Local and regional micro brews are great, and usually have a little greater alcohol content. Being from Northern Illinois I can get some really good ones here like Capitol, Sand Creek, New Glarus, Sprecher ( Highly recommend this one ) and Point all from Wisconsin. Bell's, Founder's, Grand Rapids, Keweenaw, and Dark Horse from Michigan.
2 Brothers, Carlyle, Goose Island, and Rock Bottom from Illinois and from Ohio I like Thirsty Dog and Great Lakes. My daughter plays volleyball for Indiana University, so when in B-Town it is usually something from Upland for me. Get out there and try some new ones, and never be afraid of the dark ones........ Mmmmmmm
Oh and don't forget the imports....... Nothing like a good German brew
I probably saw your daughter play then, I went to a number of Purdue volleyball matches the past two years.
If you're in West Lafayette, be sure to go to the People's Brewing Company and Lafayette Brewing Company. People's is newer and has the LBC's old brewer, and probably is a little better now. But both are pretty damn good IMO. Also if you're going to this year's Great Taste of the Midwest, give me a PM, I intend to go and we can meet up in Madtown before or during.
I like Upland, Bell's and Founders, I've had Rock Bottom and Great Lakes but must have had too many to form an opinion by that point. Don't like Goose Island unless its on discount. I have to give a shout out to Back Road and Three Floyds as two from Indiana to try.
For my Strategic Management course my group was assigned Breckenridge Brewery for a case study (this is really common in college courses now). One of my roles was to analyze the overall craft brewing market. There is a huge amount of growth in the market, the selection of "non-crap" beers you can get in the USA now is at an all-time-high.
That said, IMO there's a lot of micro-brewed stuff out there that I just don't like. At the previously mentioned Great Taste of the Midwest last year, I had a lot of stuff that I thought tasted way too much like barley wine or just plain alcohol and not nearly enough like beer. I'm not impressed by high alcohol contents, I want to enjoy the flavors and the alcohol be a pleasant side effect. Personally, if I don't like it more than Sam Adams, I'm more than happy to spend my time and money on more Sam Adams, which is IMO the best nationally-sold beer around.
As for imports, most of them I think spend too long in shipping and don't taste right. If there's one beer that's probably another nation's Budweiser that I like quite a bit, it would be Warsteiner, which a great little place less than a 10 minute stumble from my house called
Nine Irish Brothers carries.