Want to make a road trip – for beer?

Toppling Goliath Brewery in Decorah has become a popular destination for "beer tourists"—people who take trips out of town to visit top-ranked breweries.

The brewery review website www.ratebeer.com every year releases its list of the top 100 craft breweries in the world.  Toppling Goliath is on that list—and so are 69 other American breweries.
 
But let's say you didn't just want to visit Toppling Goliath—you wanted to visit each and every one of those 70 American breweries on the list.

UCLA graduate Nathan Yau, who has a PhD in statistics, has been pondering that very question.  Yau, who brews his own beer at home, has used genetic algorithms and the Google Maps API to come up with an answer.  It's posted at http://flowingdata.com/2015/10/26/top-brewery-road-trip-routed-algorithmically/
 
Yau's road map—the shortest time required to visit all 70 breweries-- passes through 40 states and stops in 28 of them.  How long would the trip take?  Visit the website to find out.