Which of these four breweries is the most local to the San Francisco Bay Area?

Here's a little test.  Which one of these four Northern California breweries is the most local to the San Francisco Bay Area? Is it:

a) Russian River Brewing
b) Lagunitas Brewing
c) Sierra Nevada Brewing
d) Anheuser-Busch InBev

Yes, it's meant to be a trick question. I argue d) Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B InBev) is a very valid answer, and arguably the best answer. That's because A-B InBev has a Bay Area brewery right here in Fairfield. All the other beers from the other breweries travel much further to get to get into the hands of Bay Area beer drinkers. A-B InBev's employs more people in the Bay Area than any other brewery and while foreign owned, clearly brings more money into the Bay Area than any of these other breweries . True, not every A-B InBev beer is brewed in Fairfield, but if you live in the Bay Area and are drinking Bud, Bud Light, Shocktop, Busch, Busch Light, Keystone, Keystone Light, or Rolling Rock, your beer was made right here in Fairfield.

You could make a case for Russian River, but I consider Russian River really local to Santa Rosa/Sonoma County and not really the Bay Area. Despite Russian River's popularity in the Bay Area, it's remains a cultural import from the north. Petaluma's Lagunitas has become a national brand, with another brewery in the Chicago area and another pending in Southern California and 50% of Lagunitas is owned by Heineken, headquartered almost on the other side of the planet. Sierra Nevada headquartered in Chico is a 3+ hour drive from the Bay Area, and while it remains independent, has also emerged as a national brand and operates another brewery in North Carolina.  Do any of these three breweries really strike you as "local to the Bay Area".

Do I really consider A-B InBev the most local brewery to the Bay Area from the four on this list? Emotionally, I just can't bring myself to say yes, yet logically the argument makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure there's any right answer, just a little test to make you think about how slippery the concept of "local brewery" is these days.

The Session #61: Of Course Local is Better. But Where and Why?

For this month's Session Matt Robinson of Hoosier Beer Geek  asks us what makes the local beer tastes better.  I don't have a clue what the answer is, which didn't stop me from writing.

When was the last time you heard someone say, "Support your local brewer"? Seems like it's been a while.

Of course, your "local brewer" has changed over the years. Growing up in Bowling Green, OH in the 70's, my dad drank Rolling Rock because it was from the local brewery, a mere 300 miles away in Latrobe, PA. By the 90's when I was a graduate student at Ohio State, the city of Columbus finally had its own brewery, but you couldn't find their beer at campus bars, so going out with friends and having a few "Rocks" was still drinking local. Rolling Rock just had that unique flavor you couldn't find with other beers, which I suppose was why we preferred it. Never mind that unique flavor in each bottle of Rolling Rock was from massive amounts of dimethyl sulfide, widely considered a brewing defect.

With so many new breweries popping up today blanketing the landscape, it's hard to say which ones are actually local. This was apparent the day I attended a beer dinner in Los Gatos a couple years ago featuring a San Francisco Bay area brewery located about 40 miles away. The brewery's representative exhorted the crowd to drink his beer because it was from their local brewer. He was seemingly unaware that he was standing about a block away from Los Gatos Brewing Company, which would probably beg to differ as to who the local brewer in Los Gatos was. In fact, I counted at least six breweries closer to where he was standing, proclaiming himself as our local brewer, than where his brewery was actually located. And yet, despite this apparent contradiction in brewing geography, his claim to be our local brewer somehow seemed genuine. Maybe that's because his beer was better than most of the beers from the technically more local" breweries.

One by-product of the commercial success of craft beer is that through inevitable industry consolidation and increased distribution, craft beer is becoming more national and less regional.  We're losing something in that.

My local brewer happens to be Devil's Canyon in my home town of Belmont, CA. I've had so many pints of Silicon Blonde, Deadicated Amber, and Full Boar Scotch Ale there's a warm familiarity each time I have one. The beers from my local brewer have a unique character, nuance, and flavor profile which make them unmistakably local.  I've had beers from far away lands like Kenya and Thailand which have a unique character, nuance, and flavor profile which make them unmistakably foreign. Drinking a pint of Deadicated Amber is like being out with an old friend. Drinking a pint of beer from a distant brewery is like meeting a new friend.

But that's just my opinion. Psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have struggled to figure out why local seems better for years. Maybe that's because geographers and economists are still debating what "local" means.