America, the Beertiful
America, the Beertiful, photo courtesy American Craft Beer Week
A refresher: Portland won last year’s duel by only a few percentage points, prompting Papazian to name it Beer City USA of the West and Asheville the Beer City USA of the East. This year, the contest was even tighter, with Asheville coming out on top and less than 1,000 votes between first and second place. However, for some curious reason that has not yet been explained, Papazian changed his own rules and gave the title exclusively to Asheville this year.
The switch is a bit random, especially considering that the two cities were even closer in the poll this year than last. Whatever. It’s Papazian’s playground, and he can do what he wants.
Interestingly, over the past year since Papazian’s first poll, I have asked just about every craft beer fan I know who has visited Asheville to describe what it’s all about and, without any variance, the answers have all been very similar to one I recently received from Carl Singmaster, owner of the famous Belmont Station & Biercafe bottle shop, who lived for many years in the Carolinas and is also quite the beer traveler:
“I was truly impressed with the way Asheville has completely embraced craft beer,” Singmaster recently wrote in an e-mail newsletter. “Local craft beer was on tap at virtually every tavern and restaurant and, outside of Portland, Asheville is the only other city I’ve seen where that could be said. But brewery for brewery, fine as they were, they don’t match up with Portland’s craft brewers. Give Asheville a few years, and they’ll be amazing.”
On the week of my 21st anniversary of choosing Portland as my home, in the spirit of good sportsmanship and with great respect, I send my congratulations to Asheville in claiming the title this year, and hope my fellow Portlanders will join me. I commend Asheville’s beery enthusiasm and the work (fun work, but still work) that I know goes behind creating such a tight-knit, passionate beer culture and community. You are a proud group, and you should be. I look forward to the opportunity to visit your fine city, taste your craft beers and experience your craft beer culture for myself.
Congratulations, also, to the other cities that made the list. It should be a great source of local pride to be recognized among the best craft beers cities in the country, and, really, the world. A big “Cheers” for you all!
Now, for a little beery dreaming: Wouldn’t it be great if next year’s poll wound up being a tight race between more cities than Asheville and Portland? W. Scott Griffiths is credited with saying “Wine gentrifies; beer unifies.” Instead of letting a silly beer poll divide us, perhaps our task for the next 12 months is to work harder to assure every city in our country can rightfully be called Beer City USA.
7 Comments to “America, the Beertiful”
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Well said, Lisa. I found the whole competition to be a bit ridiculous, since it quickly came down to which city could rally the most ballot-stuffers.
Being a native west-coaster but now living on the east coast for the past 15 years, i had no dog in this fight, and found there to be little true debate, just “vote for me!” posts everywhere.
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The Beer City Poll is just for fun and is a measure of which city can muster the enthusiasm of locals to vote. As to the quality of the beer in Asheville I wouldn’t be so dismissive. The brewers in Asheville produce high quality craft beer that is worthy of its following. You can’t get craft beer fans anywhere to enthusiastically support breweries who are not producing quality beer.
On paper there is no reason Asheville should be even close considering the size of Portland and the number of breweries in the city. The Beer City Poll is about which city has the most enthusiastic fans. Asheville won with all due respect to Portland. Come visit and see why we so actively support our local craft breweries. I would like nothing better than to visit the Portland breweries and enjoy the best they have to offer. Cheers.
Hi saazhopper — You Asheville folks can be so touchy sometimes. I was not being dismissive. I can’t be! I’ve not yet had the pleasure of tasting Asheville’s beers.
Hey, I just had an idea. You want to visit Portland and I want to visit Asheville. We should start a beer-exchange student thing as a way to visit each others’ hometowns. Anybody in?
A beer exchange program is a great idea and should be instituted instead of another meaningless internet poll that doesn’t educate people on the actual beer scene in both cities.
I would love to learn about both cities. Maybe Belmont Station and Bruisin Ales can set something up together.
Beer Exchange for Beercations, all right, sounds like great fun. And I have to agree on one point if Portland with supposedly over 2,000 SNOBs can’t get enthusiastic enough to put in enough votes to be a city of 75,000, then who cares.
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