#1 Beer City in America...

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BrianTheBrewer

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Dont know if this topic has been discussed in the past couple of weeks. I have been away for awhile from HBT.

Anyways was on my honeymoon and picked up a magazine for the plane ride. Picked up a Men's Journal of all things (not somthing I usually read). Flipped through the pages a bit. All of a sudden I came to two articals about beer. One artical was talking about some of the best beers around the country and where to get them. The other artical was the top 5 beer cities in America.

Men's Journal ranks San Diego CA as the #1 beer city in America.
#2 was NY City, #3 was Portland OR, #4 Philadelphia, #5 Chicago.

In the first artical they rank Stone Levetation as the #1 Ale in the USA.
Best Dark beer was Ommegang Three Philosophers. Best Belgian was Flying Fish Exit 4 and best Lager was Left Hand's Polestar.

Just wanted to see if any of you read this magazine or heard about it and what are some of your thoughts. Very interesting and great to see that craft beer is getting advertised everywhere you look these days.
 
No love for Asheville, NC -- aka Beer City USA? It's a very small mountain town with nine microbreweries and the third best beer store in the world.

I am a little surprised to see no love for Colorado, though. So many good breweries not only in Denver, but in the whole state.
 
Ya in Colorado they even figured out how to tap the Rockies... lol

I love Ommegang anything, nice to see NY beer make the list.
 
Hartford should be on that lis... Never mind, Hartford wouldn't know good beer if it bit it on its ass...
 
Colorado does need representation - second most breweries, most medals at GABF this year, macro and micro brew history.
 
Only because I don't know anything about San Diego, but I'm VERY surprised to even see them on the list. I know Stone is out there, but that is all I was aware of.

I think the rest of the list if pretty fair, except I think NYC should be more like #4 or #5, Philly and Chicago should be higher, and I'm also a little surprised that Denver or Milwaukee are not on there. However, if adding them means pushing Chicago off the list, I'll just bite my tongue.
 
NY should be out. Philly should probably also be gone. Its a crime that Denver / Ft. Collins didn't make it, and Seattle should have also (although the Pacific NW is already represented by Portland).
 
NY should be out. Philly should probably also be gone. Its a crime that Denver / Ft. Collins didn't make it, and Seattle should have also (although the Pacific NW is already represented by Portland).

Don't forget Boulder! Denver/Ft COllins/Boulder is like the Bermuda triangle of beer. Except over land. And delicious beer comes out instead of planes going in missing. Nothing like the Bermuda Triangle actually, ignore that.
 
A blogger that I follow on twitter exposed the flawed logic behind selecting San Diego over Portland.

Here is the source: http://www.mensjournal.com/top-five-beer-towns
Here is the blog: http://portland.daveknows.org/2009/...-beer-town-facts-wrongs-and-slights-portland/


I reminded myself, the writers, Christian DeBenedetti and Seth Fletcher, are entitled to their opinions. But then, in the writers’ rationalization for putting San Diego at the top of the list, I read this:
The sheer number of breweries (33) blows us away. (It has crept past Portland, which has 29.)
Well I try to keep up on my Portland factoids, and I was pretty sure that Portland still had more breweries than any other city in the world – Beervana and Munich on the Willamette and all. And as I thought about it some more I realized that I could come up with a list of 25+ Portland area brew pubs and breweries I’ve actually patronized myself. I’m sure there are some I was forgetting or maybe hadn’t even heard of. So I checked up on my factoid at the Oregon Brewers Guild website, and I confirmed that yes, Portland, Oregon actually has 30 breweries within the city, still more than any other city in the world.

Further:

. A quick glance at the publication, A Complete Guide To San Diego Breweries (pdf), however, quickly reveals that only 13 of the 32 breweries listed in the Guide are, as matter of fact, in San Diego proper. The rest are in surrounding suburbs and towns in the metropolitan area. Even Stone Brewing Company, probably the best known San Diego brewery (well, the only one I could think of), is based in Escondido. The Portland metropolitan area, on the other hand, has 38 breweries – quite a few more than the San Diego area.

Opinion based on shoddy journalism? I think so.
 
Further:

. A quick glance at the publication, A Complete Guide To San Diego Breweries (pdf), however, quickly reveals that only 13 of the 32 breweries listed in the Guide are, as matter of fact, in San Diego proper. The rest are in surrounding suburbs and towns in the metropolitan area. Even Stone Brewing Company, probably the best known San Diego brewery (well, the only one I could think of), is based in Escondido. The Portland metropolitan area, on the other hand, has 38 breweries – quite a few more than the San Diego area.

Opinion based on shoddy journalism? I think so.

The thing about San Diego is, everyone in SD county considers themselves from San Diego. I live in Lemon Grove, but I consider myself from San Diego. SD city limits itself is not very big and it's really hard to tell where say, San Diego ends and National City starts.

So that being said, I would consider Stone, Alesmith, etc. to be in SD even though they are not in the city itself.
 
The thing about San Diego is, everyone in SD county considers themselves from San Diego. I live in Lemon Grove, but I consider myself from San Diego. SD city limits itself is not very big and it's really hard to tell where say, San Diego ends and National City starts.

So that being said, I would consider Stone, Alesmith, etc. to be in SD even though they are not in the city itself.

Either way, even if you include all the breweries in the surrounding areas, it still doesn't equal the amount in the Portland city limits, let alone the quality percentage in Portland is way better :D I keed, kinda....

Let the beer wars begin :)
 
My first gut instinct when I read the thread title was to say "Portland" and I was surprised to see it at #3 behind NYC, which I didn't even expect to be in the top 5. I also am very surprised to see Colorado unrepresented in that list, when there are so many fine breweries there.

I consider the surrounding areas to be part of the city, as that is standard practice in any city I've ever lived in. You may live in Dunwoody, GA, but you'd tell strangers in an airport bar that you live in Atlanta.
 
NY should be out. Philly should probably also be gone. Its a crime that Denver / Ft. Collins didn't make it, and Seattle should have also (although the Pacific NW is already represented by Portland).

Philly should be gone?! Surely you jest. I don't know why NYC is there though. It's not very fair for NYC to be in these sorts of lists, it's so big that you can find a lot of anything, but doesn't say much about the overall culture. Philly has a very strong beer culture and it's getting stronger and stronger.

There's lots of things to make fun of Philly about, but it definitely deserves to be near top or top of the list of best beer cities. Even our bums are drinking Belgian imports! (seriously, I've been in a few conversations with local bums about them).
 
Philly should be gone?! Surely you jest. I don't know why NYC is there though. It's not very fair, for NYC to be in these sorts of lists, it's so big that you can find a lot of anything, but doesn't say much about the overall culture. Philly has a very strong beer culture and it's getting stronger and stronger.

There's lots of things to make fun of Philly about, but it definitely deserves to be near top or top of the list of best beer cities.

Philadelphia's got a lot- a lot of culture. Anybody?
 
How ever you draw the circle, the writers used a larger "metro" circle for San Diego and a smaller "city of" circle for Portland and they even did that wrong.

The fact remains, that in every numerical comparison, Portland would prevail. If the numerical argument was controlling in the minds of the authors as they stated, they reached a conclusion based on a mistake.
 
No love for Asheville, NC -- aka Beer City USA? It's a very small mountain town with nine microbreweries and the third best beer store in the world.

Word!

Asheville has a crazy good craftbrew scene.
 
There are 21 McMenamins in Portland. Take that away from the the 38 the blogger comes up with and Portland gets smoked in number of breweries. Rogue is also listed but I don't think they brew at their public houses (and they are in Newport). San Diego has 26 after removing all Karl Strauss and Oggis locations but one, even though they brew on site.

San Diego county = 13 beers in the BA top 50. Portland (Multnomah County) = 0. (I didn't have time to go through the whole 100)

Lets see the final score here:
San Diego 26 unique breweries and 13 beers in the top 50 beers.
Portland 18 unique breweries and 0 beer in the top 50 beers.

Looks like Men's journal got it right.
 
I am moving to San Diego at the end of the month. As of now I live 20 mins outside of Boston. I believe Boston should be in the top 5. I do agree though San Diego is amazing and should be #1.

I have not been to Portland yet but hopefully will soon.
 
I don't know of anywhere else in the country where you can get Sculpin, Angel's Share, Older Viscosity, Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder, etc all on draft at the same place. Hell you can even buy sixtels of AS and OerV at the distributors.

Philly has huge support from a ton of breweries, so you guys that are saying it shouldn't be on the list obviously have never been there.
 
There are 21 McMenamins in Portland. Take that away from the the 38 the blogger comes up with and Portland gets smoked in number of breweries. Rogue is also listed but I don't think they brew at their public houses (and they are in Newport). San Diego has 26 after removing all Karl Strauss and Oggis locations but one, even though they brew on site.

San Diego county = 13 beers in the BA top 50. Portland (Multnomah County) = 0. (I didn't have time to go through the whole 100)

Lets see the final score here:
San Diego 26 unique breweries and 13 beers in the top 50 beers.
Portland 18 unique breweries and 0 beer in the top 50 beers.

Looks like Men's journal got it right.

First off, BA is not a good place to go to for a list of classic good beers, at least their top beers link. It is more of a "most outrageous beer list". There is not a beer in the top 10 that is under 8% and that one is Pliny which is a hop bomb, most are above 10% actually. This has been discussed on here before.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good IIPA or RIS and also love a few beers from the San Diego vicinity but for most categories like a brown porter, amber ale, APA etc... Portland would win out over San Diego. I know your hometown pride is kicking in but how many Portland beers have you really tried with an open mind?
 
I don't know of anywhere else in the country where you can get Sculpin, Angel's Share, Older Viscosity, Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder, etc all on draft at the same place. Hell you can even buy sixtels of AS and OerV at the distributors.

Philly has huge support from a ton of breweries, so you guys that are saying it shouldn't be on the list obviously have never been there.

I just had my first Sculpin a few days ago. Wow!
DSC_0055.JPG
 
I lived in near Portland for a couple years and travel there frequently to visit family. Love me some Full Sail, Hopworks and have had great beer at a handful of breweries.

It was not implied that I do not like any beer from Portland, just pointing out that the number of unique breweries is far less than stated. It seems that that was the biggest point the blogger was making. When 21 of the breweries are McMenamins chains, that may not all brew, you have to take that into account. Their beer (McMenamins) is rather pedestrian though I have had some good seasonals from them now and then.

As far as Imperials go, San Diego is known for them but they also have winners in classic styles as well. BA is not the best judge so let's look at GABF awards. San Diego county breweries won awards this year in Sweet stout, english style pale ale, english brown (silver and bronze), American brown, scotch ale, English IPA and american amber, also a Brewing Company or Brewpub of the year in 3 of the last 5 years.

Yes I am a homer and the Chargers are going to the Super Bowl!;)
 
chicago belongs nowhere near that list.

Hell there's only 3-4 breweries in the area. Goose Island, Two Brothers, American Brewing Co., 3 Floyd's(kind of)
Lots of pubs, but...
 
I am surprised the CO was not represented. Not necessarily in QTY, but in knowledge and experience. Seems there are a ton of beer enthusiasts from there. I fully expected to see them on the list. Portland, yes. CA, yes.

Michigan has some very good beer, but can't compete with some of the other states for sheer number of breweries, and certainly no single city in MI.
 
Well if there was a top 10 Boston would be right up there. You have Sam Adams, Harpoon, Cambridge Brewing Company, Watch City Brewery, Boston Beer Works, Mayflower Brewing co, Cape Ann Brewing Company...ect. There are a ton more as well. New England over all is a wonderful place for great beer.

Oh and the Patriots are going to the Superbowl!!!
 
No love for Asheville, NC -- aka Beer City USA? It's a very small mountain town with nine microbreweries and the third best beer store in the world.

I am a little surprised to see no love for Colorado, though. So many good breweries not only in Denver, but in the whole state.

I agree that Asheville shouldn't be left out, at least when considering breweries per capita. Good to see another Monroe home brewer representing.:rockin:
 
The beer culture is AMAZING in Asheville. Highland is a great company as is The French Broad and Green Man. Its also worth pointing out that Asheville hosts three annual festivals that are awesome to go to. There are like 12 people that live there so its pretty impressive.
 
chicago belongs nowhere near that list.

Hell there's only 3-4 breweries in the area. Goose Island, Two Brothers, American Brewing Co., 3 Floyd's(kind of)
Lots of pubs, but...

+1 to this. Chicago has very few breweries. And IL distribution laws are so tight (re: purposely monopolistic) that there are TONs of beers we can't even get in this state. Bell's was gone for years until recently. And we have to drive over state lines to sample dozens of breweries: Stone, New Glarus, Ale Asylum, etc. Woodman's in Kenosha stocks countless beers that we can't get, for the sole purpose of feeding people like me who are willing to drive 45 minutes to go on beer runs.

Chicago area does have a couple decent beer bars with good selections (Hopleaf, Maproom, Firkin, etc). But our overall lack of selection and breweries should completely disqualifies us for the top of this list. The fact that Chicago is included on this list seriously damages the author's credibility IMO.
 
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