Is a neat story.
They brewed it to raise money for victims of the Camp Fire.
All sales go towards fundraising (not just the profits, which is a gimmick that many companies do with “charitable” giving.)
Their suppliers have also agreed to donate product. Distributors are also waiving their fees.
But the best part is that they shared the recipe with other microbreweries around the country and asked them to do the same.
At this point, over 1400 breweries nationwide have joined the effort. I looked at the spreadsheet that’s linked to the site and there were 350 breweries from California alone.
I’m going to track down several and taste compare them. But it’s not about me; I’m just trying to do my part to help those in need.
AL, MS, LA & Arkansas all rank last in almost every category for breweries per capita, consumption, etc.
I've never spent much time in Mississippi. I realize they're not a wealthy state .
Just 12 craft breweries statewide. Hell Hawaii has 18. Last in beer consumption nationally.
Interestingly Vermont is the highest breweries per capita & they drink the most beer per capita. Delware is 2nd most in beer consumption but far fewer breweries.
I am fairly stunned after relocating to Durham, NC how many of my coworkers don't drink at all.
Happy hours are like herding cats/children who stubbornly either refuse to go or sit in the corner sipping on ice water waiting to leave.
Lots of small breweries, home brew shops and pubs all over the place. Heck, even the Durham Bulls have their own on-site brewery. Can't top that.
I work at a local golf course and in the summer I work with a bunch of high school students. I came in late on a Sunday and found seven unopened beers down in the cart barn. I looked at all the high school aged boys and asked them why those beers were still there? They all said they didn't like to drink beer. Naturally, I confiscated the unclaimed brews. When I was in high school, free beer was like a miracle. I weep for the future.
Homebrewing appears to be a prerequisite of a micro brew culture.
I was no longer living in the state at this time, but my recollection is that some of the big beer distributors lobbied hard to keep that 6% threshold and were successful for a quite a while. Free the Hops eventually organized to get the law overturned.
Per Alabama State Rep Alvin Holmes - "What's wrong with the beers we got? They drink pretty good"
I was reading an article earlier this week about how it is often seen in the same vein as moonshine. You are right that without a homebrewing base you won't get a micro brew culture, but I think it takes a while for homebrewing to actually reach critical mass.
just kidding...have no clue.
The last one to close of the breweries that reopened after Prohibition was Peter Hand Brewing Co., brewers of the awful swill branded "Braumeister", that sold $3.28 a case (sic) at King's Cellar in South Bend in the late 70's. So of course was the beer of choice for penniless college students when "premium" beer like PBR was out of our price range.
I would have guessed San Diego. It seems like there is a brewery on every block out there now.
Maybe 2 miles
It takes into account the whole metro area. Metro Chicago has 9.5 million people compared to San Diego's 3.3 million. San Diego is also naturally hemmed in by oceans, mountains, the border, and Camp Pendleton - Chicago's brewery MSA covers Three Floyds in Munster, IN to Scorched Earth in Algonquin, IL (almost 80 miles) and everything in between.
Chicago has the good fortune of being nearby some traditionally good brewing areas (Wisconsin, western Michigan, St. Louis area) and has relatively cheap real estate compared to other cities its size. Breweries can't be all that great as far as revenue/square foot is concerned, so it makes sense that Chicago would out-perform NYC, LA, DC, SF, Miami, and the like from that perspective and would out-perform traditionally top cities like Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Milwaukee, and so forth just from a sheer size perspective.
Though I met plenty of people at ND who told me they were from Chicago, rather than DeKalb, Rockford, etc., so I guess why not.
the entire MSA was included, at least from what I could tell.
ETA: I think this helps Chicago in this type of calculation - it seems like every suburb has its own brew-house/restaurant in its little downtown, and Chicago has a lot of suburbs.
Chicago's beer scene is odd to me. It's spread out, as you mention, which makes it hard to feel much of a beer community whenever I'm in town. Cities like Portland and Denver tend to have concentrations and pockets of breweries and beer bars that make it easy to get a feel for their beer scenes. Maybe those exist in Chicago and I've just had poor tour guides.
and a few others that come to mind (probably Austin, Grand Rapids area) still out-punch the big cities pound for pound by a good bit.
The well-known breweries actually in the city (Half Acre, Revolution, DryHop, Haymarket, maybe a few others) tend to be clustered where gentrification started occurring maybe 10 or 20 years ago, and land was relatively still cheap in those areas, at least compared to today and compared to what were the expensive areas back then. You can almost draw a semi-circle arc around where that was at the time and go right through the first line of brewery renaissance in the city. That line has now pushed out again into areas like Humboldt Park, Edgewater, Hermosa, almost into Belmont Cragin - would have been unthinkable ten years ago, but that's where the cheap land is now, and it's too expensive to do anything where the more established places are. I think that's why you don't see a cluster or a couple of clusters.