Well, isn't that a cold slap in face?!
Last year at this time, Pittsburghers could revel in the fact that we jumped six spots to land at No. 3 on SmartAsset's 2016 list of best cities for beer drinkers.
But this year ? Oh, this year we aren't even good enough to make the Top 10!
No. 12!
That's right. And with all the breweries opening this year, you'd think we would have been in contention for the top spot. What the heck happened?
"Pittsburgh's drop from third to 12th is largely due to lower Yelp ratings for breweries and higher prices for beer," SmartAsset's Kara Gibson tells upgruv. "In our 2016 study, the average brewery in Pittsburgh had a Yelp rating of 4.31 and this year that rating fell to 4.16.
"Additionally, the average price for a pint of domestic draft beer increased from $3 in the 2016 study to $3.75 in the 2017 study."
We also picked up that while Pittsburgh added 1 microbrewery in 2017, other cities added more — Cincinnati added six.
SmartAsset looked at a number of data factors in 300 cities across the country.
"First we ranked each city in each metric," the site says. "We then found each city's average ranking, giving the price of draft beer and average Yelp score a half weight. We double weighted the total number of breweries. Using this average ranking, we created our final score. The city with the best average ranking received a score of 100 and the city with the worst average ranking received a 0."
Let's face it: Other cities just poured more into their beer scene.
Seems like 2018 is Pittsburgh's year to step it up, suds-wise.
