Exactly how would you measure the popularity of a brewery? How would you rank all of the breweries in America based on popularity? No doubt, a lot of you do not care about popularity. You are much more interested in knowing which are the best breweries.
By the way, if you are interested in reading a story about the largest craft breweries in the USA, read this story from Microbrewery.com – The Largest Craft Breweries in the United States.
The title best brewery is subjective and mercurial. That is, it is not based on data but construed by opinions. Even if those opinions belong to the world’s best beer judges, they are still opinions. Popularity is a different thing altogether. It can be measured. You may disagree with the method, but popularity is something that can be backed up by data, as it is in this case.
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Some Interesting Results
The list of most popular breweries produced by housemethod.com has nothing to do with “best,” but it is still interesting. It ranks the top breweries in the nation in terms of popularity. Also, the most popular breweries in each state. If nothing else, I am impressed with the heavy lifting, the data-crunching, housemethods.com did in compiling this list.
You might see that things didn’t turn out exactly as you ‘d imagine. There are some unexpected names on the lists. On both the list of most popular USA breweries as well as the list of most popular Washington breweries. Apparently, they looked at all the breweries in the country to come up with one list, and then only the breweries in each state to come up with the others. That yielded different results.
In compiling the lists, they took into account measurable data: Number of Facebook followers, number of Instagram followers, Yelp score, and number of Yelp reviews. Now, you may think that’s a bunch of nonsense, but I would ask you to devise another method for determining a brewery’s popularity. Not quality, but popularity.
Anyway, given the methodology and the data, I think the results are interesting. That’s why I share them here. To see the complete results, and learn more about the method, check out the story at https://housemethod.com/blog/most-popular-breweries/.
Most Popular Breweries in the USA
- New Belgium Brewing (CO)
- Boston Beer Co. (MA)
- Goose Island Brewery (IL)
- Sierra Nevada Brewing (CA)
- Dogfish Head Craft Brewery (DE)
- Lagunitas Brewing (CA)
- Ballast Point Brewing (CA)
- Lewis and Clark Brewing (MT)
- Hodad’s Brewing (CA)
- Anchor Brewing (CA)
- Lagunitas Brewing (IL)
- Binary Brewing (OR)
- Ballast Point Brewing (VA)
- Stone Brewing (CA)
- Rogue Ales (OR)
The first Oregon brewery to appear on the list is Binary Brewing, which is interesting and a bit surprising. The first “Washington brewery” to appear on the list, Elysian Brewing (owned by Anheuser-Busch), is much less surprising because Elysiannow produces beer at multiple locations across the country and distributes beer nationwide. It is the most visible “Washington brewery” by a longshot.
The list showed the most popular 150 breweries in the country. Elysian Brewing ranked highest for Washington breweries, coming in at number 42. The only other Washington breweries on the list were Georgetown Brewing (68), Fremont Brewing (74), Seapine Brewing (88), and Reuben’s Brews (149).
See the complete results.
The Five Most Popular Breweries in Washington
(Not necessarily the five that made the top 150, and not even in the same order, which is interesting).
- Elysian Brewing
- Fremont Brewing
- Reubens Brews
- Backwoods Brewing
- Georgetown Brewing
In the coming weeks, I anticipate getting my hands on 2019 production numbers and will learn which Washington breweries produced the most beer last year. While four of the five breweries listed above will most assuredly appear near the top of that list, Seapine Brewing and Backwoods Brewing probably will not, which makes their position on these lists interesting and impressive.
