Finding great beer in unlikely locations

sports bar up the street has Sculpin and Two Hearted on nearly all the time. Did not expect that when I moved to the area, and Ive been able to walk home afterwords if need be!

 

Niko's, Mt Washington, Pittsburgh PA, enjoy a Chimay Blue Cap on Taco Tuesday.

 

Nothing surprises me anymore, since craft beer has exploded, but about 6 years ago, I found a tiny liquor store in downtown Ventura (a craft beer wasteland at the time) that consistently stocked fresh Hop Stoopid in their coolers for about $3.67 including tax and CRV. I always found an excuse to go by this store, even though it was usually about 10 miles out of my way.

 

House of blues. They carry all the brown box firestone walker releases, bourbon county, they also had a ballast point bucket of beers.

 

I live in a town of about 5-6 bars in the downtown area, and on black friday 5 of the bars downtown had Bourbon county on tap, this was surprising coming from the places that usually serve your basic bar beers.

Another big surprise was going into this gas station/deli type place and them having a case of Bourbon county.

 

There is a sketchy gas station located in a questionable part of my town that was selling Pirate Bomb, BCBCS, and Vanilla Rye on Black Friday. From the first look you would never know, but they have one of the best selections of beer in town. Not too many people know about it so I'm not gonna give any more details away

 

Similar story: I went up to Noosa (a small tourist area about 1.5 hours north of Brisbane) and found a tiny little bottle shop - XO Cellars - which was only around 30 sqr metres. It didn't stop them from somehow stocking over 100 fairly hard to find craft beers. This was at the time that I had just scoured all the beers stores I could find for new beers to try and hadn't yet discovered that Leura Cellars delivers interstate. Suffice to say, it was a god-send whilst on holidays.

 

Went into a small liquor store in Morrison, CO looking for some good beer. Scoped out the craft cooler, nothing really caught my eye. Wandered over to the BMC cooler and nestled in between the Bud Light and Coors was a 4-pack of BCBCS. I did a double take to make sure I wasn't imagining things. Then I bent down and realized they had an entire case of it out for sale in the cooler. I talked to the owner and he didn't really know anything about it, just said it was a new expensive beer from Bud. So I bought two 4-packs and left, leaving the rest of the beer there for the next beer guru who wandered into that twilight zone.

 

The big sports bar around the corner from me (Duffy's, for those of you in Chicago) almost always has regular BCBS and the 10% Not Your Father's Root Beer on tap. Just a few months ago, I had a snifter of 2013 BCBS followed by a snifter of the root beer there, and this past weekend I had a snifter of the 2014, of course followed by a snifter of the root beer. They're not cheap, but not out of line with what I'd expect either ($10 for what looked like 5oz).

Overall, they have a surprisingly nice beer menu. Miller Lite stadium cups & Michigan games with the volume on 11 by day, craft beer bar (with a hip-hop DJ in the back room) by night.

 

Was at Babes BBQ in Palm springs they had bottles of FW sucaba and parabola and Allagash Curieux on tap

 

The little bar and grill down the street from my house only has about 6 taps (bud, bud, bud, sam adams, corona, broken), but they hosted a Cincinnati Beer Week event last year and featured Bourbon County Stout. I didn't think they had it in them.

 

Whenever I'm out n about, I will stop just about anywhere that looks halfway interesting. 99% of the time all they have is BMC, but every once in a while I'll find a nice place that that has a decent selection. By doing this, I've found many bottles that the more popular places were sold out of. I'm still waiting on the day that I'll walk into a place and find a bottle of cantillon lol.

 

Stopped into a small liquor store on the North Shore of Lake Superior to pick up some beer while golfing at Superior National. They had about a dozen bottles of Surly Darkness (which had been released about 9 months earlier). Along with some other high end craft brews. I was too stunned at at seeing all that Darkness to even register what else I saw.

 

Awesome Italian Bar and Grill around here. I walked in expecting no beer selection or just Peroni and they had St. Bernardus Abt. 12 and Wormtown Be Hoppy - both served in proper glassware. Needless to say I've been back

 

Found 6 bottles of KBS at a small liquor store in CT that had no other craft beer to speak off. Seemed like the store had no idea what they had.

 

I can't imagine what those cost. The Cleveland HoB charges $6.75 for a PBR.

 

Wait a damn minute here- you're saying Georgia got Vanilla Rye?! They are not on the list of limited markets to receive it ao kudos to you if you found it on a shelf in GA.

 

The craziest place for outstanding beer has to be Greensboro, VT!

 

Not on draft so much in MI's Upper Peninsula but in the summer months and into the fall its not uncommon to run across random 4 packs of KBS and BN.