Throughout the history of this great nation, we have held one truth to be self-evident: drinking beer is awesome. And lately, we've raised it to an art form. We have Michelin-starred restaurants with beer lists as meticulously edited as their wine cellars, bars with more microbrew suds on tap than stools, and gas stations—yes, gas stations—selling six-packs of craft brews. Let us now pledge allegiance to the best places in America to grab a beer (or five)
L.A.'s nightlife is notorious for being more about the scene than the
drinks. But of late, this city of saketinis and sprawl has lit up with
joints pushing craft beer, and every one of them feels like it couldn't
exist anywhere but Los Angeles.
Right now, the city's best bars for suds tend to be run by one of two
beer gurus. Ryan Sweeney owns the windowless faux-speakeasy Verdugo
(Glassell Park), the chill-by-day, party-by-night Surly Goat (West
Hollywood), and Little Bear (Downtown), where you'll want to wash down
the Stilton cheeseburger with a Unionist Belgian pale ale by Eagle Rock
Brewery.
Then there's Tony Yanow, co-founder of Golden Road Brewing (one of
two city breweries, along with Eagle Rock). He also owns Echo Park's
Mohawk Bend bistro—California-fresh food and seventy-two taps—and Tony's
Darts Away in Burbank, which strongly resembles a
Big Lebowski set. Instead of a White Russian, you want Russian River Brewing Co.'s Redemption, a rare blonde ale brewed in Santa Rosa.
Late at night, though, the pick is a giant pretzel and an even more
giant glass of something German at the Standard hotel's rooftop
Biergarten. There you'll have two classic L.A. views to choose from: the
glittery, beautiful skyline and the glittery, beautiful women.
—Christian Debenedetti
Lessons from a Beer Sommelier
Master Cicerone
In wine, a sommelier certification is the mark of a vino savant, but any guy with a bottle opener can call himself a beer sommelier, because, really, there's no such thing. But there is a certification program for the title of cicerone. A cicerone can swab a tap line and pick the perfect ale to match that aged Manchego. Most beer havens have one, but since the program began in '08, only four people have passed the two-day Master Cicerone exam. Oakland's Nicole Erny is the newest MC. We asked her how to drink beer better.—William Bostwick
Read Between the (Tap) Lines
"If the beer at a bar is sour or smells like butterscotch, the draft lines are dirty. I'm wary of places that have more than four or five beers on draft. It's a lot to maintain."
Don't Wait—Drink
"Beer has a shelf life of about three months, kept cold. If beer sits out, it takes only about five hours for oxidation to kick in. You get a papery flavor and less of that hops aroma."
There's No Shame in Being Cheap
"You don't need the rare, expensive stuff to drink awesome beer. My first favorite beers were amber ales. And a really well-made pilsner is a beautiful thing."
Hunting for the White Whale Beer
One Saturday last April, roughly 6,000 people gathered in a Munster, Indiana, office park in pursuit of a beer: specifically, 3Floyds' Barrel Aged Dark Lord ($50 per bottle). It's one of several hyper-rare beer trophies sought by fanatical collectors and even resold (illegally) for ten times the price.
You'll find similar mania around the release of Portsmouth Brewery's Kate the Great, the Bruery's Black Tuesday—both stouts—and Russian River's Pliny the Younger, a dizzyingly fresh IPA that tastes like an orange Creamsicle.
Beer fiends will do anything for a taste: have mules buy bottles or sneak samples out of bars in jars. Scoring a bottle of rich-as-molasses The Abyss by Deschutes is bucket-list-worthy. If you get your hands on some, mount your empties like the trophies they are
12 Bars for Beer Lovers
Stocked with the latest brews and staffed by encyclopedic hop-heads, these malted meccas are worth the pilgrimage
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The Country's Best Brewery Tour
Ever seen a big steel silo filled with fermenting grain? Congratulations—you've been on every brewery tour, ever. For a step up in scenery, hose off your shitkickers and head to Independence, Oregon, site of Rogue Farm's Micro Hopyard. This forty-two-acre farm is home to seven kinds of hops, plus rye, pumpkins, beehives, and a couple of pigs—all of which (except the pigs) find their way into Rogue's Chatoe series of homegrown beers. Book a room in the century-old farmhouse, tramp the verdant acreage, then retire to the taphouse and mini brewery for glasses of Dirtoir, a bready black lager, or the tangy Single Malt Ale.
Taste Test: Big-Box Beer
Costco, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's all sell beers made specially for them. According to Jon Langley, beer sommelier at DBGB in New York and blind-taster of twenty-one of these brews, some are even worth drinking.—Eric Sullivan
St. Cloud Belgian White
from Whole Foods ($7 per six-pack)
Langley's tasting notes: "It balances banana and lemon with a solid bitter backbone."
Good for: A pint after a long day.
Mission St. Pale Ale
from Trader Joe's ($7 per six-pack)
Langley's tasting notes: "It's crisp, sweet, and malty."
Good for: Your first beer of the night, as a bit of a wake-me-up.
Josephsbrau Plznr
from Trader Joe's ($7 per six-pack)
Langley's tasting notes: "Biscuity, with subtle hops on the end."
Good for: Bulking up your reserves for a dinner party.
Beer-Store Snobbery That Goes Down Smooth
The guys at my favorite beer store, Bierkraft, in Brooklyn, possess a particular kind of beer-guy arrogance that, if I had to guess, is made from the freshest hops and finest barley. It was a little off-putting at first, but over the years I've come to tolerate it. To appreciate it, even.
Allow me to explain: Small, cramped Bierkraft is one of a growing number of shops around the country—like Top Hops in Manhattan, Seattle's Bottleworks, and the Bruery Provisions in Orange, California—that treat beer like wine, with a fussily curated collection of bottles you'd never find at
the local beverage mart. The first time I walked in, I asked the tattooed dude behind the counter for a little help navigating. "What's delicious?" I said. To which he replied, "Dude, it's all delicious. What, you think we'd sell you something that wasn't delicious?"
A little asshole-ish, but also strangely comforting. How often do you walk into a store and have the guy behind the register vouch for everything he's selling? At places like Bierkraft, the staff only grudgingly cares about you, but they care deeply about beer. Your only job is to give yourself over and find your favorites. And the dude was right: Though I still hate lambics (they're like the wine coolers of beer), everything else I've tried at Bierkraft is delicious.—Michael Benoist
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Suds Investment: The Growler
In a good beer store, the best stuff is in the taps—and to get it home, you need a growler. Portland Growler Company's version keeps beer fresher—and looks prettier—than your average glass jug.
$65 by
"Twenty Bucks on Pump One and a Growler of Ommegang, Please"
Generally speaking, a gas station stands out by saving you a few cents per gallon or by having an unusually vast selection of Combos. But last year, a handful of APlus convenience stores in and around Buffalo installed Craft Beer Exchange counters, meaning you could fill up both your car and a sixty-four-ounce growler with selections from top-notch breweries like Dogfish Head, Stone, Magic Hat, and Ommegang—or assemble custom $10 six-packs from a hundred different bottled microbrews.
The experiment went well enough that the Craft Beer Exchange expanded to thirty-eight locations across New York, as well as fifteen in South Carolina. Fingers crossed that outdoor beer pumps aren't far behind.—Steven Leckart
Point. Click. Chug.
You can order a TV, wolf urine, and Iberian ham from Amazon, but not beer. That's where these suds-centric sites step in. They can't ship to every state due to local import laws. But for those who can get beer by mail, there's no greater joy than seeing the UPS guy arrive with a sixer of something you'd never find at your local shop.—Christian DeBenedetti
Beerjobber.com
Idealistic beer geeks arrange shipments directly from breweries, so what arrives is fresh from the vats.
Add to cart:
American Blonde, out of Edmonds, Washington, is proof that craft beer can be refreshing and still not be too, well, blonde. ($48 per case)
Madeinoregon.com
It doesn't sell only beer, but its selection of 119 vaunted Oregon brews is a well-kept secret.
Add to cart:
The hard-to-find Logsdon Organic Farmhouse Seizoen Bretta, an amber-hued saison-style brew with an earthy, herbal kick.
($11 for 750 ml)
Bruisin-ales.com
The site is bare-bones—just an A-to-Z list of beers with no descriptions. But there are nearly 1,000 of said beers. Collect 'em all!
Add to cart:
Dernière Volonté, a spicy Montreal-made hybrid of Belgian and English pale ales.
A Salute to Drinking by the Case
One Saturday last April, roughly 6,000 people gathered in a Munster, Indiana, office park in pursuit of a beer: specifically, 3Floyds' Barrel Aged Dark Lord ($50 per bottle). It's one of several hyper-rare beer trophies sought by fanatical collectors and even resold (illegally) for ten times the price.
You'll find similar mania around the release of Portsmouth Brewery's Kate the Great, the Bruery's Black Tuesday—both stouts—and Russian River's Pliny the Younger, a dizzyingly fresh IPA that tastes like an orange Creamsicle.
Beer fiends will do anything for a taste: have mules buy bottles or sneak samples out of bars in jars. Scoring a bottle of rich-as-molasses The Abyss by Deschutes is bucket-list-worthy. If you get your hands on some, mount your empties like the trophies they are.
Italy: Craft Beer's Latest, Greatest Playground
Arrivederci, Belgium—Europe's best beer speaks Italian now. The country's bizarro brews taste like Nona's herb garden, flavored with foraged spices, fresh fruits, and, naturally, plenty of grapes (what'd you have in mind, wine?), but don't plan your pilgrimage yet. These beers are easier to find here, at temples to hipster Italian fare like Alla Spina in Philadelphia, Café Spiaggia in Chicago, and Farina in San Francisco. New York's Eataly even boasts its own rooftop birrificio.
Why Italy? Ask your chef. Friendlier to your delicate antipasti than a palate-blasting American IPA, this craft birra pairs best with food because, well, it's made with it. Spices and herbs, fruits and nuts—with no brewing tradition to draw from, Italian brewers turned instead to their backyards, picking inspiration and ingredients wherever they grew. Piccolo Birrificio's bright and snappy Sesonetta uses juniper and chinotto oranges; Birrificio del Ducato's Verdi gets its tingly, gut-warming glow from chili peppers; Birra Baladin's Nora tastes like honey and Bazooka Joe—it's made with kamut, ginger, and myrrh. While other brewers channel monks, dust off nineteenth-century recipes, and out-bitter each other in a hop-head arms race, Leonardo Di Vincenzo hikes the hills behind his brewhouse, Del Borgo, and gathers wild thyme.
"Italian beer has a lot of high tones, but they're not too sweet," says Jason Carlen, wine director at Café Spiaggia and the guy behind its well-stocked beer cellar. Take Birrificio Montegioco's Draco, made with fresh blueberries. "In other cases, the berries would be sweet and cloying," Carlen says, "but Italian beer is done with much more finesse." Peroni has its place, of course (next to the garlic knots)—this is beer for the wine glass.
Meet Lambics, The Beer Nerd's Nerdiest Beer
Bugs in your beer? With lambic, that's the whole idea. These extra-rare, extra-sour Belgian beers are made the old way (and we mean old; recipes go back to the 1300s): fermented au naturel, by a host of wild bacteria in open-air breweries. For years, true lambics were only made in a small area around Brussels—what drinkers found here, whether imported or brewed stateside, was tempered with fruit flavor (cherry kriek, raspberry framboise) or soured on purpose, by the brewer, not the breeze. Now, a few bold American breweries are releasing the real thing. Portland, Maine's Allagash, Santa Rosa, California's Russian River, and Dexter, Michigan's Jolly Pumpkin have all started lambic programs, and if you're lucky (and local) you can score a bottle at the breweries when the beers are occasionally released. (Patience pays—wild bugs work slow, and some lambics ferment for years.) Why bother? You've never had beer like this before: Bright and fresh despite its age, Russian River's Beatification sizzles with grapefruit oil and pepper; Allagash's Resurgam is bracing and sweetly sour, with a wispy strawberry juice finish. Other sour beers strip paint, but lambics are subtle and complicated—think Champagne (and eye your wallet appropriately). Who knew beer gone bad could taste this good?
