Cedar Springs Brewing Company

Stopped in on a early Saturday afternoon because it was Octoberfest season. Tried a flight of four. All were excellent. Lots of room inside the building. Long picnic tables in the main room with tables in a room to the left of the door and seats at the bar. Order at the bar and take your drinks with you the day I was there so not a lot of interaction with the waitstaff. Interior is a German theme with flags and beer mugs on a high shelf along the walls.

 

I'm very impressed! Over four visits, I have tried ten beers and found eight of them to be very good to excellent. It's worth the effort to travel here from Grand Rapids.

I've been wanting to visit this place to compare its beers to those from my local German-inspired brewery, as well as to the beers that I drank while on a beercation to Germany earlier this year. Long story short, the comparison produced some very good results.

This brewery is located in its own 2-story brick building on a street corner location along the main drag through town. The interior has a 2-story ceiling, maybe meant to mimic a beer hall. Colorful European flags are draped on the upper wall around the perimeter, and the brewing equipment is situated on a mezzanine area above the bar. The L-shaped bar seats about 16-18 people. The vibe is nice.

We chose seats at the bar because the place was crowded in the early afternoon on Labor Day. We ordered lunch, and decided to have a sampler flight of 6 of their beers in order to arrive at an overall evaluation of the beers. (Twelve beers were available.) I'm still an inexperienced German-style beer drinker, but I have some limited comparison examples to which I could evaluate the beers, and every one of these was brewed very well to its respective style. We didn't place any of them into an exceptional category, but two were notable (Kusterer's Original Weissbier and Salzburger Marzen), and the rest were good to very good.

The food that we ordered was also German inspired, and it was good. Service from the kitchen was a bit slow, maybe because of the large crowd, but the bartender was attentive. Wine and Apfelwein are also offered along with soft drinks that were crafted here or elsewhere in Michigan. On nice weather days a covered patio is available for additional seating at the rear of the building. We liked it here and would make a return visit when in the area again.

My first visit. Have heard good things about it and needed to check it out. Nice and new looking building in "downtown" Cedar Springs. This city needs a nice place to go and eat and drink. It got one. Great helpful service and open to suggesting favorites. Food was amazing. Really. Beer was delicious and mostly true to style. Thought was really put into creating these beers. Overall, it was a great place that I'll go back to time and time again.

 

Came on a Wednesday afternoon, place was rather empty. A few servers were standing around chatting or on their phone, and the service was very slow.

None of the beers I tried were good. A couple were awful, and the others were average (if I'm being generous).

Moderate selection... I'd say 10-12 beers on tap if I remember correctly.

I most likely won't be back.

 

We drove over on a Saturday afternoon in February around 3:00 and the place was full. Our wait was around 10 minutes, which was less than the 15 minutes for a waitress. Not a good start. Service improved after that and I had the Outdoorsman Session Ale, good but not exceptional. For dinner I had the brisket and again it was good but not exceptional. My side was the Brussel Sprouts, they were exceptional and I'm not a big vegetable eater, but these were worth the trip. For my second beer I had the Kusterer Marzen, again tasty but not exceptional. All in all the beer and food was good and I would go back and give them another try.

Very impressive for a new brewery. I will be back.