finding craft beer near Virginia Beach

Reaver Beach a Brewing is in Va Beach. Grab Hoptopus. Their sour game is also strong. Young Veterans right around the corner from reaver puts out some solid IPAs. If you come anywhere near Richmond during the trip then a brewery stop to Triple Crossing, Hardywood, The Answer / Mekong would be in order.

 

You may also come across AleWerks Cafe Royale if you are lucky. The fresh batch hit distro in the past few weeks.

 

This thread has plenty of good suggestions.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...ridge-va-for-a-week-soon.311403/#post-3905322
You wont see Cigar City in VB, but plenty of other good stuff like Hardywood, Alewerks, Lickenhole, etc. Definetly hit Reaver beach, good sours & hoppy beers, this weekend they still had on a port aged/vanilla bean stout that is impressive, back bay and pleasure house brewing are solid also.

Where? I went to G&G and VB TW last week and neither had any, is it in the pennisula/rva area? I need a fix.

 

I live outside of Charlottesville and the 6/30 batch just landed at a couple bottle shops there on Tuesday. Not sure where it may be in Richmond but I saw a couple people post a place called Crafted Haymarket towards Northern Va have it last week as well. Not sure if it has already arrived in RVA or if it is still lagging behind due to recent distro changes. Not too familiar with the peninsula area bottle shops but Hair of the DoG in Williamsburg is showing it being on tap (updated today) through Trinkin. I'm guessing for it being local there it is long gone in bottles...

 

Ah ok, well hopefully we will see a bit in the hampton roads area, I am pretty sure it has not shown up here recently.

 

Hair of the DoG had cases of Cafe Royal on Friday. Like more than 10

 

http://seekabrew.com/distro/index.html you can compare what gets distro in your state to what we get here. National stuff that jumps out at me: Firestone Walker, Maine, and Perennial.

Devils Backbone is okay, but they're pretty standard imo. I like stuff like Blue Mountain's barrel house (Dark Hollow is great BB stout but you get that in OH), Alewerks proprietor series most everything- Cafe Royale (new batch is probably the best I've had, it's everywhere right now) and also their BB Porter, but even non-barrel stuff like 20 Knots etc. Hardywood Park barrel series stuff - currently BB Cru and Vinalia Urbana are pretty easy to find right now and both very good but don't think there are any stouts of theirs out right now.

A must go to in you're in VB for any amount of time is to head to The Birch in Norfolk.

Back Bay is a nice place for a hangout and a quick beer but I've been underwhelmed with their actual beer. Similar note for O'Connor - great people and great place, but haven't had a beer from them that blew me away yet. They did just put out a BB stout I haven't had yet but is on shelves everywhere.

 

Blue Mountain Brewery's Dark Hallow is a barrel aged imperial stout that I think it awesome. You can find bottles of it in total wines in the area and I've seen it in some grocery stores too. Definitely worth a look if you like the style.

 

Yeah, I just assumed OP has had this since they're in OH but if not it's the best readily available BB Stout from VA imho.

 

Glad you found some good finds. Curious what brewery(ies) you hit up.

Not sure when you're heading home but you'll drive through Williamsburg and as of now I'm 100% certain you can find some Cafe Royale if you're really looking.

 

"bottle shops in NC kinda close to west Virginia"? Referring to western part of Virginia? As in towards Greensboro or Winston-Salem? If you are going back through Williamsburg then you may be on the eastern side (Raleigh/ Durham)?

 

I'm not familiar with much in the way of bottle shops / brewpubs up that direction other than Raleigh/Durham area and that's about a 3 hour drive. I know NoDa can be found in sparse parts of Raleigh. Westbrook shows being distributed in NC by Advintage Distributing but not sure exactly where to find it. The Outer Banks is a little over an hour's drive from VaBeach. Not much in the way of breweries but they do have a couple fairly good bottle shops (Trio OBX & Chiip's) that gets quality stuff and sticks around a little longer then some other more active spots. Both places update their fb pages regularly with deliveries and such.

 

Not sure if anyone else mentioned above but you may have luck tracking down some AleSmith (Speedway Stout, Grand Cru, Horny Devil, IPA, ESB, Nut Brown, etc) beers. Just hit Central Va earlier this week so maybe it's down your way by now too.

**edit: Mix it Up (bottle shop in Va Beach) posted about receiving their bottles yesterday and they take reservations over the phone according to their fb page**

 

Saw Speedway on the shelf last night. it's around.