Probably. Their RateBeer data indicates only 12 breweries, which seems like it's off by 2-4 fold? There must be at least 30 places within city limits, no? Maybe another 20 or so within 5-10 miles?
They also don't note the brands with East Coast production there like, say, Sierra Nevada and Oscar Blues, which would be hard to argue don't count as breweries.
Anyway, Santa Rosa is so small, it could really be the winner. But per capita, it would be hard to imagine anywhere else besides Asheville would be the spot.
I'm enjoying Chicago's position on that list. Within, say, 3 miles of my house on the North Side there's probably 10-15 breweries plus one distillery I know of.
At the same time, I've seen a few of these small places close up shop. In one case it was a lease dispute with the landlord and they simply couldn't afford to open up again in a new place. It's a tough business for sure and many of these breweries certainly seem to be a labor of love, profitable perhaps, but I think they're in it for the brewing.
I was a bit disappointed not to see DC on the list (or at least, not very high). While the city itself isn't great, Loudoun County (2nd county to the West) has an ever-expanding selection of small breweries.
That's what is great about the initial load where they try and show your city and what it is ranked. It is a great hook to get people to read why their city is ranked highly by the geniuses that built the list or why their city was unfairly punished by this shit-ranking system that has all sorts of obvious, monumental flaws. (I'm kidding here. I was just really impressed by the subtle-ish localization as a content hook in a unique way.)
Not really sure how they get the number of breweries. Here's all the ones I can think of in the Cleveland area (17) and I can't get it to show up on any list in that map with any filter set.
Bottle House
Brew Kettle
Brick and Barrel
Buckeye
Cornerstone
Fat Heads
Forest City
Goldhorn
Great Lakes
Hansa
Market Garden
Masthead
Nano
Platform
Portside
Sibling Revelry
Terrestrial
I don't live there, visit frequently, but how the hell is Lexington, KY not on the list? I've been to Grand Rapids, Asheville, Ann Arbor, Denver, Fort Collins, etc and the breweries in Lexington stack up with any of the ones listed. Country Boy and West Sixth have a lot of fantastic beers, the newer breweries (MirrorTwin, Ethereal, Blue Stallion, etc) are really good as well.
What you say is true now ( I don't have first-hand experience), but 20 years ago Denver/Boulder/Ft. Collins was already a hot-bed for microbrews. Before the US as a whole got on board the microbrew-train, the situation was different. There is a reason the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) is in Denver, and the home brewers association is based in Boulder.
With an over abundance of excellent breweries and tons of data I'll forgive any of these lists (top breweries, top beers, best cities etc) for introducing some form of bias. It's inevitable.
One flaw I will take issue with in the 'microbrew capital' list is that it's somewhat irrelevant when you take into account distribution. Hill Farmstead and The Alchemist will make anyone's top ten yet they are not in catchment for Burlington VT.
I'm also truly surprised not to see Boston show up anywhere on this list no matter how I tweak the inputs. There are multiple dozens of breweries within the metro area.
Without question, Portland ME is a mecca. But MA & VT cities don't seem to make the cut while clearly over representing in the 'top' lists?
I'll take this list with a pinch of Irish Moss to damp it down a little.
Here's one of the more compelling brewery reports I've seen recently
Boston is not surprising to me. As a Boston resident when I visit other major metropolitan areas they are exceeding Boston in microbrews and brewpubs, very likely due to cheaper real estate and maybe easier to navigate regulation.
Minneapolis is a great comparison, lots of breweries and tap rooms relatively speaking vs. Boston.
I had the same reaction about Boston, and decided to look a little closer.
I am not sure how the city selection works. Tree House is more than 50 miles from Boston, so it doesn't get included. But if you move the selector to 1+ breweries and 50 miles, then Treehouse shows up, under Chicopee, MA. Which is an interesting choice, because Treehouse is less than 50 miles from Worcester, which is also less than 50 miles from Trillium (although barely), which would certainly show up.
So, maybe there are some details around the "grouping" that aren't clear. Maybe the brewery gets "pinned" to the closest city with more than 40K people?
it's also quite unclear how he used the Ratebeer data.
"Data from RateBeer. Only breweries with 3+ beers that were reviewed 10+ times and 50+ total reviews were included. Restricted each brewery to its top 10 beers by review count (which accounted for greater than 90% of all reviews)."
And yet Santa Rosa, his primary example, lists the breweries
Bear Republic
Cooperage
Fogbelt
Henhouse
Moonlight
...but not Russian River?! It's pretty obvious that Russian River is better rated than Bear Republic, especially by his extended criteria.
So, yeah, I guess I'd like to see his data and code.
I'm in Portland right now. The number of breweries in Oregon is mind blowing. I just visited a town of 7,000 people that has multiple craft breweries[1]. The reason Oregon has so many is the hipster foodie demographic, good water, a most importantly a plentiful supply of both hops[2] and barley from Pacific Northwest farms.
I think Bend stacks up pretty nicely on a per-capita basis.
Unpopular opinion: I wish the US did more wine though. Beer is great when it's hot and sunny out, but when it's cold/rainy/snowy out, I'll take wine or bourbon or a cocktail or something.
The US is the 4th largest wine producing country in the world. To be sure a significant portion of that is low quality wine made with grapes from California's Central Valley. But the US is a big wine producer across a wide spectrum of quality and cost points.
Wine production isn't really as widespread as beer in the US but that's partly a function of the climates where grapes grow well (and economically relative to their quality). Add in fruit wines and things are a bit more widespread.
A nod to your username, that's one of my favorite coffee shops on the Wet Side of the state. If one were to make the WW booze pilgrimage I suggest it would be worth also checking out the Spokane fermentation scene. It seems like there's a new craft brewery opening every week here and there are wineries and craft distilleries sprinkled all around the greater GEG area.
Oregonians seem to overcompensate for their beer and undercompensate for their skiing. I came from Colorado; when I say Oregon skiing's good I get strange looks, but when I say the beer scene is equal, them's fightin' words.
I found their data source interesting - "Only breweries with 3+ beers that were reviewed 10+ times and 50+ total reviews were included." In my city there are probably 12+ breweries, but almost none of them meet the requirements on RateBeer set out by this article to qualify.
Bit disappointing to me. Cities may have various concentration of "picobreweries" not big enough to have a presence on RateBeer. I know I've been to many such breweries on the east coast. Not that I know how an effort of similar scope would account for that nor how strong this effect would be.
Santa Rosan checking in. Can confirm, we have a lot of really great breweries here. I'm surprised there was no mention of Pliney the Younger by Russian River Brewery in the article. This town fills up with people from around the world when that beer comes out. I've never actually tried it because I have better things to do than wait in line for 3 hours for a beer. Especially when there are so many top shelf selections to choose from.
It is a little odd that Russian River doesn't show up in the "Top Breweries" list. I like Bear Republic, but I would go to RR any day over them, and not just for Pliny.
I think the subjectivity of this kind of data ruins any value in statistical/scientific analysis.
For example, my beer taste developed while I lived in Michigan. The craft scene is more spread out there, but there is a ton of high quality IPAs, Stouts and Porters being brewed in the metro Detroit area.
Now I live in Austin, and the beer here is crap in those categories, but stronger in the Pilsners and Pale Ales. When people down here rate breweries, it is usually much more focused on those categories, thus putting Austin at #13, even though it is trash compared to a Dark Horse, or a Dragonmead, in the "harder to do right" categories. It's just that they don't know any better.
EDIT: But aside from that the presentation was nice, and well executed
Any idea why Hood River, OR doesn't factor in? Is there a minimum population cutoff? With 5 breweries and a population of 7,624 it comes out to 65 breweries per 100k.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadBut they really aren't. GR doesn't even rank in the top 20, in any of the metrics listed.
https://pudding.cool/2017/04/beer/
https://www.ratebeer.com/p/founders-brewing-company-grand-ra...
They also don't note the brands with East Coast production there like, say, Sierra Nevada and Oscar Blues, which would be hard to argue don't count as breweries.
Anyway, Santa Rosa is so small, it could really be the winner. But per capita, it would be hard to imagine anywhere else besides Asheville would be the spot.
At the same time, I've seen a few of these small places close up shop. In one case it was a lease dispute with the landlord and they simply couldn't afford to open up again in a new place. It's a tough business for sure and many of these breweries certainly seem to be a labor of love, profitable perhaps, but I think they're in it for the brewing.
Why, clearly it's [my city].
None of the above are actually in Phoenix (Tempe and Chandler mostly) so you may be correct :).
Bottle House Brew Kettle Brick and Barrel Buckeye Cornerstone Fat Heads Forest City Goldhorn Great Lakes Hansa Market Garden Masthead Nano Platform Portside Sibling Revelry Terrestrial
One flaw I will take issue with in the 'microbrew capital' list is that it's somewhat irrelevant when you take into account distribution. Hill Farmstead and The Alchemist will make anyone's top ten yet they are not in catchment for Burlington VT.
I'm also truly surprised not to see Boston show up anywhere on this list no matter how I tweak the inputs. There are multiple dozens of breweries within the metro area.
Without question, Portland ME is a mecca. But MA & VT cities don't seem to make the cut while clearly over representing in the 'top' lists?
I'll take this list with a pinch of Irish Moss to damp it down a little.
Here's one of the more compelling brewery reports I've seen recently
http://flowingdata.com/2015/10/26/top-brewery-road-trip-rout...
Minneapolis is a great comparison, lots of breweries and tap rooms relatively speaking vs. Boston.
I am not sure how the city selection works. Tree House is more than 50 miles from Boston, so it doesn't get included. But if you move the selector to 1+ breweries and 50 miles, then Treehouse shows up, under Chicopee, MA. Which is an interesting choice, because Treehouse is less than 50 miles from Worcester, which is also less than 50 miles from Trillium (although barely), which would certainly show up.
So, maybe there are some details around the "grouping" that aren't clear. Maybe the brewery gets "pinned" to the closest city with more than 40K people?
it's also quite unclear how he used the Ratebeer data. "Data from RateBeer. Only breweries with 3+ beers that were reviewed 10+ times and 50+ total reviews were included. Restricted each brewery to its top 10 beers by review count (which accounted for greater than 90% of all reviews)."
And yet Santa Rosa, his primary example, lists the breweries Bear Republic Cooperage Fogbelt Henhouse Moonlight
...but not Russian River?! It's pretty obvious that Russian River is better rated than Bear Republic, especially by his extended criteria.
So, yeah, I guess I'd like to see his data and code.
[1] http://oregoncraftbeer.org/breweries/
[2] http://www.oregonhops.org/
Unpopular opinion: I wish the US did more wine though. Beer is great when it's hot and sunny out, but when it's cold/rainy/snowy out, I'll take wine or bourbon or a cocktail or something.
The US is the 4th largest wine producing country in the world. To be sure a significant portion of that is low quality wine made with grapes from California's Central Valley. But the US is a big wine producer across a wide spectrum of quality and cost points.
Wine production isn't really as widespread as beer in the US but that's partly a function of the climates where grapes grow well (and economically relative to their quality). Add in fruit wines and things are a bit more widespread.
I used to like to take friends on a tour of the agricultural high school where my mother in law worked, and they produced some pretty good wine.
I like Sacramento's stuff.
For example, my beer taste developed while I lived in Michigan. The craft scene is more spread out there, but there is a ton of high quality IPAs, Stouts and Porters being brewed in the metro Detroit area.
Now I live in Austin, and the beer here is crap in those categories, but stronger in the Pilsners and Pale Ales. When people down here rate breweries, it is usually much more focused on those categories, thus putting Austin at #13, even though it is trash compared to a Dark Horse, or a Dragonmead, in the "harder to do right" categories. It's just that they don't know any better.
EDIT: But aside from that the presentation was nice, and well executed
EDIT 2: "Pale Ales"
The "weighted blend" of "ratings" might be more accurately portrayed as "Ratings" instead of "Quality."
Portland, ME Boulder, CO Asheville, NC