#1 Beer City in America...

Not a fan of that poll.

If you are a beer city, your beer reputation proceeds you.

Anyone outside of NC get any Asheville beers?
How many of those breweries are household names?
Any buzz of specific Asheville beers?
Can anyone name some notable Asheville brewers?
Who is Asheville's Tomme Arthur? John Maier?
What are Asheville's answer to Toronado? Hopleaf? Falling Rock?
Beer Culture? Blogs? Beer Writers?

I would argue that distribution and marketing is not necessarily the end-all gauge of how passionate a city is about their beer.
We are blessed here in SD, but there are a lot of BMC drinkers as well (although the C is Corona here).
Asheville seems to have a very large segment of their population tuned into craft beer.
It's just a poll.
Cheers,
Jeremy

I'm not loving the poll either. It seems like the results are going to indicate which city got the word out about the poll the best. While some folks would no doubt vote for cities other than their own, a lot of hometown pride is going to skew the answer they come up with.

The poll IS marketing.

My point is, I know way more about SD, Portland OR than Asheville and I can get beers from those cities.

Germey said:

Asheville seems to have a very large segment of their population tuned into craft beer.

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so does Bend, maybe even more so, but you don't see them at the head of the pack. the this is that Asheville's probably trying harder than anywhere else. its probably heavily advertised just to get this little bit of arbitrary, completely subjective recognition.

olllllo said:

Not a fan of that poll.

If you are a beer city, your beer reputation proceeds you.

Anyone outside of NC get any Asheville beers?
How many of those breweries are household names?
Any buzz of specific Asheville beers?
Can anyone name some notable Asheville brewers?
Who is Asheville's Tomme Arthur? John Maier?
What are Asheville's answer to Toronado? Hopleaf? Falling Rock?
Beer Culture? Blogs? Beer Writers?

Click to expand...

I largely agree and this is the same argument against Portland. Who gives a crap about almost all of the beer brewed there? Remember, if you drink Deschutes outside of PDX it was probably brewed in Bend.

Portland does have a very good beer culture, but Philly is just as good. I haven't been to Asheville, can't comment.

For me it is Bay Area #1 and then a big tie between Chicago, Philly, Denver, PDX and probably some other places for #2.

remilard said:

I largely agree and this is the same argument against Portland. Who gives a crap about almost all of the beer brewed there? Remember, if you drink Deschutes outside of PDX it was probably brewed in Bend.

Portland does have a very good beer culture, but Philly is just as good. I haven't been to Asheville, can't comment.

For me it is Bay Area #1 and then a big tie between Chicago, Philly, Denver, PDX and probably some other places for #2.

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I don't get the Bay Area over San Diego. I do get Chicago over Portland, just because they get so much from neighboring states.

carnevoodoo said:

I don't get the Bay Area over San Diego. I do get Chicago over Portland, just because they get so much from neighboring states.

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Well, I haven't been to San Diego. I'll go in with an open mind in June. There is certainly a lot of great beer being made there, and perhaps from that angle San Diego is clearly number 1, but I haven't seen the pub culture etc yet. So I will reserve judgement.

carnevoodoo said:

I don't get the Bay Area over San Diego. I do get Chicago over Portland, just because they get so much from neighboring states.

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bay area for the beer bars. there are some places with epic tap and bottle lists. I suppose when people talk bay area they want to include moylans, russian river, lagunitas, etc, too, which is fine by me.

making the comparison between SD and SF is tough for me, there's a crap ton of good beer, beer bars, and most people in SD are pretty cool about craft beer. but in the bay area, I can pretty much go anywhere I want on public transit, drink as much good beer as my stomach can hold, and not have to worry about being too drunk to drive home.

it's not like that down south, unless you're in the area you can't go to toronado SD, drink enough to make driving dangerous and illegal, and then go home unless you've got a DD. when you get bored with toronado SF you can either walk up the street to magnolia for more beer, or walk down the street the other direction to five or six different bars that serve an insane amount of craft beer.

I still can't believe you ladies get your panties in such tight wads over such a trivial thing.

Drink your beer. Enjoy it. Who gives a #### where you are? Seriously?

olllllo said:

Not a fan of that poll.

If you are a beer city, your beer reputation proceeds you.

Anyone outside of NC get any Asheville beers?
How many of those breweries are household names?
Any buzz of specific Asheville beers?
Can anyone name some notable Asheville brewers?
Who is Asheville's Tomme Arthur? John Maier?
What are Asheville's answer to Toronado? Hopleaf? Falling Rock?
Beer Culture? Blogs? Beer Writers?

Click to expand...

I think you've hit the nail on the head in that there really is no standard (or interesting) criteria for establishing a list. But even so, Asheville seems to carry a pretty good reputation without knocking the ball out of the park on all the items on your list. In the end, I think these polls and rankings are really only marginally interesting for establishing your beer city bucket list.

Exactly. A great local beer culture doesn't necessarily translate into a national reputation.

I am gonna have to say Fort Collins, CO... New Belgium and Odell's plus FoCo brewery, Phunkworx and Equinox. All within a couple square miles.

I really like the Colorado cities because the breweries are so concentrated. In Denver, for instance, you have several breweries and one of the best beer bars in the country within a short walk of each other. Similar in Boulder (which also has Redstone Meadery) and Ft. Collins - everything is within a few minutes by bike or car.

Schizosaccharomyces said:

I am gonna have to say Fort Collins, CO... New Belgium and Odell's plus FoCo brewery, Phunkworx and Equinox. All within a couple square miles.

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Yep, have to go with Ft.Collins too.

My vote, based on great beer and sheer quality per capita would have to be Fort Collins, too. We had an afternoon, and hit O'Dells and Fort Collins Brewery- and when you think how much else there is in the area, it's amazing. And we were that impressed, even though we'd already been through some micros in Boulder.....

Ahh,
Lotsa great pontification. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Y'all voted, right? (shame on you if you pontificated without voting)
Probably not statistically supportable, but it got people talking about craft beer, and that is good for craft beer.
Cheers.

I would definitely put PDX over all the others. Even more so if you count breweries within 50 miles of PDX. Plus the variety between each brewer is amazing. At least is my opinion there is not as much overlap of tastes between the breweries in PDX. Not so much Oregon pride here as, I love BEER, so I love PDX.

Bend though is truly incredible for a serious beer scene in a tiny town. 7 Breweries for a population around 80k.