Yup, I pick up a lot of craft beer in Missouri since I live at the other end of Kansas. Thankfully we still get decent distribution even without Michigan, Oregon, and California.
These label laws that you speak of were overturned quite some time ago and we've actually gained a lot of new breweries this year (Alaskan, Six Point, Ballast Point, Lazy Magnolia etc...). Goose Island is in the beginnings of their soft rollout into our state and several more strong players making plans to distro here in the next couple of years. The only Colorado brewery that "skips" us that I feel we are really missing out on is Odell and they are one of the breweries with Texas in their short term distro plans. Trust me...I wish I could grab Founders, Bells, Cigar City off the shelf but so do a LOT of other states. Come on....Texas is very far from the worst distributed state in the country...very far.
New Mexico is horrible. The simple fact that it hasn't been mentioned in 4 pages of this thread is evidence of the beer netherworld this place is. Nobody even notices its bad! Deschutes, Odell's, stone, Sierra Nevada, ummmm, Oskar blues, that's about it. The only advantage is when we do get our small allocation of deschutes releases and SN seasonals, they hang around for a while because everyone is reaching over them for bud light. Sure, it could be worse, but if we want to go comparing...
I'd have to go with Utah (based on my only visit) Went to Ogden, Utah for a research conference and went out with a few other students. Dismal craft beer options. Bars closed at midnight and couldn't get anything above 3.5% Not sure how the Mormons can live with it. If I had to live with multiple wives, I would have to find something stronger than 3.5!
As far as distribution goes -Northern Minnesota is by far the worst-and I've lived in New Mex/No. Car./Virginia/Maryland and the Twin Cities- I can't imagine anyplace in the U.S. being worse
I dig Marshall. I think it may be near the top of the class when it comes to Oklahoma brews. But I must say that Oklahoma is (in my opinion) a poor beer state. Thats why I am even reading this thread! I guess there are states that are even worse of than us.
West Virginia is absolutely terrible. The distro list says that Rogue, Sierra Nevada and Great Lakes are available but I've never seen any of them. Sam Adams is as close as it gets to craft beer for most of the state.
Really? How high are your expectations?? Last visit to Orlando I got Cigar City beers, landed a few Bell's Hopslam's, and several local Fla beers including St Elsewhere....and some beer called DFH 120....yea, poor you in the beer desert of the US...I bet WV, WY, and Miss feel better knowing about your plight for better beer.
"West Virginia is absolutely terrible. The distro list says that Rogue, Sierra Nevada and Great Lakes are available but I've never seen any of them. Sam Adams is as close as it gets to craft beer for most of the state" Dude find a decent liquor store. You should be seeing Christmas Ale, Celebration Ale, Yellow Snow etc in high end convenience stores as well.
True, Nebraska doesnt which sucks, but we have weyerbacher, we get all the limited boulevards and copious amounts of them, great GI selection especially BCBS time, Odell, and honestly the biggest city in Nebraska (Pop. 500,000) is at most a 40 minute drive from Iowa that gets Founders, Stone, Bells, Avery, Its not the best but it could be far worse
This is not as objective as you make it seem. Let's say, for instance, that Philly does get a large selection of craft beer (including Russian River and PtE and PtY, which it does) but a lot of this is East Coast swill that most West Coasters wouldn't want anyway. Does this mean that, regardless of the quality of the beer access you have to, Philly still comes out on top? Of course, I'm just joking about the East Coast swill...
never had trouble finding anything in philly. it may be limited, but if its brewed, someone will get it in.
I appreciate where you're coming from even though you're wrong...the distribution is what it is. Tons of fresh stuff makes it here from the west coast - Ballast Point, FW, Bear Republic, Green Flash, Deschutes - as well as from the midwest (Bell's, Founders, Great Lakes, Jolly Pumpkin). But yeah, you're right, we do just get a lot of "swill" from the east coast like CCB, Hill Farmstead, Victory, Maine Brewing, Pretty Things, Troegs...
Coming from Jersey and now living in Delaware, DELAWARE SUCKS. Went from having a plethora of options to hardly any. In Jersey I went from having 3 stores in a 15 mile radius that had over 500 different beers to not even having 3 stores.
I thought Kansas was bad, then I visited Utah a few weeks ago. It was a beer desert! If I move there in August for a year, I will be bringing my cellar with me
http://suite101.com/article/alcohol-laws-in-rural-alaska-a51697pretty bad substance abuse because of the depressing winters supposedly.
Considering the Twin Cities population is about 3.4 million while the state as a whole is only 5.4 million, I wouldn't expect much in the other places. Considering there's probably not a town with a population above 10,000 in the northern half of Minnesota it's pretty easy to see why they don't get much. Luckily I live in ND (on the MN border) and we get far more beer options than we should with the extremely small population of the state. Not that I'm going to complain about that! Definitely nowhere near the worst and FAR better than Texas when it comes to amount of good choices. This is just distribution wise, obviously. Brewery wise North Dakota is easily bottom 3. Possibly bottom one. *sigh*....
are we measuring quality of distribution as number of breweries, quality of beer available or something else? not too get too technical but this seems like a vague question...
Hawaii doesn't sound as bad as some of the other states. It's gotten better around here especially on Kauai, just have to know where to look. This past year some of the notables I've purchased are Deschutes Abyss, Unibroue La Terrible, Ballast point Sculpin (old though), Rochefort 8 and 10, Westmalle tripel, SN Southern Hemisphere, Hoptimum, and Beer Camp, and a few others. Would be nice to get more west coast beers though, but at least we have Maui Brewing and Kauai Island Brewery. The brewery had Coronado Idiot IPA, Lost Coast Indica, Ballast Point Big Eye, and SN Torpedo and Celebration on their guest taps this year. So I'm not complaining, but I do enjoy going to Oahu and the mainland when I get the chance.
