Eastern Market Brewing Co.

Best brewery in Detroit and Eastern Market area- well done beers and best hazy IPA brewed in the state.

Second to last day out, and yes, still in Detroit, pre the game as it is or will be, anyway. The last of 3 on this beer & baseball trip having rolled through Cincy and Cleveland already. Out and about looking for a few (more) beers, literally right around the corner from the last place. “Hey Dave!!” (who went walking the wrong way), “Ova he-ah!!”, shouted Ben, pointing at the blatantly obvious well marked brewery with music and mad seating in the street...

Brewery off to left, thinking a 5 bbl system, and keep moving through if you want a beer. ‘L’ shaped concrete topped bar to the rear, vertical corrugated & framed wood base, and a piping foot rail. 6 chairs along the corner of the bar, the rest being for service (get your beer, then stand clear). Barback wall holds a mural logo elephant seemingly happy about something over a horizontal can cooler down under. 20 tap non-descript panel on the far cold box wall over glassware shelved below, and a cans-to-go cooler adjacent. Wide pan lamps tracing the bar above.

Brick walls weathered, pillar uprights, concrete floors & ceiling with I-beams & ducts. Drop filament pear bulbs & Chinese red/white/blue lantern balls forward in rows. The front wall is brick with a large glass panel wall around the entranceway, and a bar counter ledge on a roll panel door alongside with seating for 8 for people watching, I suppose. It's strangely doublesided as there are 6 stools for the sitting at on the outside. 3 shleves of looooooong wall plantings off to one side below ornate metal pieces, and a mural piece below. A bunch of hooks around the corner to hang the bad kids on over a Toledo scale, and the merch zone past there. Inlay with board games, and a new releases & events board.

4 long tables in 2 rows of 2 and a hightop shared in the far corner where we are (watching the US Open). 20 tables in the street out front, shared and shorty square, on benchings or bright colorful chairs (don’t know if that is a regular thing), and upwards of a dozen tables in the side alley.

Vertical draft untapped board listing selections (beer, style, ABV, and pricing for a full pour or 5oz shorty). 14 beers up (Same Old Lager, 4.5%; Wunderboi, Kolsch, 5%; Wunderboi and Lime, 5%; Ube Coconut, Blonde Ale, 5.5%; Flip Flop Weather, Blonde Ale, 5.5%; Grapefruit Radler, Shandy, 4.5%; Stingy Jack, Sour Pumpkin Ale, 6%; Designer’s Delight, Passionfruit Sour, Design Core Detroit collab, 5.5%; Raspberry Gose, 4.5%; Woolly, Cold IPA, 6%; 313 IPA, NE IPA, 6.2%; Elephant Juice, NE IPA, 7.2%; Pumpkin Spice White Coffee, Golden Ale, 6.8%; Oktoberfest, Marzen, 6%).

Same Old Lager, simple, easy drinker, crisp & light; Wunderboi, Kolsch, fruity esters, yummy factor 7, quite nice; Elephant Juice, NE IPA, citrus, tropical fruit, pine, light bitterness, solid, we deemed this to be the better of the 2 NE IPAs they had on; Oktoberfest, Marzen, a bit of caramel, toasted malts, nice, but a tad sweet. Am thinking Wunderboi Kolsch for the win and Same Old Lager a close second.

It’s a well rounded tap list, albeit with 2 pumpkin beers (the devil’s gourd). Good for a few and I could have hung around for another beers, but we’ve got a game to get to.

 

I visited Eastern Market Brewing yesterday while visiting Detroit. When I visited, they had 18 beers on tap, representing a wide variety of interesting styles: several lagers, two goses (one is NA!!), two other sours, two wheats, two kölsches, an imperial stout and three NEIPAs. Probably one of the best mixes of styles I've seen.

Honestly, each thing I had here was so good. The Primavera Italian pilsner, German lager, hopped sour and west coast IPA were all quite good, but the standout for me was the Champions Day NEIPA is even better. I am very happy indeed with the quality of the beer here.

As far as atmosphere goes, they've got an industrial look with a concrete bar, exposed brick and plenty of wood accents. The brewery itself is in full view of the taproom, which I like. My server was great as well; I highly recommend Eastern Market.

Stopped by for a flight after a local recommended visiting. The location is not large, but the bartenders were friendly and the beers were the best we encountered on this day of brewery hopping. Food not available on site when we visited.

We walked by here after ordering a pizza at Supino's so we could grab some lemonade and coffee at Bea's. What we should have done was brought our pizza to eat in this grafitti'd alley that the city seems to have made available to all, because after finishing our pizza and deciding to hang around a little longer, we ended up here anyway.

Aside from a window with a few stools facing outwards, the indoor space is reserved primarily for lining up to order at the bar. It's a pretty classic, industrial Detroit interior with a tall vertical space, but would otherwise feel pretty small with a full house. That said, the visually stimulating alley--between the murals and the people watching--is where you want to be anyway.

Barrels and chairs are strewn around the alley for anyone to come down from the Eastern Market to chill for whatever reason they so desire. But the brews are something else entirely. Not only was my session NEIPA perfectly delicious and chuggable, but they had a heavily fruited berliner that was more in line with the stuff 450 North is doing. While not exactly the most prestigious style, it was a nice treat to have out in the sun, especially considering we weren't planning on getting tanked anyway. It gave us a little pep in our step before moving on to attend this beautiful, rainbow-filled weekend's events, not bogging us down at all.

Only 4 beers on tap the day we visited, but the beers we tried were the best of the day... out of 6 Detroit area breweries we visited on a weekend in Oct 2019. Cool vibe on a Saturday night. The free peanuts were a sweet bonus! Definitely worth checking out this brewery.