{"id":15283,"date":"2014-08-07T18:32:01","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T23:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=15283"},"modified":"2024-10-04T13:25:27","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T18:25:27","slug":"more-geo-brewities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/more-geo-brewities\/","title":{"rendered":"More Geo-BREWities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My geography and brewery interests collided a few months ago. The happy result produced Geo-Brewities<\/a>. Apparently Google says I own<\/a> that term now, a pseudo-portmanteau of geography + brewery + oddities. I don’t expect it to become part of the popular lexicon. It’s not that catchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Developing the List<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"16<\/a>
This episode brought to you by the number 16<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I took a different approach on the second and possibly final round of this series. The renewed effort began as I noticed a lot of breweries and brewpubs with numbers incorporated into their names. Once again I started with the Brewers Association directory of breweries<\/a>. It included 5,309 listings for the United States alone. However, that’s also why this might be the last time. If I check again there will be more — a lot more — and I’m not sure I can withstand that level of tedium one more time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From that nearly overwhelming universe, I distilled a couple of hundred breweries that matched my numerical criteria. Then I documented them in a spreadsheet<\/a> and shared it with the 12MC audience. The usual caveats applied: omissions and spelling errors were unintentional; the file is only as good as the source and it only applies now (August 2014). Also, it will be out of date if you happen to read this article in the distant future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Finding Patterns<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

That left me with a big list of breweries that incorporated numbers in their names. What should I do with it? Well, examine it and look for patterns that might align with 12MC’s geography themes, of course. It encompassed every cardinal number from 1 through 16. A prospective brewer wishing to be original would have to start with 17. The smallest number was fractional (several breweries with half of this-or-that) and the largest was 5050 (FiftyFifty Brewing<\/a> of Truckee, California). I ignored zero<\/a> and infinity<\/a> although they both existed in Vermont for some odd reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, patterns revealed themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Area Codes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"312<\/a>
312 Urban Wheat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first time I recall a telephone area code associated with brewing was Goose Island’s 312 Urban Wheat. I’m not sure when it first hit store shelves although Beer Advocate reviews<\/a> extended back as far as 2004. Since then, 312 Urban Wheat won a slew of awards at the Great American Beer Festival and became one of Goose Island’s flagship brews. Those three simple digits associated strongly with a specific geography, downtown Chicago, and resonated with a customer demographic that the brewery hoped to reach. And it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A similar premise served as inspiration for an episode of Seinfeld that aired in 1998, focusing on the 212 area code<\/a> of New York City. Clearly an area code could serve as a strong brand identifier and a marketing mechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of the original inspiration, a solid association between area codes and the craft brewing industry spread nationwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n