COLUMBUS, Ohio (COLUMBUS BUSINESS FIRST)–Columbus is moving up among the “best cities for beer drinkers” in the United States, according to a new national ranking.
SmartAsset, a financial technology, and analytics company ranked Ohio’s capital city No. 17 in its latest list of the 50 best cities for craft beer drinkers. That’s a gain of 10 spots from the position Columbus held in 2020.
Cincinnati dropped from its two-year reign in the No. 1 spot to No. 4.
Pittsburgh, No. 5 in 2020, moved into the top spot in this year’s seventh iteration, followed by Bend, Ore., and Milwaukee.
Other Ohio cities to make the list were Akron (No. 14), Dayton (No. 40), and Cleveland (No. 47).
To determine its rankings, researchers considered cities in the 2020 Census with a population of 60,000, at least one brewery, and available Numbeo data. This resulted in 366 cities, which were compared across five metrics:
- Total number of breweries
- Number of breweries per 100,000 residents
- Average number of beers per brewery
- Number of bars per 100,000 residents
- Average price for a pint.
Other highlights from the report:
- The number of craft breweries in the U.S. nearly doubled between 2015 and 2020, reaching 8,764 last year
- While the study-wide average is eight breweries per city, those in the top 10 average 32 breweries apiece.
- Chicago, with 101, has the most breweries
- Portland, Ore., and Portland, Maine, not only share the same namesake, but rank No. 9 and No. 10, respectively.
To read the full report, including methodology, click here.
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