Beer Advocate.com has just released their latest list, The Top 50 Places to Have a Beer in America in celebration of American Craft Brew Week. If you glance quickly at the list, you’ll be surprised to only see Portland listed once. When you scan again, you’ll realize that it is actually Portland, Maine. So Portland, Oregon does not have one of the top 50 places to have a beer.
Don’t storm off yet. Washington and Oregon have a tremendously low Beer Advocate membership population density, so the math used in calculating these locations often omits some of the best places to get beer if there are not enough reviews. Complicating this calculation is the fact that there is an abundance of places to get good beer. For Example:
Brewpubs in the State of Maine: 16
Brewpubs in the State of New York: 30
Brewpubs in the City of Portland: 27
So, the 18 million residents of New York state have only 30 brewpubs to haunt, while the 550,000 residents of Portland have 27. And that doesn’t even consider how much more craft beer we drink here in Oregon. We’d need our own Top 50 list.