I love breweries, and I really enjoy visiting the tap rooms associated with them. Breweries do everything they can to sell their beer, and besides retail stores, craft beer bars are the other excellent place to sell their beer, and get discovered. These places are frequented by craft beer aficionados who like having diverse selections of craft beer to choose from. These taprooms usually exist independently from any particular brewery, and I feel they are in essential spoke in the wheel of craft brewing. The bar in the picture above certainly supports a lot of breweries with their 262 taps of craft beer. Whenever I get to Des Moines, Iowa, I definitely plan on checking the place out!
The Heorot in Muncy, Indiana is also a very interesting place. The inside is designed like a Viking longhouse, with taps all along the right hand side of the establishment. When they first opened almost 20 years ago, they were doing something very few places could offer, and I think it partly was successful because of it being in a college town. Their beer selection is immense, with dozens of taps, and even more crazy beer in bottles. And speaking of a little off kilter, should you ever get to Chicago, you need to find The Map Room. This beer bar specializes in all things Belgian!
I have been drinking craft beer for over two decades, and my travels around the country have taken me to a lot of very good tap rooms. One of my favorite was in the Orlando, Florida area, and was called the Oblivion Taproom. It was an eclectic place with several hundred beers available, and sadly is not open anymore. A place that reminds me of that tap room is in Sandusky, Ohio called the Small City Taphouse. It is an Asian fusion/Sushi bar with 80 taps of craft beer. You won’t find a more unique place in northern Ohio, and no trip to Cedar Point would be complete without a visit to the tap room!
I could go on and talk about lots of tap rooms because I’ve been lucky to visit so many of them. There are many of them in almost every city, and odds are good that you’ve been to one. If I tried to mention every awesome place that I’ve visited, this article would be 200 pages long! So I’m going to talk a bit about why I appreciate the work these places do, and then recount my visit today to one such place.
Tap rooms are important because they can feature beer from dozens of different breweries. And what’s neat about this is sometimes there are tap takeover’s by breweries, and often times representatives for the breweries will stop in to talk to customers about their beer. On a visit to the Small City Taphouse several years ago, the owner asked me to stop in the next day so that I could meet the owners/brewers of Willoughby, and JAFB who would be visiting his establishment. I took him up on this, and he made introductions, and I got to sample really great beer with both companies!
Breweries also make small batches of their beer often just for their own taproom, and the beer bars that sell the most of their beer. These are the places that an out-of-state brewery often will select for release parties, and special events. 12 years ago I was a part of a beer bar on the north side of Indianapolis that was cutting edge for the time. The Old Towne Alehouse offered craft beer readily when very few places were offering nearly 2 dozen craft beers on tap. I remember a KBS release that was really fun. That place is sadly gone, but the spirit lives on in so many tap rooms today.
Another reason for independent taprooms is that some people are just into one style of beer. You have a better chance of finding more beers to try from a specific style because taprooms can offer selections from multiple breweries. And if you have that one person in your group who always likes something different, there are many reasons that a taproom can work for any group of beer drinkers. And like the brewpub, taps rotate, and this can make for interesting nights of drinking. And it goes without saying that I found taprooms to have excellent food!
This concept of taprooms is not unique to America. Long before we had a vibrant craft beer scene in the US, I remember visiting beer bars in Belgium, and the UK where dozens, if not hundreds of beers were readily available. I’ll talk about it in another article, but to this 23-year-old in 1999, Belgium was like Disneyland when it came to beer. The bars had very diverse selections, and it was hard for me to know where to begin. I imagine this sense of overwhelmed curiosity overtakes so many novice craft beer drinkers anytime they enter a taproom. If you’re new to all this, I am excited for you!
As I write this article, I am enjoying a beer at the 5’s Tap Room in Anderson Indiana. This place used to be a fire station, and they’ve kept the feel to it. It is a grand reopening for them, and they have a very nice crowd in the back yard behind their building which is featuring live music. They have a nice selection of Indiana beer on tap, and I gravitated towards Pax Verum, a brewery in Lapel, Indiana I have never had beer from. The beer I’m trying is a New England IPA called Clouded Judgement, and it is quite tasty. They have several other beers on tap from Pax Verum, and I hope to try at least one more while I’m here.
I found out about this tap room last weekend while I was working a beer festival here in Anderson. Their staff was going around promoting the place, and I think they did a good job given the crowd here tonight. It takes hard work to make a place successful, and I wish them all the success. They are serving good beer and that’s something I think they should be proud of.
And as I close this article, I want to focus on how beautiful it is that 5’s Tap Room is here on the north side of Anderson, Indiana serving craft beer to a diverse crowd. Beer bars don’t need to have extensive tap lists, and a place like this is doing a good job of letting their craft beer drinking patrons drink locally in many ways. The beauty of craft beer in America is that it’s everywhere, and this taproom attests to that. Our culture is healthy if you can go to small town’s in America and find good beer on tap somewhere.
I have lots more traveling to do this weekend. As I get to northern Indiana I hope to drink some good craft beer with my little brother. It’s the weekend and I toast you all and hope that you’re drinking something excellent somewhere just like me!
So Much Beer So Little Time 