Now if they can diversify styles rather than following fads I'll be happy. We need things other than IPA, Flemish sours and bourbon barrel stouts. How about Bavarian dark beers? Malty ales that aren't stuffed with hops? Belgian golden ales? And for fuck's sake, watermelon and grapefruit do NOT belong in beer.

Yeah, thousands of these breweries are absolutely indistinguishable, and the vast majority don't know how to make a clean and balanced beer.

The people opening all these breweries are business people, not brewers. I live in a town with a population of 5,000 (during winter. 40,000 during summer) and there are three breweries opening up, none of them by people with any history of brewing. This is happening all over the country, and most of the results are not good.

That said, if you're ever around the West Michigan area, I highly recommend stopping by New Holland or Founders. But the best way to make sure you are drinking great beer is to make it yourself.

No love for Bell's?

I love some Bell's, Kalamazoo Stout is easily in my top 5 stouts.

New Holland and Founders are solid.

Great craft brewing scene here in NC too, and many of our breweries are indeed started by beer guys, but let's face it, the brewers and some of these beer guys don't have the capital to start to begin with and that is where the business people come in.

I've had some great craft beer and the sheer volume of choices is what makes it fun for me. People are brewing some styles of beer that before were pretty rare to find.

Agree 100%, in fact I've been generally avoiding IPAs for the past couple of years for this very reason.
But there are plenty of good breweries with interesting, diversified styles offered. There are also other trends that have gotten out of hand - sours have exploded around here, and right now almost everyone is making some kind of coffee stout.

If you miscreants find yourself in Vancouver, which Vogue seems to think is the craft beer capitol of North America (and I'm not swamped... which I usually am), I'll show you around. You're buying though, brewers don't get paid a lot ;)

Cheers!

... and enjoying the golden beer of age.

Every time I visit a city these days a significant portion of the trip revolves around breweries/beer-centric pubs. It's pretty cool how you can find good beer in almost any major US city these days.

...and even in small towns, random strip malls and industrial parks, and sometimes out in the middle of nowhere. Anytime I travel these days I try to scope out good beer opportunities along the way.

A golden age of beer... if you like IPAs

Now we just need to change the fucking laws that many states have regarding distribution and distribution rights when a craft brew exceeds a certain volume of output. Those laws were written by the distributors by lining the pockets of state lawmakers many years ago.

Here in NC brewers are limited to 25,000 barrels of output which only allows them to produce enough product to serve one metro market.