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Health & Fitness

The Coastside's Beer Renaissance

The Coastside enjoys the opening of two new breweries and celebrates the craft beer culture.

Over the past few months the Coastside has found itself with a new brewery near Pescadero, a soon-to-be opened nano brewery in El Granada and a new brewmaster at the Half Moon Bay Brewery.

This led me to start thinking about the history of the local brewery and its importance to the community. If you've read Daniel Okrent’s "Last Call," a fascinating look at the rise and fall of Prohibition, or seen Ken Burns' documentary on the subject, you'd be familiar with the central role that the small brewery played in the life of nearly every town in America pre-1920s. For those who think that the rise of the small brewery is a new phenomenon, allow me to present this more visually.

Your eyes do not deceive you — in 1873 there were 4,131 breweries operating on American soil. The population of the US in 1873 was just under 43m people, or roughly around 1 brewery for every 10k people. According to the Brewers Association, there are 2416 breweries in operation in 2013. With our current population at 314m, that's 1 brewery for every 130k people.

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For the teetotalers among us, that may seem a more reasonable ratio … until you look at the output numbers of those breweries. In 1873, there were under 15m barrels of beer produced. Last year, there were 200,028,520 barrels produced. At 31 gallons per barrel, that clocks in at 6,200,884,120 gallons of beer, or about 20 gallons of beer for every man, woman and child in the U.S. 

With that much brew rolling around, you have to wonder how breweries can continue to pop up the way they do? How can we have not hit saturation? Part of it comes from people's love locally crafted items, especially food and drink. I mean, why drink something brewed in Washington, Oregon or even San Diego when you can have something just as good, brewed right on the Coastside, and actually talk to the guy who made it while you're knocking them back? Pair that with a good menu and you can't go wrong!

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But there's something more — something to do with beer itself. Perhaps beer is more of a "people's drink" than wine or spirits. Perhaps it's something to do with the vast variety and ever increasing styles of beer. There's a real brewing culture that exists in the US today and a craftsmanship that goes along with it. People seem to respond to that. 

That brings me back to the importance of the local brewery. Unlike 1873, we can easily enjoy beer from all over the world with out having to venture further than the local market. You would think that would diminish the local brewery's prominence, but it seems to have produced the opposite effect.  

A local brewery can define a town. Can you really think of Chico, CA and not think of Sierra Nevada? Have you known someone who travels to the Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa and stand in line for hours to try their anual release of "Pliney the Younger"?

If you're a beer lover, you seek out the breweries because you know they have stuff on tap that they don't sell outside the walls of the taproom. You convince your friends to take particular routes on your road trip so you can hit as many local breweries as possible. Now it may well be our turn as a hot brewery destination! So raise a pint and enjoy the renaissance, my fellow Coastsiders!

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