THIS is where I draw the line.

Best beer scene? Really?

That's insane. If Boulder does anything right, it's the fact that it's in the center of the beer capital of North America. Avery, Great Divide, New Belgium, O'Dell, Left Hand, and a ton of smaller breweries are within 30 minutes of Boulder.

They hold the Great American Beer Festival (see #1 http://allaboutbeer.com/live-beer/culture/2008/05/the-growle...) in Denver for a reason.

It's bizarre that Joe didn't mention it. Colorado absolutely kicks ass at beer:)

*EDIT: I should also mention that we just elected a fricking brewer as as our new governor. :)

Colorado does have some great beers. I'm a big fan of Fat Tire and the other New Belgium beers.

If you like fat tire you should try 90 shilling from from Odell Brewing Company (if you can find it). I find fat tire really depends on what batch you get and how lucky you are for how good it is but 90 shilling is consistently good.

As are most of the other beers from Odell, I personally like their Cutthroat Porter.

And yet, the best beer in the country comes from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

http://www.bellsbeer.com/

I'm a huge fan of Bell's (and am currently missing it terribly), but to be fair I feel there are better breweries out there - granted, not many, but they do exist.

Yes, and several of them are in Michigan.

Bell's is great, but so are Founders and Short's. (New Holland isn't bad either, but kind of second-tier in comparison.)

I import it from the Midwest to San Francisco. Currently having a Two-Hearted, and I've got a bunch of Oberon in the basement.

Midwest beer nerds trapped in San Francisco should give me a shout.

Maybe it is because it is right next to Portland. :)

I'm not sure he said that. I think if anything, he made the strongest case for Portland.

I think he does sell San Francisco a bit short in the beer department. While the city itself isn't known to produce a huge amount of widely known brews, there are a couple good breweries in the city limits. Additionally, some of the best beers in the world are all made within a half-day drive of San Francisco (Russian River, nuff said).

If you're going to call Deschutes a Portland beer at 160+ miles away (and at the same time, leave out Rogue? That one confused me.), I think it's fair to call Russian River, North Coast, Lagunitas, Bear Republic, Anchor, and Sierra Nevada all San Francisco area breweries — and it's a little hard to argue with those. (As long as you like hops, at least.)

Breweries in Portland: http://www.portlandbeer.org/breweries/

Here are some interesting statistics on craft breweries per capita: http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/business-tools/craft...

It's too bad they don't break it down by city.

He didn't actually say that.