Spud.

absalomabsalom:

memesetc:

strub:

Several points:

1. Sad that no major brewery is based in Milwaukee anymore. Even Pabst?

2. Interesting and almost obvious that the craft breweries are predominantly in a specific type of place: Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, New England, on a smaller scale the Upper Midwest. In Northern California, at least, part of this is UC Davis seeding brewers and a long history of craft breweries (Anchor is the oldest in the country), but I think a lot of it is the presence of a sort of gastronomically inclined and well-educated (upper) middle class in these areas which sustains multiple craft brewers. Northern California and the Pacific Northwest also are where all the wine in the country comes from, pretty much, which is a result of geography but helped create a culture of alcohol appreciation.

3. As a corollary, interesting and almost obvious that the major non-craft breweries with the exception of Coors (but including High Falls — the makers of Genny Light — and Yuengling and Iron City) are all in Midwestern/Rust Belt cities.

I don’t have any point with these observations.

I think the entire point of this post was to create a semi-legitimate mention of Genny Light.

From here in Buffalo, NY, the state of Rust Belt breweries seems pretty good. There are numerous Buffalo and Western New York breweries (Flying Bison, Elicottville Breweries, Butternut Beer & Ales, Ithica, Southern Tier, etc, etc), and one of my absolute favorites, Great Lakes, is out of Cleveland, Ohio.

I don’t think you might get many of these outside of the area, except for maybe Great Lakes. Maybe these all fit in the Upper Midwest range. But go down to Texas, and there’re a ton of local breweires like St. Arnold’s, and a bunch that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Maybe it’s more of a question of local knowledge, though admittedly certain areas, which seem to correlate much more to outdoors-types-places (Oregon, Colorado, etc) seem to have an over-abundance of riche; maybe there’s also a correlation with colleges as well.

You’re right, of course; craft breweries are basically everywhere (except, again, the Bible Belt), and particularly in places with indigenous (if dormant) brewing traditions, like basically every Midwestern city. I was pretty unscientific in my analysis and I was only working with the top 50, nor was I trying to suggest at all that the gastronomically-inclined upper-middle-class is a net positive for a region.

(These people, in fact, tend to piss me off: no offense intended with this, I like good food and beer too, but I hate it when this pleasure-seeking becomes sanctimonious. People who intensely care about Slow Food and local-grown also tend to ignore the fact that Slow Food and local-grown is by no means economically feasible for many or even most people — again, how many farmer’s markets take food stamps?)

Anyway, I think you’re right: colleges play a part. Outdoors culture, too, for whatever reason. But places that have “craft” or boutique agriculture of any type — you know, fancy purple heirloom tomatoes or whatever — tend to spawn craft beer.

But local knowledge is clearly important. There are top-50 craft breweries in Boonville, Ukiah, Eureka, and Fort Bragg, four small towns in a stretch of far Northern California (the southern extent of the greater state of Jefferson) that supports many wineries, an extremely important and very large pot-growing industry, and not a lot of people. Clearly, local knowledge and a substance-exporting culture meet up here, but the majority of the bougie drinking market lives hundreds of miles south in the Bay Area. So… whatever. (I also just discovered that the major US schools with brewer-training programs are Davis and Oregon State. That explains something about where people end up, I guess. Not really, though, since it may account for the historical density of craft breweries on the West Coast but not their distribution since the 90s or so.)

More interesting, to me, was the third point, the long historical life of these specific breweries in specific Rust Belt cities, where they were probably planted by German and Czech immigrants a century ago and are still chugging along. Prohibition killed the dozens of brewers that existed in most cities, so it’s interesting that these few managed to hold on, especially intensely local brewers like Yuengling who by all rights should be providing a fancy logo and no production to generic InBev swill by now.

These smaller general breweries are also suddenly being complemented by localish beers resurrected with the help of second-tier major brewers (i.e., Gansett brews with High Falls, Schlitz is made by Pabst). This doesn’t mean a lot for the ownership: Pabst is mostly made by Miller, apparently. But it does mean that the shape of the beer market may change somewhat over the next few years, where there’s some real competition in the cheap-beer market outside of the big three. That would be interesting, but… whatever.

Another thing I realized: fascist Coors has joined my beloved Miller in an unholy union in Chicago, not Colorado or Milwaukee, their respective homelands. So… whatever to that, too.

PS: Tripp, it wasn’t the entire point; but when I discovered that it was relevant, I was suffused with joy.

Several points:

1. Sad that no major brewery is based in Milwaukee anymore. Even Pabst?

2. Interesting and almost obvious that the craft breweries are predominantly in a specific type of place: Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, New England, on a smaller scale the Upper Midwest. In Northern California, at least, part of this is UC Davis seeding brewers and a long history of craft breweries (Anchor is the oldest in the country), but I think a lot of it is the presence of a sort of gastronomically inclined and well-educated (upper) middle class in these areas which sustains multiple craft brewers. Northern California and the Pacific Northwest also are where all the wine in the country comes from, pretty much, which is a result of geography but helped create a culture of alcohol appreciation.

3. As a corollary, interesting and almost obvious that the major non-craft breweries with the exception of Coors (but including High Falls — the makers of Genny Light — and Yuengling and Iron City) are all in Midwestern/Rust Belt cities.

I don’t have any point with these observations.

Kind of sad that they inexplicably suck this way, especially given that they’re pretty okay with workers, relatively. Still non-union mostly, though. (Except in the Northeast US and California, according to Wikipedia; those are the two places I’ve been to Costco, so… whatever. In fact, I guess I’ve only been to Costco in California.) Anyway, the notion that “people who shop at Costco don’t use foodstamps” seems pretty ridiculous. Whatever.