I would first like to say that I am relatively new to home-brewing beer. That being said I attended college recently in a college town and more than anything cost was always the issue. College drinkers notoriously pass up higher quality brew for cheap piss-water. It would seem to me that given the frequency and volume of beer that college students drink it constitutes a respectable chunk of large beermakers profits. My question is this, why not (and if it's already been done why haven't I heard of it) base a microbrewery(ies) in college towns to cut costs on distribution marketing and transportation? It seems to me that using cheap ingredients you could create a cheaper beer than say keystone natty or beast even though you don't have the economies of scale. Ideas and discussion are welcome, people questioning my intelligence are not.

That's an interesting idea. My guess would be that while college students consume a lot of beer, on a per capita basis it might not be large enough compared to the non-college segment of society to make micro-breweries in college towns any more profitable. When you consider the fact that maybe half of college students are below 21 (not that that stops all of them) it makes me wonder if the amount of beer consumed by college students on average is much greater than non-college. The underage issue comes more into play in bars or restaurants where micro-brews are sold as opposed to house parties where it obviously easier for underage folks to drink. All that said (and this may be your original point), if you could create an economy of scale great enough to compete with PBR and Natty Light, then it seems like an ok idea. My guess is that to have a brewery that can compete with those prices, it would have to have a market much much bigger than the college town and then other considerations would outweigh a local market that drinks a lot of beer such as easy access to transportation (railroads etc) and proximity to raw materials (which really also comes back to transportation. Homemade wine on the other hand could be made cheap enough without a huge factory to make that a profitable business model (I think). You can make some pretty decent wine even at home for very very cheap. Anyway, what do others think? And does anyone know about microbreweries that focus mainly on a college town? I go to school at the U of Michigan in Ann Arbor and there are some great brew pubs here (Ann Arbor Brewing Company being one of them) but no microbreweries that distribute primarily to the college.