Gerrymandered! Craft Beer Is No Proxy for Political Leanings
Philly's Joe Sixpack:
He includes a very professional graph to show how it all shakes out. The thing is, the metric is pretty bizarre: "It ranks the states by brewery density - the number of breweries per 1,000 square miles." It's based on geography, not people, so states are penalized for not having breweries in the middle of pasture land and mountains. He analyzes:
But really, the indefensible part is that business about the "progressive attitude." Unless he's talking about progressive Guernseys, I assume he is talking about people. And the people of the great states of Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming drink a whole lot of craft-brewed beer.
(On the off chance anyone reads this as an endorsement of either party, it's probably important for me to offer the full disclosure that I'm pretty much a communist. But only on matters of politics, not beer.)
Remarkably, every one of the 25 most densely brewed states voted for Obama in 2008. Those blue states account for 335 electoral votes - much more than the 270 needed for victory.
What's really important here is the type of beer voters are drinking. Most American breweries today are microbreweries or so-called craft breweries - small businesses that make handcrafted batches of premium-priced beer. There are about 2,100 of them nationwide, according to the Brewers Association, the highest number since the 1800s....Yes, indeed you shall get an argument. Look, we don't care about square miles. Sagebrush doesn't drink beer. If you were really trying to find out how people and breweries related, you'd look at breweries per capita. And why is this metric uninteresting? Because Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska are top-seven per-capita states, and states like New York and New Jersey are in the bowels of the ranking. It is true that the southern states are the least-breweried, but they're also the states where new breweries are cropping up the most.
I know I'll get some argument here, but I'd say that it takes a certain progressive, open-minded attitude - certainly not fundamentalist, conservative values - to even begin drinking craft beer. That's why the Deep South is so far behind the curve in the microbrewing revolution.
But really, the indefensible part is that business about the "progressive attitude." Unless he's talking about progressive Guernseys, I assume he is talking about people. And the people of the great states of Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming drink a whole lot of craft-brewed beer.
(On the off chance anyone reads this as an endorsement of either party, it's probably important for me to offer the full disclosure that I'm pretty much a communist. But only on matters of politics, not beer.)