It's all in the details.
Yesterday, we took a look at the styles of beer included in my mega list of top beers by state, according to Beer Advocate. Today, the full list of beers and breweries is unleashed.
While we know that IPAs, DIPAs and imperial stouts are all the rage, now it's time to find out where all these big hitters are coming from. If you need a refresher how I came up with these lists, I recommend this explainer.
But before we start scrolling to find our particular states and what's represented, let's have some fun.
First, I've created a map that highlights the "best" brewery each state offers, per my Beer Advocate ranking system. That means that even if you love Pennsylvania's Tired Hands Brewing and think they're the best ever, they will not appear in any of this analysis because none of their beers made the cutoff for that state.
Again, I want to reiterate the goal here is to find some kind of middle-ground between what most people can acquire and rate. With this example, Tired Hands' beers were all about 200 ratings or more below what I set as the cutoff for that state by averaging the list of PA's "best" beers.
With that out of the way, here's the United States of Beer, according to Beer Advocate:
A couple of these required tie breakers based on my own bias. Beer-soaked Colorado, for example, was a toss up, with Avery (2), Odell (2) and Great Divide (3) all featured more than once. In the end, I went with Great Divide but would have been OK with Odell as well.
On the flip side, a few states like New Hampshire had one brewery holding down all 10 spots. Congrats, Smuttynose.
If anything, this list was enlightening to me as a representation of what breweries to look for if I ever found myself in Nevada, Montana or New Mexico. I honestly had never heard of a few of these businesses before now.
Another interesting point to consider as you look over the state-by-state list below, which brings me back to yesterday's post on state culture and personality of beer, is that on a whole, styles are interchangeable, but preferences may not be as flexible. An imperial stout in New Mexico may not play as well as one in New Jersey for a variety of reasons, some of which I'll get to later this week.
Finally, you'll notice the list below only contains the basic info on these beers, but that's purposeful. Tomorrow we'll go over ABV and what kind of inferences we can make from that information and eventually work our way to tie-ins with how people rate beers and even how geographical aspects like climate may have some kind of factor in our "best of" rankings.
So without further adieu, here are the top-10 beers for each state (and DC) with apologies to the people of North Dakota who only get seven. If you dare scroll all the way down, I encourage thoughts, comments and questions from readers near and far.
Let's dissect this stuff:
+Bryan Roth
"Don't drink to get drunk. Drink to enjoy life." - Jack Kerouac
