The facilities at Land-Grant Brewing — Photo by Walker Evans.

When it comes to local beer, Columbus is launching breweries at an incredibly rapid clip. Since 2012, over a dozen new beer brewing businesses have opened, including Seventh Son, Land-Grant, Four String, Zauber, Hoof Hearted, Wolf’s Ridge, Actual and many others. But are the locals drinking it?

According to a new study, they most certainly are. Consumer trends analysts at Neilsen recently completed some research on craft beer and local beer, and Columbus stood out big in two categories. It was the 9th ranked city when looking at the share of dollars spent on beer that goes to craft beer, and was the 5th ranked city when looking at that stat’s growth over last year’s information.

In addition to the growth in craft beer drinkers, the emphasis on local is also on the rise. Neilsen surveyed drinkers on their local preferences, and not only did over half of craft drinkers cite locally brewed beer as being very important when deciding what to drink, but so did 45% of all beer drinkers of all ages. From the survey:

“Consumers’ desire to search for and buy local is growing. Among all alcoholic beverage categories, local has grown in importance the most among beer drinkers. In fact, 22% of beer drinkers said they think the importance of being made locally has grown over the last couple of years, compared with 14% of wine drinkers and only 5% of spirit drinkers.”

While West Coast cities still dominate the charts as the highest consumers of craft beer (Portland, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento) it’s worth noting that in addition to Columbus, other Midwest region cities also appeared across both Top 10 lists — including Cleveland, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, Chicago and Detroit.

To read the full results of the research, CLICK HERE to visit www.nielsen.com.

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