Sniff. I miss Yuengling. I still haven’t adjusted to the reality that my grocery store sells Iron City (gag) but not Yuengling…
Wonderful. There’s 9 breweries in the City, excluding branches of non-locals breweries (Rogue, Gordon Biersch).
Speakeasy’s Prohibition Ale, Magnolia’s Proving Ground IPA are two of my all-time favorites.
Oh yeah, and there’s that Anchor Steam stuff.
And that’s just within city limits. Travel a few miles and you’ll find Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Lagunitas IPA and Russian River Brewing Co, to name a few.
In Houston, Saint Arnold’s is pretty good. Celis, in Austin, makes good Belgian-style beers. Other than that, not so great.
One of the best things about going to Pennsic is stopping in New Castle to pick up a case or two of Yuengling for remarkably little money. If they have a variety I don’t like, I haven’t hit it.
Here in Atlanta, Red Brick and Sweetwater are good breweries.
I would say SoCal takes this competition easily.
SoCal:
Alesmith
Port Brewing
Stone
Lost Abbey
Coronado
and others. The advantage here is that the first 4 on the list might be the 4 best breweries in the entire United States–if not the world.
This year when you go to Pensic, You HAVE to go north country brewing This place is awesome.
try the Stinky Hippie IPA
I’d count Three Floyd’s in there as well–they’re in Indiana, but still in what I would consider Chicagoland.
It’s pretty damn good around here.
Russian River Brewing is just a couple of miles from our house and is a weekly pit stop for my husband and me. Look in any beer rag and at least one (usually closer to five) of their brews are in their Top 25 Beers in the World, Top 25 Beers in the US, etc. Often in the Top 10. The brewpub is consistently ranked as one of the top 20 in America. PLiny the Elder, Blind Pig, and the Russian River IPA are my all time faves.
Other favorites:
Bear Republic - Racer 5 is at the top of my list.
Lagunitas
Third Street Aleworks
Mendocino Brewing Company
Anderson Valley Brewing Company
Moonlight Brewing Company
Sierra Nevada
Moylan’s
And there are several great ones down in the city. My husband and I are going to attempt touring most of them this weekend. We’ve already been to most of them I think, but we’ve never attempted hitting them all in one weekend.
On our list:
Beach Chalet
Magnolia
San Francisco Brewing
Speakeasy
Thirsty Bear
Anchor Steam
21st Amendment
Or well, pretty much all of the places on this map and a few others.
The former does not support the latter, and brings your entire post into question.
BJ’s can make some good beer when Owen is on a roll. Most of their standard stuff is ok, but if you can find one of their specials on draft…those can be quite nice indeed.
Mmmmm . . . beer.
It is a grand thing to have grown up on phenomenal beer from many different local brewers.
bouv, you did leave one other local notable off the list, Shed.
Huh… I can actually believe that. I thought in the hands of a good brewer with some leeway, those beers could become a lot better than they are.
Yuh huh.
I’ve only recently discovered that beer doesn’t have to taste like horse piss. Devil’s Canyon Brewery over in Belmont makes a good hefeweizen and blonde. Pyramid is not bad either, although their main brewery seems to be in Seattle so I don’t know if they count as local.
While I must acknowledge that NorCal and Oregon are probably the two best regions for breweries in N. America, if not the world, I gotta put in a mention for West Michigan-
Bells (Kalamazoo BC)
Founders
New Holland
Kraftwerks
Arcadia
Dark Horse
Including the rest of the state, add-
Jolly Pumpkin
Michigan BC (Celis North)
plus a bunch of smaller ones.
Wow, the ones (3 Houston locations) out here don’t even brew their own beer; they farm that out to Saint Arnold. I had no idea they were a serious brew pub. My ignorance has just been fought.
Hey, you SoCal people- anyone know what’s going on with ReaperAle? Their red is another of my favorites, but they’re on hiatus. Anyone know anything more than what’s on their website?
Here are the results of last year’s Great American Beer Festival(pdf) so, as you can see, almost everyone in the US has some pretty good beer available locally. I feel pretty lucky with the awesome breweries near me, but equally lucky to be able to get some non local great beers like Stone, Dogfish Head, etc. Of course, like Silenus, I homebrew too, so some of my own beers have been some of my personal favorites.
Hey, anyone wanna do a Great American Beer Festival dopefest this October? 
I have been a bit curious about Denver…