Oh and brewery figures are out...

US Craft Breweries ranked by volume:
Rank Brewing Company, City, State
1 Boston Beer Co. Boston MA
2 Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Chico CA
3 New Belgium Brewing Co. Fort Collins CO
4 The Gambrinus Company San Antonio TX
5 Deschutes Brewery Bend OR
6 Matt Brewing Co. Utica NY
7 Bell's Brewery, Inc. Galesburg MI
8 Harpoon Brewery Boston MA
9 Lagunitas Brewing Co. Petaluma CA
10 Boulevard Brewing Co. Kansas City MO
11 Stone Brewing Company Escondido CA
12 Dogfish Head Craft Brewery Milton DE
13 Brooklyn Brewery Brooklyn NY
14 Alaskan Brewing & Bottling Co. Juneau AK
15 Long Trail Brewing Co. Burlington VT
16 Shipyard Brewing Co. Portland ME
17 Abita Brewing Co. Abita Springs LA
18 Great Lakes Brewing Co. Cleveland OH
19 New Glarus Brewing Co. New Glarus WI
20 Full Sail Brewing Co. Hood River OR
21 Summit Brewing Co. St. Paul MN
22 Anchor Brewing Co. San Francisco CA
23 Firestone Walker Brewing Co. Paso Robles CA
24 Sweetwater Brewing Co. Atlanta GA
25 Rogue Ales Brewery Newport OR
26 Flying Dog Brewery Frederick MD
27 Victory Brewing Co. Downingtown PA
28 CraftWorks Breweries & Restaurants Chattanooga/Louisville TN/CO
29 Oskar Blues Brewery Longmont CO
30 Odell Brewing Co. Fort Collins CO
31 Stevens Point Brewery Co. Stevens Point WI
32 Ninkasi Brewing Co. Eugene OR
33 BJ's Chicago Pizza & Brewery, Inc. Huntington Beach CA
34 Blue Point Brewing Co. Patchogue NY
35 Bear Republic Brewing Co. Cloverdale CA
36 Lost Coast Brewery Cafe Eureka CA
37 Big Sky Brewing Co. Missoula MT
38 North Coast Brewing Co. Inc. Fort Bragg CA
39 Saint Louis Brewery, Inc./Schlafly Bottleworks St. Louis MO
40 Gordon Biersch Brewing Co. San Jose CA
41 Breckenridge Brewery Denver CO
42 Founders Brewing Co. Grand Rapids MI
43 Saint Arnold Brewing Co. Houston TX
44 Karl Strauss Brewing Co. San Diego CA
45 Real Ale Brewing Co. Blanco TX
46 Mac and Jack's Brewery Inc. Redmond WA
47 Smuttynose Brewing Co. Portsmouth NH
48 Utah Brewers Cooperative Salt Lake City UT
49 Left Hand Brewing Co. Longmont CO
t.50 Anderson Valley Brewing Co. Boonville CA
t.50 Four Peaks Brewing Co. Tempe AZ



And the overall brewery sales rankings:

1 Anheuser-Busch Inc. (a) St. Louis MO
2 MillerCoors (b) Chicago IL
3 Pabst Brewing Co. (c) Woodbridge IL
4 D. G. Yuengling and Son Inc. Pottsville PA
5 Boston Beer Co. Boston MA
6 North American Breweries (d) Rochester NY
7 Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Chico CA
8 New Belgium Brewing Co. Fort Collins CO
9 Craft Brew Alliance, Inc. (e) Portland OR
10 The Gambrinus Company (f) San Antonio TX
11 Deschutes Brewery Bend OR
12 Matt Brewing Co. (g) Utica NY
13 Bell's Brewery, Inc. Galesburg MI
14 Minhas Craft Brewery (h) Monroe WI
15 Harpoon Brewery Boston MA
16 Lagunitas Brewing Co. Petaluma CA
17 Boulevard Brewing Co. Kansas City MO
18 Stone Brewing Co. Escondido CA
19 Dogfish Head Craft Brewery Milton DE
20 Brooklyn Brewery Brooklyn NY
21 Alaskan Brewing and Bottling Co. Juneau AK
22 Long Trail Brewing Co. Burlington VT
23 August Schell Brewing Co. (i) New Ulm MN
24 Shipyard Brewing Co. Portland ME
25 Abita Brewing Co. Abita Springs LA
26 World Brews/Winery Exchange (j) Novato CA
27 Great Lakes Brewing Co. Cleveland OH
28 New Glarus Brewing Co. New Glarus WI
29 Full Sail Brewing Co. Hood River OR
30 Pittsburgh Brewing Co. Pittsburgh PA
31 Summit Brewing Co. St. Paul MN
32 Anchor Brewing Co. San Francisco CA
33 Firestone Walker Brewing Co. Paso Robles CA
34 Cold Spring Brewing Co. (k) Cold Spring MN
35 Sweetwater Brewing Co. Atlanta GA
36 Rogue Ales Brewery Newport OR
37 Mendocino Brewing Co. (l)Ukiah CA
38 Flying Dog Brewery Frederick MD
39 Victory Brewing Co. Downingtown PA
40 CraftWorks Breweries & Restaurants (m) Chattanooga/Louisville TN/CO
41 Oskar Blues Brewery & Tasty Weasel Tap Room Longmont CO
42 Odell Brewing Co. Fort Collins CO
43 Stevens Point Brewery Co. (n) Stevens Point WI
44 Ninkasi Brewing Co. Eugene OR
45 BJ's Chicago Pizza & Brewery Huntington Beach CA
46 Blue Point Brewing Co. Patchogue NY
47 Bear Republic Brewing Co. Cloverdale CA
48 Goose Island Brewing Co. (o) Chicago IL
49 Lost Coast Brewery and Cafe Eureka CA
50 Narragansett Brewing Co. Providence RI

Sweetwater holding down the fort for the South.

With their expansion they are looking to move up that list.

Yeah no shit, that's right. Good time to start a hop farm at Redlands.

Speaking of which, their new offering in June (which I believe will be a year rounder):

Sounds delicious, label looks like crap.

I have been collecting recipes, and was looking at cloning either Two Hearted or Spotted Cow. Then I thought about making a 2 Hearted with rye... wonder if that would be good. Also i was really surprised to learn that 2 Hearted is 100% Centennial hops. No other varieties. Interesting.

I'm surprised Dogfish isn't higher on that list.

Cap'n, I opened one of the double IPA's the other day. It's real good, maybe a little too malty, but other than that I like it a lot.

edit: I tried it again tonight, probably a week after I first had it, and it's less malty. Excellent first beer.

Looks like the cover for Tyler, the Creator's collection of vintage Ca$hMoney covers, as produced by Justin Vernon.

With a special appearance by JV's fellow 'Sconsin-adjacent rockers, Cashmoneyaudio. (Funny that Touch n' Go/Quarterstick doesn't know the difference between No Limit Soldiers & Ca$hMoney Millionaires. Back dat Azzhat up!)

I find the comments really interesting - I can't tell if it's ok or not. On the maltyness, a lot of that came from improperly mashing the 5 lb's of crushed grain. A lot of fuel didn't get properly prepared to become yeast food (and thus alcohol), so they survived as flavor and color instead. Thus, we wound up with a much more bready, substantial feeling/tasting beer with "only" about 8% booze instead of a cleaner, meaner 10%. Only because we went so gonzo with the total amount of malt and sugar did the beer come out still having 8%. If I'd done the mash right, it would've been rocket fuel, I guess.

And I didn't make that mistake on the hoppy tripel, which explains why it has been fermenting like a motherfucker for 4 days straight. That one should come out a lot cleaner and meaner. Only thing I would change is the temp in that closet - I'd like it to have been down in the 60's, but it was so hot until this morning outside... it's been reading high 70's on the ferms in there. Part of that is the yeast activity, which releases some heat, but the rest is the fact that it's been like 80 something out for 2 days and I don't cool the whole house down all day when we're gone just to get that closet a few degrees colder.

Oh it's good, it's just different. It's almost like a stout, not in flavor or texture, but where you have to just sip it and just enjoy it for an hour.

The most hipster beer in the world?

http://draftmag.com/beereditor/the-most ... the-world/
http://churchkeycanco.com/home/

Former Ob poster D posted about this on Facebook a couple weeks ago and I commented it was basically a Portlandia skit.

Wow, this is a fantastic beer. I haven't been disappointed by any of their four pack series beers. I also consumed a Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA in a tall boy can for the first time tonight as well.

I think I'm going to try to subsist on only homebrew and a beer-of-the-month club (6 bombers a month) for a while. 3+ years of hitting it hard is evident in my budget... Haven't had a beer now in 5 or 6 days (wife is cleansing or something, I'm showing solidarity). I feel no different whatsoever and while I miss having a beer when I get home, there is no "craving" whatsoever. Great news all around, I guess, but it's a good opportunity to not spend $50 a week minimum on beer. Hell, if I make something less hoppy, I can go from $70 / 5 gallons to $50 for homebrew. People make "beer" for $30/5 gals, but fuck that.

50 a week!? *low whistle*

Consider yourself lucky that your vice is beer and not wine. My wine budget pretty easily exceeds my food budget.

Plan Dead. They can't ship to the Peoples Republic. Shit.

I'd normally go through 3 good beers a night, or a bomber and a shitty beer. Bombers are anywhere from $8 to $13 each. Good sixers are about $11, maybe as much as $14. Sometimes I'd get 12 packs of cans for about $18. Normal trip to the store is two singles and a sixer, and that happened every 3 or 4 days, so generally about $25 per visit and twice a week, sometimes more I guess.

I spend at least $50 on a week where I attend more than one tapping party or a home brew club related event, but for the most part I spend about $25 to $30.
I think I would be spending about $75 a week, if I was regularly making beer for AHA contests or home brew club events, and my initial costs for a home brew set up would easily equal five to ten weeks of good beer drinking right now.
My order for hops, yeast and honey for the Big Brew in May was $37 plus shipping, and then my malts and grains will cost me $19 at the event. That's a little more than $50 total for five gallons of beer, which is a sweet deal when you think of it, but I'll also be giving most of it away for free.

Oh believe you me, I'm hip to the dent that good beer can put in your wallet, I just don't drink as much as you do.

As far as "living" on homebrew goes, if I were you, I'd do a tap setup with a chest freezer like Terry has. Bottling and bottles are for the birds.

Oh I know how nice a tap setup is - Uncle Tom in Wiscy has had one for a good 7 or 8 years now, and I hit that thing like a punching bag everytime I visit. But because of him I also know how much cost and trouble it is to set up and maintain (buying gas, cleaning lines, buying a keg fridge). My conclusion is that it's absolutely worth it WHEN you own your own place, and absolutely not when you rent. Sadly I cannot see us being able to buy anytime soon, no matter what happens. To mitigate some of the trouble of bottling, I went with a lot of swingtops and growlers, which really is pretty damned easy. And I think I would probably always brown bottle at least 6 or 8 from every batch, to give away.

Bottles are easy. I don't know anything about kegging homebrew but setting up a tap system can be cheaper and easier than you probably think. You can probably buy an old, used refrigerator, a drill attachment for cutting a circular hole through the refrigerator, and a kit that includes the gas tank, regulator, lines and tap for a couple hundred total. I had a nice and cheap setup in college for a few years. If you have a garage or basement that you can put any old ugly refrigerator in, it's easy peasy. If not, then there's the issue of having the setup not take too much room and not being a big eyesore or odor problem.

I had a 22oz of Eagle Rock Brewery's Populist IPA last night. I'm a little ashamed to admit that they are located less than 2 miles from me but I've yet to make it over there and am only getting around to trying more of their beers because they just started their bottling operation within the last month. Their beers are really solid if anyone gets a chance to try them although I'd imagine their distribution is pretty limited at this point. Populist is the only bottle available now although they are supposedly bottling a Wit and a mild ale soon. I've had the mild ale on tap before and it is really great.

Or work in an industry that functions on Happy Hour. But at least I can write off half of those expenses