As craft beer has become a larger industry, fans of the brew have begun treating hops with the same reverence that wine lovers bestow upon grapes. But where wine has a long history of snobbery attached to it, beer has long been seen as the drink of the working class, and accordingly, no one’s getting too precious about it.

Make no mistake, brewers put as much care into their products as vintners do theirs. And they choose their tipples as carefully, too. Beer (along with cocktails) is beginning to get as much cred as wine as a with-dinner drink. Let’s look at some of the evidence that beer is being taken seriously, and held in ever greater esteem:

San Francisco’s Locavore restaurant offers 23 wines and 23 beers, all sourced from within 100 miles. (The Bay Area as a whole has an organization called Beer by BART, which lists all the microbreweries and pubs within walking distance of public transit stops.)

The Beer Trail in Colorado is set up exactly like any wine country in the world, with limos advertising their beer-crawl services, shuttles available, and breweries both large and small now equipped with tasting rooms.

Mohawk Bend was perhaps LA’s most anticipated restaurant opening of the year, and people weren’t even thinking about the food. It was, and still is, all about the 72 (yes, 72) beers on tap (yes, on tap).

Looks like the East Coast needs to step up its beer game.