Keep Up

Not to toot my own beer horn or to impose my L.A. brewery bona fides but I recently did a little Excel work to keep track of the breweries that I have visited of the Official (currently) 90 breweries in the L.A. County Brewers Guild orbit.

Here are the statistical takeaways…

As Los Angeles draws closer to the century mark in breweries, it will probably mean an increase in the “just once” category and I expect the not visited yet total to stay around the 10 mark since many will probably head the way of selling from their taproom only. Of course this does not count the breweries not part of the guild that I have been to or the bottle shops frequented. There is room for improvement. I hope to knock off a couple from the unvisited list before summer is over.

the Year in Craft Beer – 2011

Two things jump out at me. The number 13.2% growth and the fact that this time next year, we could be looking at over 2,000 craft breweries. That is amazing. And all in a staggeringly short amount of time. But the future number that I am looking at is market share. With each large gain the water lager manufacturers might finally learn that taste is paramount.

This chart is courtesy of the Brewer’s Association.