Having moved recently to Buffalo from Southern California, I was worried that my quality of beer life was going to take a plunge. SoCal has some mighty fine breweries. But, a little diligent research led me to find Village Beer Merchant, with two locations (one not more than a mile from my front door). They have a great selection, including taps for filling growlers. There's also Premier, which is a liquor store and gourmet grocery. Because of the flocc'd up blue laws, a liquor store can't sell food (including Angostura Bitters - it's classified as food) and a grocery can't sell wine. But at Premier the two stores share a common entrance and vestibule. The grocery has three isles devoted to all manor of beer, foreign and domestic. They also have a very high tech 12 tap growler filling station that purges the jug with CO2 before the beer gently cascades down the sides. And they have a great selection for growlers. Last time I was there they had Bear Republic (Bay area) Racer X - the imperial version of their Racer V IPA, and Black Racer (guess the style?)
You can also fill growlers at many gas stations, but those setup are sketchy at best in the hygiene department.
The local stuff isn't so bad, though I prefer Southern Tier and Ellicott to Flying Bison. Community Beer Works is ok, too. I went to a home brew event at a local art gallery, and some of the guys there were avid home brewers about to open their own brewery in South Buffalo. They hope to be ready sometime this spring. They didn't have samples, but they were. Ice guys, very passionate about the brew, and had some interesting styles lined up. Well, I thought the sounded interesting at the time, but I don't remember what they were. Other folks had samples... Anyway, the brewery will be called Rusty Nickel. I hope they're awesome. More good breweries!
Lastly, there was a big beer festival here in August, and some of the best beer I had was from Three Heads Brewing out of Rochester, which someone else here hated. Their Saison actually tasted like a saison. Beer is beautifully subjective.