft beer also led Tom Peters (now of Monk's fame, but I think it was Copabanana back then) to become the first person in America to import draft Belgian beer. As for competition, I think it's just the opposite. There's some of that but for the most part it's camaraderie.
Competition and collaboration. Sounds contradictory but they can do both. Our local breweries are competing for customers based on their beers, prices, service, and coolness of their taprooms. At the same time, they realize that growing a beer community requires them to work as a team - so they're serving each others beers and having tap takeovers featuring local and/or regional beers.
What makes a great beer city? Great beer first. Lots of options. Great Vibe. Asheville NC has transformed over last 5 years into just an amazing place. Cool little city and my only regret for them are all the tower cranes downtown and construction. It is not an accident that within 20 mins is Oskar Blues (ok in Brevard), Sierra Nevada (a shrine to beer) andNew Belgium right on the river in town decided to go there. The impossible to keep up ever changing landscape of the south slope with tiny upstarts is just an awesome place to explore and great dining places showcasing local beer just makes it an awesome place to visit.
For me, a great craft beer city has a good variety of breweries to choose from. Also, how the city embraces beer is important . For example, do local bars and restaurant serve craft beer or is it just BMC? I think San Diego exemplifies this definition.
Great topic @BrianKremmel Grand Rapids, MI Austin, TX Columbus, OH Those have been the best beer cities Ive been to. I'd like to go to Asheville NC and Bend OR at some point. I think a good beer city comes down to number of good breweries (plus one or two GREAT nationally recongized brewery). Plus, good food and bottle shops.
Thanks for the info. I had no idea about the first person to impert Belgian beer to the us. Hats off to Tom!
Austin is great, and for so many reasons. Loved the food and beer culture there. Thanks for the feedback. I will add these three plus the two others to my list.
“What makes a great craft beer city?” Lots of choices of high quality beer to drink. If you are a hophead and like hoppy beers like IPAs, then plenty of IPAs to choose from. If you prefer Pilsners, plenty of Pilsners to choose from. And so on. Until recently the above paragraph would be sufficient for most folks but with the burgeoning drink local movement I suspect that plenty of folks would add the adjective of local to the above verbiage. For example, plenty of local IPAs to choose from. The US craft beer industry has really grown over the past 5-10 years so luckily there are a number of US cities that are “great craft beer cities”. Cheers!
