Thursday, April 22, 2010

Top 50 Craft Breweries in the US: Where Are They Located?

Anyone that regularly reads beer blogs has no doubt already heard that the Brewers Association has come out with their 2009 version for the Top 50 Breweries in the US and the Top 50 Craft Breweries in the US. I’ve always interested to watch the lists from year to year and see how certain breweries fall in and out of favor. If you haven’t already seen it, go read Jay Brook’s Annotated List of the Top 50 Breweries, as Jay tracks who the movers on the list between 2008 and 2009.

While reading through this year’s rankings, as I’ve done on other topics, I kept wondering where these Craft Breweries are actually located throughout the US. Which states claim the most Top 50 Craft Breweries? Are there more on the east coast vs. the west coast?  Are any of them close to me?

This line of thought got me goofing around with Adobe Illustrator and I began plotting out the 2009 Top 50 Craft Breweries.  When finished, Tom encouraged me to post the resulting map on our blog and share it with anyone who points their web browsers our way. So, without much fan fare, below is the resulting map showing the locations of all 50 Craft Breweries from this year’s BA ranking.


Circling back to the question I posed at the beginning of this post: which states claim the most Top 50 Craft Breweries? The Golden State was the front runner with 11 Californian breweries followed by Colorado with a very respectable 6 craft breweries. A run-down of all the states with ranking craft breweries is listed below.

Top 50 Craft Breweries by State
RankStateNo. of Breweries% of Total
1California11 22%
2Colorado12%
3Oregon4 8%
4New York3 6%
5Massachusetts2 4%
5Missouri2 4%
5Texas2 4%
5Vermont2 4%
5Washington2 4%
5Wisconsin2 4%
11Alaska1 2%
11Delaware1 2%
11Georgia1 2%
11Hawaii1 2%
11Louisiana1 2%
11Maine1 2%
11Maryland1 2%
11Michigan1 2%
11Minnesota1 2%
11Montana1 2%
11Ohio1 2%
11Pennsylvania1 2%
11Tennessee1 2%
11Utah1 2%

Jim Koch and the Boston Beer Company is the closest craft brewery to me, at least by car.  If I felt like going to a marathon swim, Blue Point Brewering Co. would be just across the Long Island Sound.  What about you?

Slainte!

-JW


“You can never buy beer, you just rent it.”
-Archie Bunker

2 comments:

  1. Actually, Flying Dog is a Maryland beer now (all brewing was moved to MD), and it is listed as a MD brewery on the Brewers Association webpage.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jay,

    You are absolutely correct - thanks for pointing it out. I was using the old information (Denver)and was therefore giving Colorado credit for Flying Dog.

    The map and the chart have been updated based on your feedback. Thank you!

    -JW

    ReplyDelete

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