Seems that our beer drinking brethren up in Oregon (and Washington state) don’t like the fact that Portland – the self-titled “Beertown USA” – ranked behind San Diego and New York City as a great place for beer.

Key to their claim that Portland should have been ranked number one is that Men’s Journal goofed when they wrote that San Diego has more breweries than Portland. The city of San Diego has only a dozen or so breweries. The rest are scattered throughout the county – with a concentration of them up in the North County along highways 78 and 15. Portland by contrast has 38 within city limits.

Ignoring that everyone who lives in San Diego County refers to the whole area as “San Diego”, our friends up in the cold cloudy country are missing the point of the article. Men’s Journal wasn’t ranking the cities based on the number of breweries; it was ranking cities based on the amount of great beer available. (There’s only a couple of breweries in NYC, but there’s a ton of great beer bars and pubs.)

Having been to Portland more times than I can count, I can tell you there’s a lot of breweries/brewpubs in the town — Pretty much every block.

But a lot of beer is not the same as a lot of good beer, which is the point the article was making.

Just about every brewery in San Diego is making fantastic, boundary pushing beer. Whether you want classic English styles, aggressively hopped IPAs, Belgians or barrel-aged wonders you’re going to find the world’s best examples in San Diego.

And when I write “world’s best” I’m not giving you my opinion as a San Diegan, I’m giving you the opinion of the international craft brewing community – including Oregon.

We’re the home of the 2009 GABF large brewpub of the year (Pizza Port Carlsbad), the reigning World Beer Cup world champion small brewery (Port / Lost Abbey), the 2008 GABF small brewery of the year (Alesmith), the 2007 GABF small brewery of the year (Port / Lost Abbey), and our beers have dominated the “best of” lists of beer mags and beer rating websites for at least five years. (Heck, our Pizza Port Carlsbad took home more medals at this year’s GABF than every brewery in Portland combined.)

Add all of these great breweries to the huge number of great craft beer bars and it’s little wonder than San Diego is the current center of beer in the U.S. (some might argue the world).

Sure, Portland might have more breweries than any other place, but that no longer is enough to make you number one. After all, Detroit has more car companies than any other place, but the industry and consumers will tell you the best cars come out of the Toyota plant in Georgetown, KY.

Ahhh, Padrones and beer