Any must try beer bars in Boston?

You should check out Trillium. Fort Point or Fenway location.

 

Not a craft beer bar, but Smokeshop BBQ was getting Heady and Focal fairly regularly earlier last year. They're in Fort Point which is a great neighborhood for beer and food. I'd recommend doing a little crawl around there one night. Here's some of the common recs:

• Row 34 - Upscale seafood/oyster bar. Awesome food and a great beer list.
• Pastoral - Neopolitan pizza with a good tap list
• Trillium's Fort Point restaurant - good food and all Trillium beer
• Harpoon - beer hall atmosphere, great pretzels, good beer
• Fort Point Market - one of the best beer shops in the state, right next to Row 34 (there's a chance of them getting a Heady drop, but they're infrequent)
• City Tap - not a hole in the wall beer bar, but definitely a craft beer gastro pub type setting. Their tap list usually has a nice variety of New England beers

I'm sure some others are escaping me so I'll let people chime in

 

City Tap is a chain from Philly, I feel like there are tons of other places to experience in Boston than a chain.

 

Definitely like anything else I listed, but tap list wise it has a good selection.

 

I'd say @Rysk22 definitely covered the Fort Point area well. If you're up for venturing outside of downtown, I'd say The Publick House in Brookline and Lulu's Allston are two of the better beer bars in the area. Both are accessible by the T and/or a short Uber ride.

 

Don’t forget Five Horses!

 

Depending on the night @gnargnar is going I'd HIGHLY recommend trying to get a reservation this week, everything is still limited capacity.

I wasn't able to get a reservation for Trillium until Sunday, and I booked it this past weekend (so a week out).

You'll find similar problems at Row 34 and Harpoon.

A couple weeks ago I went to both Smokeshop and Pastoral (couldn't snag a reservation at Row 34 or Trillium).

Unfortunately Smokeshop/Pastoral's tap lists are fairly depleted at this point (food is still awesome as usual).

These two places are the better bet and you can actually get into them. And their tap lists are currently far more extensive than places in the Seaport right now.

That being said, I wanted to go out this weekend and opted to hit up Malden as opposed to doing Publick House or Lu Lu's.

Mystic Station has a solid list, as does Hugh O'Neill's. And Faces Brewing Co. has a really nice space, and of course Idle Hands is up the street as well. Not to mention you're a quick Uber ride to Five Horses in Davis which also has a solid tap list. Along with Elm Street Tap room around the corner and Rosebud as well.

If it was me, I'd do Malden and Davis Square in Somerville. You can really bounce around...with the caveat that if the OP is going THIS WEEK you still have to get food everywhere you go and can't just go bar hopping.

 

Thankfully if OP is still around on Saturday/Sunday all these restrictions are gone. And frankly several places have started to ignore them altogether in advance.

 

Kinda dumb to not remove restrictions on the Friday of the holiday weekend...

 

My guess on this is that they wanted businesses that work M-F to be able to start fresh with new rules in place at the beginning of a work week as opposed to the end.

 

Sadly no heady or focal will be found in the Boston area currently. The deliveries dried up months ago and with things opening back up in Vermont, they are keeping it close to home.

 

Good point there. I did see one brewery in the area announced they wouldn’t be dropping their mask mandate yet (Remnant). Will be interesting to see if that impacts business when others are fully open. I know I won’t visit if others are fully open, but that’s just me.

 

Welcome to Cambridge and Somerville. I assume many places in those areas are going to keep certain restrictions in place. I would say the majority of people I walk by in Somerville OUTSIDE still wear masks.

Saw one dude sitting on his own porch working on his lap top all by himself wearing one. Saw another girl ride by on an empty street on her bike wearing one (this was Sunday when it was brutally hot).

I'm with you though. Unless it's a place I REALLY REALLY want to go for something specific, I won't be going out of my way to patronize places that are keeping restrictions in place.

 

Idle Hands is happily taking restrictions away. I’ll quench my thirst in Malden I believe.

 

Oh hell yeah. Heard this myself first hand this past weekend at the brewery.

I plan on trying to hit them up this weekend. Hopefully there’s a bar seat. I want to sit in a bar seat.

 

One without stupid plexiglass partitions.

 

Oh yeah, Idle Hands said they're tearing that shit down.