If you can’t make it to Munich for the original Oktoberfest celebration, a small city in Northern Michigan might be the next-best place to celebrate — or at least to grab a beer.
Traverse City, Michigan, is ranked No. 1 on Trulia’s Oktoberfest Index — a list of the 10 best places in America to celebrate the annual German festival.
Trulia, a real estate listing website, analyzed cities based on how many beer amenities — like breweries, bars and bottle shops — they have per household, as well as how many of their residents identify themselves as being primarily of German ancestry.
Smaller cities like Traverse City — which has a population of about 15,000 — dominate the top 10 spots on Trulia’s Oktoberfest Index:
The best place to be is in smaller metro areas, where your beer sources are plenty and the homes are cheap.
The 10 best-ranked cities on Trulia’s index are:
- Traverse City, Michigan
- Bend-Redmond, Oregon
- Fort Collins, Colorado
- Boulder, Colorado
- Duluth, Minnesota
- Madison, Wisconsin
- San Luis Obispo, California
- Lawrence, Kansas
- Missoula, Montana
- Portland, Oregon
Last month, Travel & Leisure magazine also ranked larger American cities based on their locally made craft beers:
Some of the top 20 beer cities have brewing histories that predate Prohibition, but many are still finding their own flavor — literally — using local ingredients like pecans, bourbon barrels, or even frozen lemonade. Others offer quirky settings and back stories: One city brewery came out of a weekly Bible study group (Monday Night Brewing in Atlanta); another offers regular yoga classes inside the taproom (GoodWood in Louisville, Kentucky).
Portland, Oregon, is No. 1 on the magazine’s list and is also the only city to appear in both Trulia’s and Travel & Leisure’s rankings.
The cities that made Travel & Leisure’s top 20 are:
- Portland, Oregon
- Kansas City, Missouri
- Minneapolis/St. Paul
- Cleveland
- Houston
- Providence, Rhode Island
- Louisville, Kentucky
- Austin, Texas
- Denver
- Atlanta
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Philadelphia
- Nashville, Tennessee
- Portland, Maine
- Seattle
- Boston
- Albuquerque, New Mexico
- San Diego
- Chicago
- Baltimore
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