Maybe I’m just snippy since Durham (the obvious #2 city) got snubbed from the list but I feel experienced enough with all of NC’s major cities to say aside from Asheville at the top, I disagree with the rest pretty strongly. There is no universe in my mind in which Raleigh is worse than Charlotte, Wilmington, or Greensboro in this metric.
In terms of raw #s Raleigh, depending how you measure, has the most breweries of any city in the state. The problem is clearly a matter of quantity over quality, and the fact that most of the best ones (Gizmo, Funguys, etc) are not downtown.