I love beer. I especially love delicious craft beer, mostly because I enjoy the idea that every new brew is a sudsy adventure for the palate. Many in the industry say that craft beer is experiencing a massive market oversaturation after years of booming business. But it’s not going away any time soon — the culture that drives consumers away from big beer and towards smaller, independently-owned brewers is more a culture shift towards a corner of the booze industry where the central ethos is experimentation, improvisation, and trying something new.
The brewery visit experience is key to being a hops head. One’s evangelism for a particular brewery is not complete without a pilgrimage to where the beer is forged. With that in mind, statistician Nathan Yau at FlowingData figured out what the perfect beer road trip would look like. He put together a dream trip based on the 72 American breweries on Rate Beer’s 100 Best Breweries In The World list. He then figured out how to best travel between them via car.
The result belongs high on a beer geek’s bucket list.
Here are the craft breweries you’d hit up along the way:
Yau estimates that it’d take 20 days if all you’re doing to do is hit up 70 breweries after brewery on your 28-state trip across the Continental U.S. By his calculations, it’d take 128 driving hours and over 12,000 miles. Via Flowing Data:
If your only goal is to sample the beers at each of the top breweries, it takes you about 20 days. This figures in a couple of hours at each stop to sample and metabolize (so you don’t drive drunk), plus driving time in between each place. This assumes staying near one of the 70 breweries each night. You can of course drink what you want at the end of the day and sleep it off, nice and fresh in the morning.
When you take into account opening times and more importantly, when each brewery is closed, it likely takes a bit longer.
Of course, road trips aren’t all about the official stops. They’re also about what happens along the way.
Damn straight. Go read the whole thing over at Flowing Data.
Personally, I think you could probably add another 100 breweries to this list (it’s missing many of my East Coast favorites like Troegs and Victory and Two Roads) and take an entire year to circle the U.S. tasting heady brews from the brewers themselves. That is the very definition of living the dream right there.
[H/T: Maxim]