World's Best Beer Cities

[10023]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

Abita and Magnolia the huge exception, but i'm never really interested in beer from the south, it doesn't feel like some place where it doesn't snow often is suitable for brewing beer (I guess I give St Louis a pass).

I had a local beer in Charleston that was decent, but that's also an old English colony (Boston of the South) so the tradition probably exists.

Kind of like the most popular Chinese beer (which isn't really that good, it's China, but anyway) being from Qingdao. The one Germany concession/colony, of course the first thing they did was build a brewery.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by 10023

I had a local beer in Charleston that was decent, but that's also an old English colony (Boston of the South) so the tradition probably exists.

Kind of like the most popular Chinese beer (which isn't really that good, it's China, but anyway) being from Qingdao. The one Germany concession/colony, of course the first thing they did was build a brewery.

Yeah there's some beer culture in Charleston, and I meant to throw in Asheville and central Texas but I figured that was obvious. Really there's some degree of beer culture in all larger areas of the south, now, usually at least one pretty local type beer.

[Private Dick]

Originally Posted by CyberEric

You missed Anchor Steam, est. 1981 in SF. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer

Intentionally left the Anchor Brewery off the list. It was established in 1896 (and your date is wrong for their Anchor Steam beer anyway; it was brought back in 1971 -- that's what happens when you cite wikipedia as a source).

There's no doubt Anchor had a huge influence on the early guys who initiated the microbrew revolution, but it was never a microbrewery in the same sense as these others. Rather, it started out as a long-established brewery that had a number of different incarnations over the past century as it weathered the ups and downs of the brewing industry. There are numerous other smaller regional breweries across the nation that persisted over the years and helped rekindle interest in lesser known beers and the brewing craft, but including all of those in this early microbrew list would be ridiculous. For example, Yuengling had a similar effect on the East Coast, sparking interest in craft brewing in the face of the commercial lite beer dominance by continuing production of a porter and a darker. flavorful lager... but you could never say that Yuengling was a "microbrewery" in the same way that the others on this list are.

Originally Posted by Centropolis

I should say that New Belgium was important in really pushing large quantities of good beer into a 1000 mile swath of the unwashed interior, between the Rockies and the Mississippi or a little further east (although New Belgium didnt cross the Mississippi for years) during the 1990s. I think it's been more of a recent trend that it's been a national beer. Same with Boulevard (1989) and Schlafly (1991). Sam Adams is a big exception to the interior, maybe Sierra Nevada.

The rest of those are important, but didn't tip the scales towards helping tip "backwater" states like Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas into having dozens of microbreweries (or I should say having dozens of breweries once again).

Oh yeah, I realize New Belgium was/is definitely a big player. I just wanted to list some of those very "first movers" who were important to the movement and that persisted.

[Private Dick]

Originally Posted by McBane

... As far NYC's scene is concerned, I'm not to knowledgeable about that.

RE: Boston - didn't find such a great beer culture. Beyond Sam Adams and UFO (both great brewers!), there didn't seem to much of a selection of other craft beers or quality imports (not Heineken, Corona, Peroni, etc.) at the bars we frequented.

Sixpoint Brewery is the best brewery in NYC. Try it! http://sixpoint.com/

UFO is actually a beer from the Harpoon Brewery -- one of the first microbreweries in the nation.