Typically we avoid national articles ranking craft beer. It’s usually just done for clicks and has the same hyped-up Milkshake IPA producers running up and down the list. But when a research firm takes time to pour through the data, we will always give it a second look, because it means genuine time was invested in the research….not just asking “how’s the line during releases”.

The team at Clever, which boasts a research team that analyzes dozens of public and proprietary data sets, recently put together a list of their Top 50 beer cities across the United States.

The research team considered the following criteria when performing the rankings:

• • The number of breweries within each metro area
  • The density of breweries per 100 square miles
  • The number of beers per brewery
  • The number of beer styles per brewery

The team also identified some key factors as a part of the data and research they analyzed:

The average American brewery offers 19 different brews — but the metro areas in our top 15 all offered more variety, with an average of 28 types of beer per brewery. (Editors note; now you see why all those different IPA releases are so popular)

Nine metro areas on our list have more than 100 breweries: Portland; Chicago; Los Angeles; Denver; San Francisco; Philadelphia; New York; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.; and Indianapolis.

Philadelphia came in at the #4 spot. Boasting 139 craft breweries, with 26 average beers per brewery and 15 styles of beer per brewery as well.

The city of brotherly love was not the only Pennsylvania city to land on the list. Coming in at #22 was Pittsburgh with 72 breweries, 23 average beers per brewery and 11 styles.

Congratulations to two of Pennsylvania’s major metro areas for continuing to propel the commonwealth as one of the best states craft beer has to offer in the USA. You can see the full list here.