If you’ve been on any form of social media this past week and have at least a few friends who enjoy craft beer, there’s a good chance you saw the post from Thrillist: “Every State in the USA, Ranked by Its Beer.” The story currently has almost 900,000 views and 170,000 shares. The only other piece that comes close is one on deep fried tequila shots, obviously, with about 130,000 shares.
In the sphere of online listicles, rankings and compilations of craft beers and states prove to be popular fodder. There’s also “America’s Favorite Beers by State” on Slate, a list of states that drink the most beer on USA Today, “50 States, 50 Beers We Love” from Serious Eats, and “Craft Beer Production by State,” with data provided by the Brewers Association.
These lists seem to be appealing because you can see how your state ranks, and then either brag or complain about it on social media. But the lists also make me think about how states develop their craft-beer culture and the geographic distinctions for craft beer.
Vermont, for instance, has earned a reputation worldwide for its craft beers, particularly its IPAs and double IPAs, and is Number 2 in country in terms of breweries per capita. Meanwhile, next door New Hampshire, often overlooked, produced 70,000 barrels of craft beer in 2013 compared to Vermont’s 229,000.
North Carolina has developed a booming craft-beer culture and attracted major breweries such as New Belgium and Sierra Nevada to set up their second breweries in state, while other nearby Southern states are a bit further behind—South Carolina has twenty craft breweries compared to North Carolina’s ninety-one.
These differences can be chalked up to a number of factors: legislative struggles and benefits, the ease or difficulty in opening a brewery or self-distributing beer, the number of places that will sell the beer, and the culture and tastes of the residents, to name a few.
But unlike winemaking, which directly ties wine to the origin of the grapes, the terroir, and the region’s soil and climate, brewing itself is relatively free of geographic limitations. Craft brewers have access to malts and hops grown around the world and shipped to their brewery. Styles may emerge depending on access to local ingredients or the quality of the water, but once they are established, anyone can attempt to replicate them. It’s perhaps most evident in the United States, as craft brewers here are attempting Belgian lambic styles, fermented with native yeast, while craft brewers abroad are inspired by American IPAs and experimentation.
Yet, there are also distinctive takes on styles within states. In the first issue of Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine™, Stan Hieronymus wrote about the unique yeast strain used in the Alchemist's Heady Topper. Jeff Baker, bar manager at the Farmhouse Tap & Grill in Burlington, Vermont, expanded on the idea in a column, arguing that Vermont deserves credit for a new IPA style, “one that is bright golden and hazy (unfiltered typically) in appearance, soft in mouthfeel, dense with hop flavor and aroma, yet restrained in bitterness allowing for balance to occur between the hops and the malt.”
So as the number of craft breweries continues to rise across the country, will geographic distinctions in craft beer increase or simmer down? We’ve seen how trends such as session IPAs can sweep the country, but there are also a number of craft breweries experimenting with the concept of terroir, brewing with local grain, hops, and even wild, native yeast.
Time, and many more craft beers will tell, but what the popularity of lists ranking states and cities by beer can tell us now is that craft beer can connect drinkers to a place and a time.