I live in an area that is always in the consideration for top beer towns in America, due to our "Craft Beer" industry. Currently, the Asheville area has 18 Breweries with some significant other Breweries near by (within a 40 min drive) in WNC. The largest three are Oskar Blues, Sierra Nevada and Highland Brewing with a 4th biggie opening up in 2015, New Belgium. To go along with these biggies, we also have some smaller yet really good breweries like, Wicked Weed, Greenman, Hi Wire, Burial, and Pisgah. Interestingly enough, most of those are going through major expansions, Wicked Weed, Candler expansion to 50,000 barrels, Hi Wire just announced a 1.2 million dollar expansion, Greenman has what I'm guessing to be about 2-3 million dollar expansion they're in the middle of. Besides New Belgium, there are also 2 more breweries opening up in 2015, Catawba and one other. Honorable mention goes to Wedge Brewing for Asheville's best Pilsner.
The ONE thing I am not into is IPA's or hop forward anything. But if folks want to talk craft beer, like Wicked Weeds fabulous Sours and Wilds, or Hi Wire's fantastic Lager, or Pisgah's Stouts, I'm game.
Edit: Glad to see Chicago finally getting their name on the map with Craft breweries. This has taken Chicago far to long. Probably the water. Chicago isn't really known for great water, which is one reason these larger craft breweries have settled into Asheville. We have fantastic water.