Chris O’Leary has kept track of the breweries he has drunk beer in since 2003. “But I really started dedicating my time to keeping a list in 2011, when I challenged myself to visit 30 breweries in 30 days,” said O’Leary in a telephone interview. Spoiler alert: he met that challenge.

By now, O’Leary has visited breweries in all 50 US states—finishing with Mississippi in 2018—and in 33 countries on five continents.

In order for O’Leary to count a brewery, two conditions must be met:

• the location must brew beer on site; satellite locations of breweries that only serve beer, but do not brew, do not count
• he must drink a beer that was brewed at that location

If a brewery has more than one location and O’Leary visits more than one, those can each count, but only if each location brews beer and he drinks a beer brewed at each one. And if a brewery closes, but another business opens in that same place, he can count it again if he goes back and has another beer made by the new brewery. Twice, he has visited the same physical location three times to count three breweries: in Portland, Oregon, The Commons became Modern Times Beer and is now Living Haus Beer, and in Providence, Rhode Island, Long Live Beerworks outgrew their location, which became Beer On Earth and now is Origin Beer Project.

Hunting down breweries to visit has become a sport for O’Leary. He regularly travels for work as a media strategist for an advertising agency, which often allows visits to breweries in new locales. But that also arms him with an abundance of airline miles—he has Platinum Medallion status and is a Million Miler with Delta Air Lines—which he uses to travel even more. O’Leary also achieved an amount of fame ten years ago when he was the only passenger on board a flight from Cleveland, Ohio to New York City.

In addition to his job in advertising, O’Leary writes Brew York, a New York City beer blog and an associated newsletter that talks about his travels beyond New York City.

An Extreme Sport

On June 19, 2025, O’Leary drank a beer at Thirty Eight O Six Brewing, in Berwick, Australia, the 3,806th brewery he has drunk beer in. The milestone was months in planning. By looking at the rate he typically visits breweries, upcoming travel plans and going to or not going to breweries that are readily available to him, he was able to ensure the apropos brewery visit.

It wasn’t easy.

“I was planning to visit five breweries in New Jersey a few days ago,” said O’Leary. “I was locking my door when the key broke inside the lock.” That set O’Leary back, with zero breweries visited that day.

Shortly thereafter, he was in Buffalo, New York for a friend’s wedding. He was only able to visit three breweries on that trip, because it was the Memorial Day long weekend and many breweries he had planned to visit were closed.

But in any sport, world-class athletes find a way to persevere. And today, O’Leary sipped victory nectar, Thirty Eight O Six NEIPA.

To put that achievement in perspective, Max Finnance, America’s most credentialed beer judge, a BJCP Grand Master And Master Cicerone and who works full-time in the beer industry, has only visited 998 breweries, he confirmed via email. And John Holl, the podcast host, publisher and the voice of beer in America, who travels the world visiting breweries as his full-time job, has only visited 2,638 breweries, also confirmed via email.

The Hunt For Breweries

“I first got into beer when I lived for a year and a half in Burlington, Vermont,” said O’Leary. That was 2004 to 2006 and O’Leary would regularly visit local breweries such as Magic Hat Brewing and Long Trail Brewing that had established themselves as local stalwarts, and the Alchemist, which opened while O’Leary lived in Burlington and has since gone on to become a darling of the craft beer world. “A lot was happening in breweries at the time,” he says. “It was a good time to enjoy on-premise beer.”

“In November 2011, I was on a work trip to Portland, Oregon,” recalled O’Leary. “I had started travelling more for work and I realized I could visit 30 breweries in 30 days, so I started a list using the notes app on my phone.”

In all of 2011, O’Leary visited 52 breweries, including the 30 breweries he did end up visiting in 30 days. He mentally went back through his prior travels and brewery visits to create the list of 75 breweries he had visited to that point. In 2012, he added 54 more breweries to the list and in 2013, 121 more. Then he thought, “I’m going to dedicate more of my time to this,” and indeed he did:

• the most breweries he visited in one day was 12, on March 20, 2015 in Denver and Boulder, Colorado

• the most breweries he visited in one year was 455 in 2021

“I would take a beer trip every year and try to hit a few breweries. After that, it took on a life of its own,” says O’Leary. “It helped that I was often traveling to Denver, Portland and Seattle for work, cities with substantial beer scenes.”

A Sport Within A Sport

The sheer number of breweries O’Leary has visited is impressive, but he also makes a sport of visiting appropriate breweries:

• his 333rd brewery was Phase Three Brewing in Lake Zurich, Illinois
• his 1,717th brewery was 1717 Brewing in Des Moines, Iowa (now closed)
• and for the math nerds, his 1,235th brewery was Fibonacci Brewing in Cincinnati, Ohio

O’Leary also seeks out “extreme” breweries.

• the furthest brewery he has visited was in Freemantle, Australia, 11,600 miles from his home

• he has visited the easternmost brewery in continental North America, in St. John’s, Newfoundland
• he has visited the northernmost brewery in America, in Fairbanks, Alaska
• he visited what was at the time the highest brewery in altitude in the United States, Periodic Brewing in Leadville, Colorado (now closed)
• he visited what was at the time the highest brewery from ground level in the United States, Birreria at Eataly in New York City (now closed)

A Favorite Brewery

When asked if he could teleport to any brewery in the world, O’Leary is quick to respond. But surprisingly, the answer is not one he has yet to check off his list. Instead, he says, “I’d go to Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, California. It was brewery #641 for me. That’s a place that will never get old for me.”