Craft beer may be getting more popular across the country, but there are places where residents are almost drowning in the stuff.

The U.S. has gained an additional 699 breweries since mid-2014, and there are still another 1,755 breweries in the planning stages.

Yet the pint isn’t quite as full in some places as it is in others. At the end of 2014, 431 of the nation’s 3,400 breweries were in California. Oregon, Washington and Colorado had more than 705 breweries combined. That’s 8% of U.S. states accounting for nearly a third of the nation’s brewing facilities. It also doesn’t help when you have tiny Vermont, with its 40 breweries, sporting more breweries per 100,000 adults (8.6) than Florida (0.8). A lot of this is attributed to state beer laws, but there are also just some places that really love their beer.

It also helps that, in those places, local craft beer has become more important to drinkers in general. According to Nielsen, while 35% of drinking age adults say they’re interested in drinking a beer labeled “craft,” 45% want a beer that’s made locally. That share jumps to 53% among drinkers ages 21 to 34. With a little help from Nielsen and a big hat tip to MarketWatch’s Trey Williams, who put this information under our nose, here are 10 cities that make craft beer a greater percentage of their local beer purchases than any other place. While 11 breweries still account for 90% of all beer drunk in this country, these cities are shuffling the selection:

Two Roads Two Roads Brewing

10. Hartford/New Haven, Conn.; 25.5% of all beer sold

Considering Bud Light accounts for one out of every five beers purchased in the U.S., craft beer has to be happy with that quarter share. Sure, Connecticut is wedged between Samuel Adams and Harpoon country in Massachusetts, Narragansett territory in Rhode Island and Brooklyn Brewing’s turf in New York, but there are a whole lot of smaller players making this possible. We had one of our earliest post-collegiate craft beers at City Steam in Hartford, which has long since been joined by Two Roads, Willimantic, Thomas Hooker, The Brü Rm at Bar and nearly a dozen new Connecticut breweries since 2011 alone. Connecticut has a wealth of great beer neighbors, but it isn’t such a shabby brewer itself.

Columbus Brewing Columbus Brewing

9. Columbus, Ohio; 25.9% of all beer sold

It’s a college town with Cleveland and the Michigan beer meccas to the north, Cincinnati to the south, Pittsburgh to the east and Indianapolis to the west. It’s kind of at the nexus of Ohio’s beer universe, but it’s also been a brewing hotbed of its own. Columbus Brewing is the long-tenured big dog of the bunch, with a history dating to the 1800s but a craft beer legacy that started in 1988. It’s since been joined by about a dozen other breweries in a huge bar town that also happens to have a great home-brewing community. It’s a town that’s no stranger to beer, but has enough access to great craft beer that it isn’t above graduating from cheap pitchers and pre-game specials to something more substantial.

Founders Brewing Founders

8. Grand Rapids, Mich.; 26.4% of all beer sold

Michigan’s beer production jumped 41.5% over the past year. The state has watched its brewery count jump 56% since 2011 and has seen brewers including Bell’s, Short’s, New Holland, Jolly Pumpkin and Dark Horse become craft beer royalty. Denver’s Oskar Blues Brewing thought enough of Perrin Brewery to buy it. However, for craft beer lovers living in or visiting Michigan, there’s no place better for one-stop shopping than Grand Rapids. Founders Brewing built a fast-growing dynasty here on limited-release breakfast stout. Brewery Vivant took Michigan beer lovers to church and made Belgian beers local staples. Bell’s, Dark Horse, New Holland and Perrin are all within striking distance, as are about a dozen other breweries. When Grand Rapids and its visitors regularly have access to some of the greatest beers in the country, if not the world, it’s easy to keep it local.

Fat Head’s Fat Head’s

7. Cleveland; 29.2% of all beer sold

Cleveland is quickly becoming the worst-kept secret in craft beer, but only because it keeps drawing converts. Great Lakes Brewing Co. took its Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, Blackout Stout and Elliot Ness Vienna Lager out of Ohio and into craft beer’s regular rotation. The Fat Head’s chain put beer quality ahead of its big sandwiches and got Portland, Ore., to embrace Cleveland beer. Market Garden, Buckeye Brewing, Portside and BottleHouse all bulked up Cleveland’s contribution to an Ohio brewery total that jumped from 45 in 2011 to 110 last year. However, the city’s biggest coup might have come from Platform Beer Co., which not only brews its own line and runs an incubator for aspiring brewers, but brought pioneering California brewer New Albion into the fold.

DC Brau DC Brau

6. Washington, D.C.; 29.5% of all beer sold

There was a time not so long ago when your best bet for getting a decent beer in Washington, D.C., involved going to the Brickskeller and asking for the best beer they had from somewhere else. You drank Heavy Seas or Flying Dog beers from Maryland or trudged out to Dr. Dremo’s in Arlington. We’re not going to lie: It was bleak. Then, in 2009, DC Brau was founded and opened its doors two years later, becoming the first brewery to brew within city limits since 1956. That led to Right Proper, Bluejacket, Atlas and 3 Star entering a D.C. brewing scene that was just starting to catch up with the capital’s love of craft beer. The Brickskeller is long gone, but beer bars and taprooms including Churchkey, RFD Washington, City Tap House and Brickskeller replacement The Bier Baron are all solid reminders that D.C. knows craft beer and loved it long before brewers decided to love the District back.

Rubicon Brewing Rubicon Brewing

5. Sacramento, Calif.; 33% of all beer sold

With apologies to New Helvetia, Rubicon, New Glory and Track 7, Sacramento isn’t really known for craft beer. Fortunately, it’s close enough to a bunch of folks who are in order to reap the benefits. The University of California at Davis just down the road is home to one of the most renowned brewing programs in the country, and the area around it is teeming with breweries. Two of the biggest craft breweries in the country — Sierra Nevada in Chico and Lagunitas in Petaluma — are less than two hours away. One of the best breweries in the world, Russian River, is roughly that far. It’s a town with a great brewing culture that has just a few dozen of the state’s more than 400 breweries in its backyard. It may not be the most prolific craft beer city in California, but the state’s capital does just fine.

Anchor Brewing Anchor Brewing

4. San Francisco; 34.7% of all beer sold

Of course, it doesn’t exactly hurt Sacramento to have this town a few hours down the road, either. You can trace San Francisco’s craft beer roots back to Fritz Maytag buying Anchor Brewing in the late 1960s, but at various points in its history, breweries including Gordon Biersch, Buffalo Bill’s, Speakeasy, 21st Amendment and Drake’s have helped make the city’s beers craft fixtures. With newcomers like Almanac still innovating and producing quality beers, craft beer’s hold on a third of the city’s beer market seems small compared to its potential.

Ballast Point Ballast Point

3. San Diego, Calif.; 34.9% of all beer sold

We’re actually stunned this isn’t a higher percentage. According to Nielsen, demand for craft beer here increased 22.5% within the past year. The city has its own brewers guild, is home to roughly 50 breweries (including Stone, Green Flash, Ballast Point and AleSmith), the massive San Diego Beer Week in November and is about to give Danish “gypsy” brewer Mikkeller its first permanent home in the U.S. San Diego is inextricably tied to craft. While we aren’t going to pretend that having Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors facilities in Van Nuys and Irwindale, respectively, doesn’t have an effect — or that San Diego’s proximity to the Mexican border doesn’t give brands from that country a big boost — we’re still stunned that San Diego places third or even second to any other city. ...

Matt Lincecum at Fremont Brewing www.bluerosepictures.com

2. Seattle; 38.2% of all beer sold

... until we see who’s No. 2. Seattle’s craft beer scene is deep enough to have gone through several waves of growth in its lifetime. Redhook Ale launched in the 1980s, had a stake purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev and still leads the state in production with 250,000 barrels last year. Elysian launched in the ’90s and rose to the No. 2 brewer in Washington state just before being purchased by A-B earlier this year. Georgetown Brewing and Fremont Brewing sprang up in the 2000s and have quickly risen among the top-five beer producers in a state with more than 250 of them. In a state of taprooms, beer bars, growler fills and a whole lot of homebrewers, Seattle has rarely been for want of great local craft beer. Even as big brewers sniff around and pick off yesterday’s favorites like Pyramid (now owned by Costa Rica-based North American Breweries), newcomers like Holy Mountain rise up to fill pints and gaps in the city’s brewing culture.

Hair of the Dog Brewing Hair Of The Dog

1. Portland, Ore.; 43.5% of all beer sold

Yes, that’s the city in my tagline, and I could spout a whole lot of hyperbole about local beer culture, homebrewing, countless taprooms, myriad breweries, different beer events each month, etc., but the Brewers Association already pointed all that out in its State of the Industry presentation at the Craft Brewers Conference earlier this year.

However, as Portland beer writer Pete Dunlop ably points out, Portland’s biggest strength isn’t that it has roughly five dozen breweries to choose from, but that big Oregon brewers including Ninkasi, Deschutes and Portland’s own Widmer Brothers don’t absolutely dominate the city’s beer culture. There’s enough room for Portland brewing legend Art Larrance’s original Portland Brewing (now owned by NAB) and his barrel-only Cascade Brewing. There’s enough space for taprooms like Horse Brass, Saraveza, Apex and Hair of the Dog Brewing all over the city, and Yard House and Rock Bottom franchises downtown. There’s enough room on the shelf and tap handles for craft beer because the city’s craft beer patchwork keeps changing. Tradition and growth are lovely, but it takes a lot of moving parts to give Portland’s beer this kind of momentum.

Huffington Post and Esquire. Notte received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.