Bros, it’s ‘National Beer Day’ and that means I’ll be bringing you a veritable cavalcade of beer content today. I know you bros love beer as much as I do (I know this because I’ve drank beer with many of our readers in the past), so like me you might be just as surprised to discover how regional the popularity of beer styles can be.
When I’m talking about regional beer styles I’m not referring to individual breweries and their flagship beers, because every nook and cranny of the United States has a favorite brewery these days. What I’m referring to is how pockets of the nation heavily prefer specific styles of beer (American Lager, European Lager, Dark Ales, etc).
As part of their #NationalBeerDay coverage the website ‘Let’s Grab A Beer‘ put together this map of America that shows the most popular styles of beer sold in each state, and when you look at the map as a whole you can really see how different our nation’s tastebuds are from sea to shining sea:
Here’s what Let’s Grab A Beer found out when doing research on the most popular beer styles across America:
America Loves Lager – it’s the nation’s most popular beer style. Nationwide, there’s a lot of love for classic American lagers, making lager the most popular beer style in America. Most Midwesterners and Southerners overwhelming choose lager as their beer of choice. In fact, lagers represent more than 80% of all beer sold by volume.*
New York: European Lager – New York shows off its cosmopolitan heritage with a fondness for European lagers, which are extraordinarily popular in The Empire State.
Colorado: Wheat – Coloradans are sweet on wheat beers. With Colorado’s proud heritage of wheat production, it should come as no surprise locals pour “prairie gold.” Wheat beer is remarkably more popular in Colorado than the rest of the country.
Southwest Border States (CA, NV, NM): Mexican Lagers – On the Southwest border, they serve up the cerveza! Not surprisingly, Mexican lagers are extremely popular in this part of the country, bordering Mexico.
Alaska: Dark Beer – Alaskans won’t see sun in winter and enjoy midnight sun all summer, but like their beer dark year-round. Dark beers are unusually popular in the last frontier.
I’m not at all surprised by the fact that the Pacific Northwest gravitates heavily towards IPAs because the Pacific NW is where all of our nation’s best hops are grown. I am however surprised that my home state of Florida is all about the dark beers, because it’s hotter than shit down here and when I think back to the beers I see people drink most often they’re typically clear American and Mexican-style lagers.
As I mentioned before the website ‘Let’s Grab A Beer‘ put together this map in celebration of National Beer Day (today, April 7th, 2016). If you’re not familiar with ‘Let’s Grab A Beer’ yet you should really be checking that site on the regular because it’s one of the few websites around that are 100% dedicated to putting out premium content about all things related to beer. An example of what they’re doing in the world of beer is this video of how to cheers across the world:
Here’s some more info from the Let’s Grab A Beer survey about who is drinking the most beer and who Americans want to drink beer with the most:
— Let’s Grab a Beer also conducted a national survey, which found:
Tina Fey is the celebrity Americans would most like to have a beer with, narrowly beating out Jimmy Fallon this year.
— The majority of working Americans 21+ and nearly 3 out of 4 Millennials (72%), would like their work to close early on National Beer Day.
Beer is more popular amongst Millennials (55%) than mixed drinks (35%), wine (30%), vodka (27%), whisky (24%), champagne/Prosecco (19%), gin (8%), tequila (1%) and rum (0%).
So follow that link above and check ’em out, or you can go give them a follow on Twitter to keep up with their daily stream of new beer content. And if you’re wondering what I’ll be drinking for National Beer Day I’m going to go ahead and start with this bottle.