Excellent suggestions, unfortunately I’m down in the Carolinas. Even the good small brewers near me succumb to the populous favoring of IPA’s. Took the misses out for dinner tonight, 30+ beers on tap, but the only stout? Guinness. Ugh, if I wanted a Budweiser, that’s what I’d order. At least they had some good double ipa’s and great food.
illinichaser wrote:
Look for the ones that don't even have food.
When I'm out of town that's what I do, and I've rarely been let down. Even in a small town Florida near Gainesville I found a brewery that was in a pole barn down a dirt road behind an excavating company that had a FANTASTIC selection of heavy Belgian ales. They had mostly IPAs on tap of course but one tap handle and a fridge with bottles served up some mighty delicious Belgians.
Best Scotch ale I ever had was at a brewery in Georgia about an hour outside of Atlanta cant remember the name but it was a small stripmall slot next door to a bbq joint. I stopped for food and wandered over to get a beer and their chalkboard menu had like 6 beers on there. The brewing tanks and stuff were all in the same room, it was basically the setup I had in my garage just tripled in size. Anyway, they had nothing in bottles to go, just red solo cups and I bought the most expensive beer on the menu a something schilling scotch ale. Mind blowingly good. It was thick, resinous, coated the mouth with a melted caramel. Went to the bbq joint and got my food, finished my beer, and got back on the road.
Was in San Diego and hit up 5 different breweries, but the only one that had the good stuff was the one that only had pretzels on the food menu. Didn't find it on our own, there was a road closed on the way to the one we found online and the uber driver suggested we go to this one but he said they don't have food. I said PERFECT!!!
I think it's the hobby business breweries that make the best stuff ....if they can stay in business. There's been several that have opened, made some beers but petered out or transitioned to all IPA and food because that's what makes money. The heavy brews are expensive and hard to make and take a LONG time to finish. IPAs can turn over in under 2 weeks.
But people that are passionate enough about brewing to open a brewery to expand their brewing capabilities over seeking profits, those are the places you need to find. They're scattered everywhere, often times not easily found online either. The pony that I frequent, it's just got a rarely updated facebook page. No website if you look em up on the googles. Dude does it for the love of brewing. Most of the brewers are/were homebrewers who got together and made large batches of good stuff. They play with yeast growing and stuff too. It's a hobbyjob for pretty much everybody I know there. With no distribution, there's no need for pushing stuff out to meet orders and stuff. They just brew beer to brew beer, and enough people buy it so they can keep brewing.
Edited by user
5 years ago |
Reason: Not specified
