Best state for Craft Breweries?

I know that Vermont has the highest per capita rating of breweries but with a quick search I can't find what states have the lowest breweries per capita and even more, which of of those have the highest demand or fastest growing market for craft breweries. In other words, what state would be the best place for a prospective craft brewery to open?
I am not thinking of doing this myself, just a curious question.

 

The states that have the lowest craft breweries per capita are probably also going to have the most restrictive beer laws. Looking at the 2011 data, Texas was 45th. We have really crappy laws here. There's been a boom since 2011 so I'm sure we've gone up a little, but once again we're still stuck with crappy laws.

 

New Hampshire is very craft brewery friendly.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...-craft-beer/Xt0ocVfMv6UPdIaPEBX6dK/story.html

 

I just moved from Idaho and it seems there are new craft microbreweries popping up like crazy over the last 2 years. Plus Boise is a very HB friendly town with several LHBS options within a close radius, my favorite being the bricks and mortar location of homebrewstuff.com.

 

Best state is still the granddaddy of craft beer - California.

But my personal favorite is Colorado. There is some serious brewing going on in the CO.

 

We have 100+ micro/craft breweries. This list is a little behind. There's at least 3 new ones that opened in the last few weeks, including one yesterday. And there's a least 2 more meaderies opening, including Ken Shramm's.

Edit-Brewer's association lists 102 breweries in the state.

 

And the best beer in the world, in my opinion, being made in a small town named Comstock.

 

That's about 4000 miles away. Won't get to go back until thanksgiving. Try to stop by Kzoo everything I'm back in the L48.

 

I wish I could say WI is the best, mostly cause I live here, but I would know it to be a lie. I would say either Colorado or Oregon. Both states have amazing beer/food

 

If you want variety, come to Brewvana. According to the Oregon Brewers Association, as of 3/5/13, there are 52 breweries operating in Portland, more than any other city in the world. There are a total of 136 brewing companies operating breweries at 169 locations in 61 cities in the state. See, http://oregonbeer.org/facts. Great for craft brew drinkers, but lots of competition if you want to open your own.

 

The OP isn't asking who has the best beer, or who has the most breweries, he's asking where is the best place to open a brewery.

Brewers Association stats on breweries per capita:
http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/business-tools/craft-brewing-statistics/breweries-per-capita
Info on beer consumption per capita:
http://www.beerinfo.com/index.php/pages/beerstateconsumption.html

You can do the math, higher consumption per capita+lower number of breweries serving beer drinkers=better place to open a brewery.

 

The CA Craft Beer association claims CA has more craft breweries than any other state, which I believe just because they have >150 listed on their site as members, and just around LA I can think of at least 10 other breweries which are not members.

I don't know about consumption per capita or whatever. I just know there are a lot of good breweries around here. I wish it was easier to get some of their beers without having to drive to the brewery (e.g. Alpine can be hit-or-miss availability), but 'cest la vie. I probably wouldn't want to open a brewery in LA right now, as there are a whole lot of them and I think competition for taps is fierce in local watering holes. That being said, all of my (very) local breweries all seem to be doing gangbusters business.

 

The problem is that a lot of the low number of breweries per capita states have laws that make it difficult or impossible to open a new brewery. You want a state with brewer-friendly laws and you definitely want the ability to self-distribute and operate a taproom. Selling your beer over your own counter is the easiest way to be profitable in a micro or nano brewery.

 

The secret in CA seems to be finding a smaller town without breweries and opening there. Two years ago Lancaster had no breweries, now we have two and they're both doing very well.

 

Traditionally the worst state is West Virginia. They have a grand total of 5 breweries and 6 in planning.

I would look at it from distribution and sell on site laws. California, Colorado, Oregon are the first three that come to mind that allow you to sell pints or samples at the brewery and also allow distribution. A major hurdle for a lot of breweries early on is cash flow through distribution. If you are able to subsidize your sales by selling pints on site, there is a better chance that you will be able to survive the first couple of years.

I went to Texas last year to do a little scouting for opening a brewery. I figured that the amount of breweries there is very small for the population size and therefore a great place to open. What I found is that Texas has some pretty distributor friendly laws. That's bad news when you are a small brewery opening up. I found that in order to have a beer, I had to go to a beer bar like The Ginger Man. If I'm a brewery, the last thing I want is to rely on a bartender who has zero interest in my company selling my beer. That turned me off to the Texas beer scene (which, by the way is exploding).

In Colorado I hear about market saturation a lot. At first glance it seems like that would be a problem: You only have so many customers to spread accross the breweries. In fact sales go up when breweries are close to each other because that creates a concentration of breweries and therefore a more desirable area to go to because you can visit several breweries in one day. Look at Fort Collins for instance. They have 6 breweries within walking distance of each other and you see the same people at each brewery. We are also seeing that a lot of these places have become the neighboorhood bar.

It's no accident that the places that have a lot of breweries also have brewery friendly laws and that translates into a beer crazy population.

Looking at what I've written, I don't think I gave you an answer. Oh well.

 

Michigan currently has a Bill pending that would allow small brewers (don't recall the cutoff) to self distribute. I haven't checked the status of that legislation in a while, but some think it will cause our brewing industry to explode.

 

Which is the exact reason I said Portland was great for beer drinkers, but a lot of competition if you wanted to open your own brewery. The title of the thread is also a little misleading, "Best State for Craft Breweries."

 

Hey NChas great craft breweries

 

California, while a great place for brews, certainly has one thing going against it: comparatively high rents that you'll have to eat while you wait to open officially. On the other hand, there's lots of disposable income, tap rooms are very much legal and (I believe) you can self-distribute. Along with the increased costs of living and wages, $4 pints are well within almost every's means.

In fact, I was at a brewery open house a few months ago in a rural, destination town in the nothingness between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe. They lowered the prices from $4 per pint to $3.50 per pint for the event. Close to 200 people showed up, and we floated a lot of sanke kegs collectively. That's a pretty big event for them, considering they're on a 5 bbl system with 4x 7 bbl and 2x 5 bbl fermenters from what I remember.

Edit: The crowd was almost entirely home brewers that drove 1-4 hours to get there. The only advertisement I saw for it was a small blurb on the front of an LHBS's page. Everything else was word of mouth through local clubs, AFAIK.

 

We're pretty blessed here in Pennsylvania. I'm in Philadelphia. I live within an hour's drive of Philly Brewing Co., Yards, Victory, Manayunk, a few Iron Hill locations, Triumph, Dock St., (amongst other brewpubs). Troegs, Stoudts, Lancaster, and Weyerbacher are a day trip. Flying Fish, Dogfish Head, Heavy Seas, and Flying Dog are also a day trip away, as are the breweries in north Jersey and NYC.

Which is surprising considering the arcane liquor laws in this state. The PLCB is hopefully on its way to being abolished however.

 

If California breaks ground on the high speed rail project and then finishes it, that would make it just over a 2 hour train ride from the LA area to anywhere in the Bay Area or Sacramento areas (normally an 8 hour drive with stops).

Can you imagine that? You could get sloshed on LA, carry a concealed growlette onto the train, engage in some beer conversation, and arrive before you sobered up.

 

Rents aren't bad if you stay away from the major cities, which incidentally also gives you less competition.

The rail is never going to happen. Final cost is going to be several magnitudes more than the original estimate and so far they've funded something like a 5 mile stretch in the middle of nowhere.

 

Californi Pennsylvania and Vermont

 

Great info everyone!
Just to clarify: I am not just talking about the best places to go and be able to enjoy multiple craft breweries. More along the lines of what state/area has a growing beer community but wouldn't be crazy competitive for a new brewery to open in.

 

Seconding OREGON as best craft brew state!

Besides Portland which is obviously king, there's a LOT (dozens?) of killer breweries in Bend. Eugene and throughout the Willamette valley have tons more, not to mention northeast breweries, southern Oregon, and the ones of the coast.

Heaven!

 

And a much smaller customer base.

What's a better location (all other things the same)... a brew pub in an affluent suburban city of 250,000, or a brew pub in a rural city of 5,000? It'd be hard to move up past nano size if you can't rake in money off your tap room because you can't fill the seats.

 

I'd say that somewhere in the south would qualify for that. There are a lot of new breweries in the Atlanta area, so quite a few people thought that was a good idea. I'd say that Birmingham, Nashville, or Charleston might be ripe for new breweries.

 

I'm not talking about the middle of nowhere. Like I mentioned in my other post, Lancaster (combined population of Lancaster and Palmdale is 300,000) now has two breweries and rents at about one-quarter or less of the metro LA area. I'm talking suburb communities.

 

PA is nice. We live in SW NYS and take trips to a bunch of breweries in PA. Sprague Farms and Voodoo are two good ones. Of course, we hit Southern Tier on the way back. 30 mins away from fresh Hop Sun and Pumpking. Love it!

 

And the nano I was talking about was clearly in a rural destination town.

Crossed wires, is all.

 

+1 Colorado... Specifically Fort Collins. I can hit ~10 breweries on my bike in a day with a good group of buds and about 8 miles of riding (including to and from home)... And yes I mean bicycle. Seriously some good stuff going on here and very knowledgable folks to talk to. This whole town really loves it's beer and appreciates the local economy of craft brewing.

Hear Oregon's got it going on too...

CA can hardly be considered a state... More like its own country ;-) with plenty of good stuff happening in the craft beer world.

 

Got it. Yep, miscommunication. Sounds like their event did pretty well, though.

Yeah that's the thing, people sometimes forget that California is a massive state. There's a lot of stuff in between San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and a lot of little hidden gem breweries that do very well in their community but don't get a lot of notice outside of them.

 

From the West Coast perspective, Idaho and Montana look to have a decent growth curve, but I don't know if they'd ever be dense enough to support craft on the scale that California, Oregon, and Colorado do.

I think the more important question is "Where do people want to live?" Look for the fastest growing communities, and you're bound to find an underserved craft market.

 

From my personal experience and travel, here's my list:

1) California
2) Oregon
3) Colorado
4) Vermont
5) Tennessee

 

Alaska is number 8 on the 2011 Brewers Association list, and we've obviously added breweries since then.

Assuming out population is still only around 650k, we probably have a per capita of around. 25-28k per brewery.

But we really do have an amazing amount of breweries considering we have very few people. And at least two of them, Midnight Sun and Denali Brewing Company stack up to some of the best I've been in the Lower 48. (But Bell's for life.)

 

Nobody really reads beyond the title of the thread, do they?

 

Title should be enough though, right?

Oregon continues to amaze me at the ability to add breweries. Living in the Bend area, and getting to watch Deschutes expand over the years, as well as all of the other breweries pop up, I'm really astounded. Bend only has about 90k people. Deschutes is the fifth biggest American owned brewery. We actually have more breweries per capita than Portland (PDX still owns the strip clubs per capita bragging rights). Due to our small population, Bend exports a lot more beer than we can drink.

And while California produces a lot of great beer, our breweries can fill any growler, mason jar, corny, whateverthe****theywant... So yeah, in answer to the OP, Oregon.

 

I like to think that Texas will be up there soon. There might be a new law that will be helpful to the micros that will be starting out.

 

You have to remember that when us folks in Southern CA talk a "small town" that there are still 30,000+ people and they are usually surrounded by much larger cities. For example, a pretty good brewery opened up in a neighboring city (Norco for So Cal folks). It has like a population of 40,000 (again, small town/city on our scale) but the neighboring cities are all near or well over 100,000 people.

 

If you are going to open up a craft brewery why would you look at a state that already has a lot of craftbreweries?

I live in GA (42nd) right by Alabama (50th) and Tennessee (36th) - There are a few decent smallish breweries in this area: Red Hare, Terrapin, and Sweetwater. Budweiser and MillerCoors both have plants in Cartersville (GA) and Albany (GA), respectively. This should say something about the beer drinking culture in GA.

In my opinion, NW GA, East TN, and NE Alabama is ready for growth in the microbrewery sector for the following reasons:
- decent sized cities: Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Atlanta, Birmingham, and Huntsville.
- good amount of colleges: UT Knoxville, UT Chattanooga, Auburn, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt to name a few plus dozens of smaller schools
- Low level of microbrewery competition
- Good water quality
- Low operating, overhead, and fixed costs

If this is about finding a state to go to try a bunch of microbrews, then don't bother coming to this part of the country. This is a good place to sample micro-distilled bourbons and whiskeys.