I’m going to be honest here…despite my state’s small size, we have one of the best local brew scenes around. A partial list includes:
Zero Gravity Brewery
Long Trail
Magic Hat
Otter Creek Brewing
Rock Art Brewery
Switchback Brewing Co
The Alchemist Pub & Brewery
Bobcat Cafe
Three Needs Brewery
Trout River
Vermont Pub and Brewery
One of these in particular, Switchback, has pretty much taken the state by storm. It came almost out of nowhere a few years ago and has grown to be the most popular beer in the greater Burlington area. Odds are, if you don’t live near here, you’ll be hard pressed to get any, because it’s a very small brewery, and they only brew in kegs. But by GOD man, it’s fan-fucking-tastic beer.
Number four, man. Best in the US! Suck it everyone else! Ok, so the list is pretty bunk overall, but still, nice to have some recognition.
Seriously though, how do you feel about your local brews? Amy recommendations for fellow Dopers?
Damn fine (I live in Hampshire, England - and there is an amazing diversity of local beer). The problem isn’t finding good beer, it’s remembering which of the hundreds, possibly thousands of beers available is the one I want, or the one I enjoyed on that picnic last summer.
Of the three local beers brewed in my country, two are horse piss, while the third - Goldstar - is good enough for government service. I mean, I don’t have the most discerning taste in beer, but Goldstar’s taste never prevented me from drinking another one.
Dreadful. Never mind the fact that booze is actually illegal except at one hotel, there is Bintang (was Heineken before they nationalized the brewery) and Anchor (shudder). You can get Tiger from Singapore which is an okay pilsner.
Not too bad. The Carolina Blonde brewery is about three miles away from my house. Their standard beer is, at best, inoffensive. They have a brown ale that I love, though, and a strawberry blonde that is what crap like Mike’s Hard Lemonade should be. It’s awesome in the summer. They also do a seasonal pumpkin ale that my brother-in-law loves. It’s not too shabby either. Overall, their selection, minus their standard Carolina Blonde, is good stuff.
Chicago is amazingly short on locally-brewed beers. There’s Goose Island and Two Brothers, and a few brewpubs of note that don’t bottle, and that’s really all I can think of. Berghoff is a local restaurant but their (bottled, too) beer is all brewed in Wisconsin.
They make very good beer. My local liquor store carries it, and I drink a ton of it. Otter Creek, and I believe “Wolavers” is their “organic” brand. Also good
There’s decent beer in Maryland. . Dogfish Head makes great beer (they might actally be Delaware, though).
I like most of Clipper City’s beers.
I used to live in Oregon, however, and that state has some superb beers. . .Deschutes, Full Sail, Rogue (which you can get here, but it’s pricey).
I grew up about ten miles south of Rehoboth Beach DE, where the Dogfish Head beers are produced. Their 60-, 90-, and 120-minute IPAs are well-known as far north as New York, as far south as the Outer Banks, and as far west as Pittsburgh, but I haven’t seen them in many other places. I don’t like IPAs much, but their other beers are generally delicious as well: I love their Chicory Stout, Worldwide Stout, India Brown Ale, Raison D’etre Ale, and its 18% cousin Raison D’Extra.
Now that I’m in Baltimore, I like the beers I can get at Brewer’s Art, Max’s, and (until recently) Capitol City Brewing Co. CCBC will be sorely missed; they had a chocolate-coffee stout called Fuel that, once you get past the Drew Carey jokes, was delicious. Their red and brown ales were great too. Brewer’s has a Proletary Ale that I enjoy, as well as a good spread of seasonal beers.
Fabulous. My two favorite British beers are made by London brewers, Young’s Waggle Dance and Fuller’s Honey Dew. Well, Young sadly sold its Ram Brewery site in southeast London last year, but I can understand the decision as further investment would have been uneconomic because of the site’s size and layout, according to the company. Fuller still makes its beer at the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick in west London.
I suspected Oregon might make it on the list. The beer here is awesome. We’ve got Rogue Brewery, Teminal Gravity, Full Sail, Descutes and Widmer Brothers as the heavy hitters with many a smaller brewery and brew pub situated throughout the major cities. Home brewing is also a popular hobby here. Oregon hosts the annual Oregon Brewers’ Festival.
My two favorite Oregon beers are Dead Guy Ale (when you need a little lighter fare) and Terminal Gravity IPA (when you want knocked on your ass).
The best beer in the world is brewed about…15 feet from where I am sitting.
But for professionals, we have Stone Brewing semi-locally, BJ’s nearby, and about a dozen brewpubs within easy driving distance. If I want to encompass SoCal as a whole, the list gets exponentially larger. We are not lacking for good beer here.
Yuengling Lager is brewed not too far from me and I quite like it. I *have *found that it does not travel well and the further I get from the brewery the less I like it.
Harrisburg has some good microbrews and the Appalachian Brewing Company has a honey wheat that I like.
Well, I live in Houston, and I end up drinking a lot of…Dogfish Head, Stone and Rogue.
OK, it isn’t really all that bad. In Houston itself, there is Saint Arnold, who makes a good Amber Ale and an excellent IPA among a host of other decent year-round and seasonal brews.
If you range out a little farther - maybe as far as Austin, Dallas and the hill country, there are great offerings from Live Oak (best hefeweizen brewed in America IMO), Real Ale and Independence.
And I will go ahead and mention Shiner. While their flagship, Shiner not a freaking bock Bock, is well-known and rightly slammed, they do make several excellent beers, especially their Dunkelweizen and their Schwarzbier. Unfortunately, those brews don’t have nearly the same range of distribution.
Hmm, I think we have a few:
Avery
Boulder
Breckenridge
New Belgium
Odells
Twisted Pine
Rockyard
Bristol
Divide
Tommyknocker
Ska
Left Hand
And those are just the big ones…
Micro-breweries (fourteen on the list, but I know of several others) and coffee roasters have all but taken over up here. The beers win national and international awards.
Used to live in the Hudson Valley, so we had lots of access to Otter Creek/Wolaver’s, which was a store-bought favorite.
In New Paltz, we had the Gilded Otter brewing co. (no relation to Otter Creek), which is fantastic, and one of the few microbreweries in the country that does lagers. (Enough with the hoppy ales, already, people! Take your time and make some lager.) Sitting on their patio on a sunny August afternoon, looking out towards the Gunks, drinking their blueberry-infused Back Porch Summer Lager is one of the greatest things in the world.
NYC was not a beer town by any means, but Heartland Brewery does have Cornhusker Lager, which is one of my absolute favorite beers.
I’m in Portland now, which obviously has no lack of brew, but I’m just not a huge fan of the super-hopped micro-brew ales. It gets very tired. My local favorites are Bridgeport’s Blue Heron and Full Sail’s Session Lager (a fun, easy-drinking beer).
