Far and away the worst thing about being a craft beer fan — worse than the weight gain, the expense and the DUIs* — is how difficult it can be to get ahold of great beers.
The market for craft beer, you see, is very different from the market for books of poetry or video games. You can’t just go on Amazon and order whatever you want. It’s much more like the market for antiques or fresh heirloom tomatoes — segmented, local and confusing. Many of the country’s best craft brewers produce only a very limited quantity of beer. Arcane laws prevent residents of many states from being able to order beer over the internet. And the beer distributor system in use throughout the country ensures that consumers in each state are only going to be able to access a limited swath of the beers being brewed at any given time.
But craft beer fans in some states (and even in some parts of some states) are much better off than others. The easiest way to see just how much better off is to navigate over to one of the most useful, least heralded websites in craft beer: Seek-a-Brew. Compiled by an eager, cartographically-inclined craft beer nut, Seek-a-Brew keeps track of which beers are distributed in which states so you don’t have to. You can search by state or beer, and even compare two states’ selection head-to-head.
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I think the first Beaver River Beer Tasting was in 2006, at The Beaver River Hotel: now called Beaver River Lodge. During those years, for a brief time, the tastings expanded to three different locations. The Labor Day beer tasting was always the most successful, with Millie, my wife, counting about 60-70 people at one point. For a town with no roads going to it, only accessible by boat, barge or trail: that’s incredible.
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