How Many Towns in New York State Do Not Sell Alcohol?

Kind of hard to believe there are still towns that hold on to old Prohibition-era laws in the year 2024.

But they still do exist in some areas across the state. According to a state database's last update, there are at least seven towns in New York state that are still completely dry. You might need Google Maps open to actually find some of these towns, for they are pretty small.

A New York Town Repeals An 86-Year-Old Law

One town outside of Albany only repealed its dry laws as recently as November 2019. The Washington County town of Argyle finally voted that year to repeal an alcohol ban that stretched all the way back to 1933.

That wasn't even their first attempt to repeal the old law either. Residents in Argyle had previously attempted to repeal the ban 11 separate times, with the most recent vote before 2019 being all the way back in 2000.

For many years, the town of 3,700 sold no alcohol in any of its stores, restaurants, or bars. Nothing.

BCFC

New York's Dry Towns

So where are the other dry towns? The database lists the towns of Caneadea, Clymer, Lapeer, Orwell, Fremont, and Jasper as being completely dry.

The town of Berkshire is also still listed, though Syracuse.com says that they may have loosened some of its laws in recent years.

The database also lists about 45 other towns that have partial bans (or, partially dry), where alcohol may be served at restaurants, but perhaps not sold in stores, or vice versa.

The last town to overturn a complete ban was actually Neversink in 2015.

How Much Beer Does the State Drink?

It's no secret that New Yorkers drink a lot of beer. With an abundance of available breweries, and more and more popping up each year, there are always plenty of options for your next drink.

But how much beer does the state actually produce in a given year? How much when compared to other states? Just how many breweries does the Empire State boast? This could give you a few tips, and hopefully point you in the right direction when planning your next beer tour.

Peter Kim

The Country's Most Popular Beers

World Population Review says that there are over 8,000 breweries across the country. The major well-known breweries remain on top of the list when it comes to beer sold across the U.S. 1. Bud Light 2. Coors Light 3. Miller Light. However, craft breweries continue to grow exponentially in the United States, with the number of barrels from craft breweries shipped growing from 9.1 million in 2008 to 25.9 million in 2018. That's quite a huge jump, and the number only continues to increase.

Not surprisingly, California leads the nation in states with most breweries with 907. New York ranks 3rd, right behind Colorado, with 423 total breweries. Pennsylvania is 5th, Massachusetts 17th, New Jersey 20th. Connecticut 26th. These are a total number of breweries, so if you broke it down per capita, some of the states with smaller populations would appear higher.

So, How Many Barrels Does New York Produce?

According to World Population Review, New York state produces 1,347,435 barrels of beer a year.

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

Gallery Credit: Angela Underwood

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