the Calm Before the Storm: Pittsburgh Brewing (Washington, Lincoln: purchasing, yard)

[SammyKhalifa]

Originally Posted by pman

flying fish is about 15 miles from citizens bank. neither flying fish nor three floyd's would show up in their "home states" on a state listing which was my point. same with dogfish head. the large western states don't have their regions split up...in fact, california encompasses more than one region.

Well, yeah not disagreeing with you there . . . I mean, just looking at a map tells you that California is the size of about half of the East Coast . . .

[BrianTH]

Someone should calculate a brewery density (by land area of the relevant states, say).

[Drover]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Someone should calculate a brewery density (by land area of the relevant states, say).

Should be easy enough with some Excel manipulating...

[BrianTH]

I'd do it but I don't want to do the data entry.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Someone should calculate a brewery density (by land area of the relevant states, say).

Here are the results. Not surprisingly, it favors small, densely populated states.


RANK / STATE / No. of Breweries / Breweries per 10,000sqmi (land area only)


1 / DC / 3 / 488.60
2 / RI / 6 / 57.42
3 / MA / 37 / 47.19
4 / DE / 8 / 40.95
5 / CT / 16 / 33.03
6 / NJ / 19 / 25.62
7 / VT / 19 / 20.54
8 / MD / 18 / 18.42
9 / NH / 15 / 16.73
10 / PA / 67 / 14.95
11 / HI / 9 / 14.01
12 / CA / 218 / 13.98
13 / WA / 93 / 13.98
14 / MI / 70 / 12.32
15 / WI / 64 / 11.78
16 / NY / 51 / 10.80
17 / OR / 90 / 9.38
18 / CO / 96 / 9.26
19 / ME / 28 / 9.07
20 / OH / 37 / 9.04
21 / VA / 29 / 7.32
22 / IN / 26 / 7.25
23 / IL / 40 / 7.20
24 / FL / 36 / 6.68
25 / NC / 31 / 6.36
26 / SC / 13 / 4.32
27 / TN / 15 / 3.64
28 / MT / 25 / 3.63
29 / IA / 17 / 3.04
30 / GA / 17 / 2.94
31 / MN / 22 / 2.76
32 / WV / 6 / 2.49
33 / AZ / 24 / 2.11
34 / NE / 16 / 2.08
35 / KS / 16 / 1.96
36 / ID / 16 / 1.93
37 / KY / 7 / 1.76
38 / UT / 13 / 1.58
39 / MT / 23 / 1.58
40 / NV / 16 / 1.46
41 / NM / 17 / 1.40
42 / TX / 33 / 1.26
43 / LA / 5 / 1.15
44 / OK / 7 / 1.02
45 / WY / 9 / 0.93
46 / SD / 6 / 0.79
47 / AR / 4 / 0.77
48 / AL / 3 / 0.59
49 / AK / 14 / 0.24
50 / MS / 1 / 0.21
51 / ND / 1 / 0.14

[BrianTH]

I'd say that looks pretty good for the Northeast Coast being able to stack up with California.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I'd say that looks pretty good for the Northeast Coast being able to stack up with California.

I suppose, if you consider breweries by land area to be a useful measure. But California has a whole lot of wide-open and rather sparsely populated spaces. On a per-capita basis, California still beats out most Northeastern states.

[pman]

Originally Posted by Drover

I suppose, if you consider breweries by land area to be a useful measure. But California has a whole lot of wide-open and rather sparsely populated spaces. On a per-capita basis, California still beats out most Northeastern states.

how many breweries when you add up the states in the east for a similarly sized area?pa is sparsely populated in large swaths of the state. id guess the midatlantic compares favorably in a lot of ways. even per capita ca is only marginally "better"

[pcity]

Originally Posted by Drover

I suppose, if you consider breweries by land area to be a useful measure. But California has a whole lot of wide-open and rather sparsely populated spaces. On a per-capita basis, California still beats out most Northeastern states.

Per-capita is the far more relevant metric. Farm-land and desert don't drink beer- people do.

Given the brewery stats you posted, I'm going to guess that Oregon, Colorado, and Washington are way out in front of everyone by that measure. Massachusetts would probably do well too.

Since you appear to be including all breweries, there's also the question of how much a brewery contributes to a "beer scene". The breweries per capita figure gives equal weight to Yuengling, Straub, and Iron City as it does to Troegs, Victory, and Yards. On the other hand, "quality" is so subjective that we could spend pages and pages debating how much each brewery should count.

[BrianTH]

Which measure you should use depends on the question you want to ask. For example, per capita isn't necessarily the right measure if you want to ask how many breweries are within a certain shipping distance of a person in the relevant locale.