Craft Beer in My Hometown and Why I'm Encouraged By Sierra Nevada's Summerfest

I'm from a pretty generic middle class suburban community in central New Jersey. I now live in DC, which is becoming, if it hasn't already become, something of a craft beer stronghold in the United States. Even before Churchkey opened its wonderful, wonderful doors, there were a number of bars in the District that took pride in the suds they slung. Now, with Churchkey, DC is undeniably a craft beer town. It's very familiar when I come home and find the same BMC cases/kegs at parties I go to hosted by friends from high school. I've tried to turn them onto something better, but I guess it's kind of hard to play beer pong or other drinking games with fuller-bodied beers. Scratch that, I guess it's not hard to play those games with these beers, but it is a lot harder to play the games for any length of time. Mostly when I come home I just bring a six or some bombers with me so I don't have to bother with the BMC stuff.

I've had a couple of interesting and encouraging things happen during my last two trips home:

- I had a conversation with a friend of mine at Thanksgiving about how he's on a quest to try as many different beers as possible. He doesn't really want to repeat, and he's saving the bottles on his journey. Very positive. He's currently pretty big on wheat beers, which isn't really my wheelhouse, but hey, more power to you. I'll be dropping him off a bottle or two of Flying Dog's Raging Bitch before I leave as I'm certain that the distribution for it won't make it up this way for a while.
- There's a liquor store that remodeled itself on a major intersection in my town that now advertises itself as the "Home of 1,000 Craft Beers." They aren't lying. The selection is fantastic, and they have the always-a-winner "Mix a Six" opportunity. I've loaded up these past two trips home. What's really nice is my friends go to this store as well, so they're starting to branch out a bit.
- Last night at a party a friend of mine brought a six of Sierra Nevada Summerfest that he'd picked up. Summerfest in the winter? Yeah, it doesn't really fit. But it wasn't Bud Light Golden Wheat, so I'm not complaining one bit. I recommended Sierra Nevada Torpedo to him, and he said he'd check it out (for the record, I think it's one of the best IPAs for your buck out there, even better than the venerable DFH 90 minute IPA, which is probably my favorite beer of all time).
- I brought two bombers of Rogue to the same party last night and another guy asked me, "They make Dead Guy, right?" Solid.

One mark in the "negative" column? Blue Moon is still viewed as craft beer. I guess it isn't really non-craft beer. I don't know, I'm kind of torn. On one hand, I want to see people buying true craft beer from craft breweries. On the other hand, if people are going to buy from BMC, I'd prefer they buy stuff like Blue Moon and not the usual swill. This will show BMC that market share is shifting (I mean, it's really not, but if Blue Moon sales go up, it might send a message, who knows?)

Anyway, I'll keep planting the craft beer seeds (bottles?) at home. We'll see what grows.