Brewery Road Trip, Optimized With Genetic Algorithm

RateBeer published their list of top 100 breweries in the world a couple of weeks ago. Of those 100, 71 of them have a physical location that you can visit in the contiguous United States. I mapped them to see where they are, but how can we construct the ultimate road trip? Below is the optimized route to visit every brewery in one go.

Optimized Brewery Road Trip

Visit 71 breweries over 197 driving hours and 11,984 miles. Totally worth it.

Hair of the Dog

De Garde

Rogue

Heater Allen

Hill Farmstead

Founders

Maine Beer

Deschutes

Bell’s

Lawson’s

Allagash

Smuttynose

Kuhnhenn

Trillium

Surly

Schramm’s

Ommegang

Jack’s Abby

Jolly Pumpkin

Tree House

Suarez Family

New Glarus

Bullfrog

Toppling Goliath

Sierra Nevada

Other Half

Hoppin’ Frog

Pipeworks

Tired Hands

Russian River

Half Acre

Cellarmaker

Lagunitas

Victory

Goose Island

Almanac

Avery

Drakes

Dogfish Head

Three Floyds

BrewDog

Sante Adairius

Crooked Stave

Jackie O’s

Boulevard

Casey

Firestone Walker

Side Project

Perennial

Bottle Logic

Bruery

Monkish

Wicked Weed

Port/The Lost Abbey

Superstition

Stone

Mikkeller

Prairie

AleSmith

Alpine

Westbrook

Modern Times Beer

Ballast Point

Jester King

Angry Chair

Cigar City

Cycle

Funky Buddha

3 Sons

J. Wakefield

Like with the route I made in 2015, I made use of Randal Olson’s implementation to figure out the routes using a genetic algorithm. The Google Maps API provides the travel times and distances. The algorithm then starts with a random route and then tries to improve with each iteration.

Here’s the algorithm in action:

Voilà. The ultimate road trip. Using the list below, start at any brewery and visit in order. You’ll end up back where you started.

One day. For now, I will just dream.