MacBruver
Well-Known Member
The president of my homebrew club had a good retort to the SD over PDX situation, not relying on math:
To his point, I can walk to 5 mcmenamin's, a Lompoc, Rogue, Deschutes, Bridgeport, Lucky Lab, Bailey's Taproom, and Tugboat. There are a bunch more breweries/beer bars within biking/transit distance. I think it is a key attribute of a "beer town" that you don't have to drive between breweries!
I figured SD would be first on this list, due to the "BA" effect. If you define "beer city" to mean that beer is an important part of its culture, portland is far and away the best I've been to. I think more people there just plain like beer. Every bar that I went to in the PDX area had some type of local microbrew on tap, and it just seems way more enmeshed with the city.
Don't get me wrong, I love me some ballast point, stone, port / lost abbey, etc and I think they make some of the best beers in the world... but just because those beers are in the SD metro does not make SD a "beer city" in the slightest.