A ‘Not So Smart’ Guide To The Best US Beer Cities: 2022

Financial and real estate firms such as SmartAsset have been using beer as a way to draw younger visitors to their sites for years.

Beer is viewed as vital youthful and trendy… retirement and refinancing rates, not so much.

And while the methodology used in these kinds of rankings can get sketchy…they still can be fun… even when their overall results sometimes strain credibility.

SmartAsset began ranking “best beer cities” in 2015 and they’ve just released the 2022 rankings which appraised 393 US cities for their ‘beeriness.”

Using data derived from RateBeer, they start by calculating the total number of breweries and brewpubs in a city per 100,000 residents.

But things get a little sketchier when they introduce the average number of beers produced by each brewery (again this data is input from RateBeer users not from the actual breweries).

And when the methodology takes into account the average price for a pint of a domestic draft beer in any given city, things get ridiculously skewed especially from a craft beer perspective.

The good news they’re no longer taking into account the average Yelp score of breweries as they did in the 2017 rankings.

And now, after more information than anyone needs on what is basically beer clickbait set to lure you into a financial planning site, are SmartAsset’s 10 best cities in 2022 for beer drinkers….

1. Pittsburgh, PA
2. Bend, OR
3. Milwaukee, WI
4. St Louis, MO
5. Asheville, NC
6. Cincinnati, OH
7. New Orleans, LA
8. Fort Collins, CO
9. Austin, TX
10. Missoula, MT

 

Key Findings

• Chicago reigns supreme with the most breweries. Last year, we gave the Windy City praise for its 101 breweries, and in 2022 it beat the competition once again with 103. The runner-up has 21 breweries fewer at 82, and the average for the study is just eight per city. Although Chicago wasn’t able to clear our top 10 list, it made it into the top 50 (No. 35).
• The top three beer-drinking cities held their ground. The top three remained unchanged with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Bend, Oregon and Milwaukee, Wisconsin holding their previous spots in this year’s rankings. In general, the top of the list held steady, with eight out of 10 cities retaining a top-10 spot from the previous year.
• The study’s average price per pint is $4.68. Among the top 10 cities, eight of them charge drinkers less than the study average. The city with the cheapest price for a cold one: Clifton, New Jersey. Beer lovers can score a cold one for $1.85 in this New York City suburb.

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