Fort Collins, Loveland, Denver Named Top U.S. Cities for Beer

If you're going to make a list of "things," this would be a pretty good one to land on. Fort Collins, Loveland and Denver - in addition to a few other Colorado towns - have all been listed in the Top 50 cities for "Beer Drinking" in the United States by the survey gurus at SmartAsset.com.

The criteria are pretty detailed for determining which cities make the cut and which do not, including total number of breweries in a given city, number of breweries per 100,000 population and the ever-important metric of how many beers each brewery serves.

Dave Jensen, TSM

Based on their criteria, Fort Collins came in at a whopping 6th spot on the list of The Best Beer Drinking Cities in America.

The Choice City apparently provides just that, with 23 breweries in town and the 9th most breweries per 100,000 residents, or 13.7 per 100,000.

Perhaps the most impressive stat for Fort Collins is that its breweries collectively average an impressive 107.7 different beers per establishment, the fourth highest average overall.

Last year, Fort Collins was ranked just outside the top ten at number 12.

Getty Images

Speaking of 12th place, Denver is the next highest Colorado city on the list, ranking #12 with 81 total breweries.

Eleven breweries per 100,000 residents and an average of 103.1 beers per brewery puts Denver in mile-high status, especially compared to most other major metro areas on the list.

Dave Jensen, TSM

But look out Denver, here comes Loveland, entering the top cities list at number 20.

That's right, Loveland isn't just Fort Collins' little step-sibling city anymore. Now with 10 breweries, amounting to 12.0 per 100,000 residents, Loveland is beginning to make quite the name for itself nationally among beer drinkers.

On average, Loveland breweries offer 51.5 different beers to its patrons. While that's less than half of what the Fort Collins breweries offer, if 51 beers to choose from isn't enough, I'm not sure you're ever going to be satisfied.

Dave Jensen, TSM

Other Colorado cities inside the Top 50 include Longmont at #38 and Colorado Springs at #41.

Longmont's got 12.2 breweries per 100,000 residents and averages 74.8 beers per brewery.

Finally, Colorado Springs has only 5.8 breweries per 100,000 residents and averages 60.8 different selections to choose from.

Find the entire Top 50 and read up on their methodology -- it's scientific! -- at SmartAsset.com.

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.