Pittsburgh - New Beers & Local Breweries

Had a roommate in college who watched it every day for nearly a year. I had to walk through his room to get to mine, so repeatedly seeing middle parts and missing the beginning kind of spoiled it for me. Remember temporal displacement, a plane crash and the human-sized bunny, only as bits and pieces. Sounds like a movie I could really get into, but for some reason I've never circled back.

 

I'd venture to say he smoked a lot of weed. Or liked acid.

 

I usually just get them filled from the breweries or like others said Giant Eagle. Roundabout goes anywhere from 13-18$ usually depending on the beer. I think brew gentlemen go from 15-20$. Hitchikers are 15-16$ ish I think. I'm not sure I'd pay over 20$ for anything here although I have paid 20$ for 32 oz fills of barrel aged saison at Tired Hands before.

 

What this is showing is that there is a huge disconnect between craft beer bars/stores and the general drinking public in Pittsburgh. How many mentions do we make of Giant Eagle?

It sure would be awesome to have a go-to bottle shop/growler fill station here in town that wasn't an insultingly overpriced store. Somebody needs to get on this!

 

It is weird that Giant Eagle is my go to place for growler refills as far as price/selection goes. It makes me feel...wrong. Like, I'd rather be supporting some place else. Just got the Ballast Point Habanero Sculpin from there last weekend. I always seem to miss it when it's on tap at my favorite bars.

 

I don't feel conflicted about it in the least. My wallet does the talking at the end of the day and their prices are by far the best in the area with a selection that rivals any other place around. It's the most logical choice. If some other places in the area priced their beer more appropriately, then I'd go there. Until then, GE Shadyside gets 90% of my beer money.

 

Good point. Thanks for making me feel a little better about it haha.

 

My local watering hole (Dommy's) charges the price of 4 pints minus a $1 for their growler fills. So if anyone lives in close proximity to Vandergrift it's usually a steal of a price. My local Giant Eagle has a cafe with a decent beer selection, minus growlers, but they have a large selection of bombers with best by dates from November 2014 . I'm always extra careful when I get something there and they don't often get a ton of my beer money.

 

I'm the same way. Something about buying something from Atlas instead of GE is a good feeling. But when it's 6 bucks for a can of Grapefruit Sculpin at Atlas it's a no brainer to go to Shadyside MD to spend my money. So I do. Often.

 

I stopped feeling guilty awhile ago. When D's is in the process of buying up half of Regent Square and yet they can't find it within themselves to charge reasonable prices for bottles of beer, let the Enjoy By sit on the shelf well past the "Enjoy By' date. They have a couple of Nebraska bombers that I know will be there well into next year and plenty of last years Warlock/Pumpking still sitting on the shelves. I'll feel bad when someone purchases a bottle thinking they are getting it fresh.

Maybe (but not likely) a bottle shop will wake up and see the potential sales if they would just charge reasonable prices. They would kill it.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a store currently can't sell both singles and cases right? It's one or the other? I think the only way that "bottle shop" prices go down is if PA law changes to allow stores to sell both 4/6 packs, singles and cases instead of just one half or the other.

If a store is permitted to do both, then they will still be raking in from their case sales and that would allow them to sell 4/6 packs and singles at a normal price.

 

The amount of places that still have last year's Warlock/Pumking is ridiculous. I'm kind of "been there, done that" with most pumpkin beers at this point, but it would still be nice to have a couple of my favorites this fall and I don't know how I'll be able to tell which ones are actually this years.

 

Yeah, was very disappointed with some D's. Went there 4th of July weekend and loaded up on some cans (without checking dates, my fault admittedly) and ended up tossing some cans that had best by dates in 2014. Not a place I'll visit again.

 

Yeah, I believe that's still true. There was this Post Gazette article from back in March about them trying to amend that a bit http://www.post-gazette.com/news/st...could-soon-sell-12-packs/stories/201503060148

I don't know if that actually happened or not though.

 

I don't know the law but if that is the case, can't you open up a store with an breeze way in the middle with two doors and have pkg store one side, bottle store on the other? That is what a lot of stores in Tennessee do because of the wonky abv. rules. You can't have high abv. bottles sitting near low abv. bottles.....it would be mass hysteria.

 

About a year ago, I had the idea to do this very thing. Sell by the case on one side and in smaller formats on the other.

 

There are always ways around dumb laws. Look at what Voodoo Homestead did so that they could open. The good old magic line down the middle of the bar.

 

So there are these places that have good/great selections and excellent prices and somehow people are having issue with it because it's a grocery store chain instead of bottle shops?

How's traffic been around the city lately?

 

You know what, you are right. Lets just go back to talking about how none of us care about your beer.

 

None of you caring about my beer has never been a discussion here.

Been trading any beer here lately?