Bellingham was recently ranked as the snobbiest beer city in the US. We’ll take it. Nielsen just released a report that shows Seattle is second only to Portland in the percentage of craft beer drinkers in the beer market. Seattle craft beer drinkers make up 38% of the total beer market there. They also reported that 81% of millenial craft drinkers in Spokane, WA are men.

Why do all of these stats and rankings matter? Craft beer is one of the hottest things on the planet right now with growth from Australia, to Japan, South Korea, Scandinavia and beyond. Naturally, anything that has massive appeal will draw a lot of attention and bring people to question and wonder what are the root causes. Again and again, the statistics show us that the Northwest has an extremely high percentage of craft beer drinkers. Perhaps more than anywhere else. Washington ranks 2nd in total number of breweries in the US, only behind California. Washington State has 7 million people residing here. California has 38 million.

Washington State has 1 brewery for approximately every 25,500 people. California has 1 brewery for every 88,000.

Why is that though? What about Northwest culture, or market, makes drinking craft beer so common and accessible?