Best Beer In Worst Place

Shhhhhhhh !

 

Long ago, hitchhiking out of Munich towards Austria and the now defunct Yugoslavia. Everyone had little cars packed with family and no one stopped. On occasion we would get a ride for a while, but never for any real distance. So we walked in oddly Austrian heat. We finally happened upon a roadhouse type of restaurant tucked back off of the road. We were exhausted, probably a touch smelly, but we had money. We wandered in tossed our packs along two sides of an old booth and a big dark wooden table. We waited a while for any attention, and finally a poor young fellow came and had to deal with us. We ordered big plates of sausages, crazy good vegetables, dark bread, and Gosser Spezial in huge mugs- still the best beers I've ever had. We drank 3 mugs very quickly and I can still enjoy the pure pleasure. It wasn't a bad place, but it was a tough spot to be in. We emerged refreshed and our journey became huge fun again. The staff had never seen anyone like us before. Yugoslavia is another story!

 

I would venture to say in this area most definitely Moccassin Bend Brewery. It's in a WWII warehouse built for K-rations in 1941. It's got 3 and half foot thick stone and mortar walls. We drove by it twice and thought our GPS was wrong. It just looks like an old house with a driveway that loops around back and down to reveal the "house" is two stories tall. When you walk in the back entrance, you walk into the stone walled room with an L shaped bar that is against the wall. It looks like you are in a scene from the Fight Club. I asked where the bathroom was and I was pointed to go thru an unmarked door. I was told, "don't trip over the hoses laying in the floor. The pisser is past the tanks and look left." Yep. I was walking through the brewery, stepping over hoses and lines looking for the "pisser." No one was back there.

I noticed they do brewery tours on their website. Ummm. I wonder if they just point people through the same door and tell them the pisser is on the left. Don't trip over anything. LOL.

Anyway. They have a ton of beers. The few I had were good. I actually liked the sour I had the best. Check out this crazy list for such a small place that is essentially a house on a highway on the outskirts of Chattanooga, nowhere near town. I think it fits your thread title.

http://bendbrewingbeer.com/beers/

 

Stubborn Beauty Brewing Co. in Middletown, CT is in this building, right next to the city's garbage dump/landfill. They've got some damn good brews though!

 

I almost didn't believe what I was walking into. Then I realized how typical its become in Brooklyn for things to pop up in the shittiest of neighborhoods (looking at you Williamsburg and now apparently Bushwick), and it started to make sense.

 

Breckenridge Brewery on Kalamath St. in Denver is pretty weird. I wouldn't call it scary, just out of place -- totally industrial.

 

DC Brau. It's right behind a post office. Not a bad area, just awkward.

 

Top Shelf in Manchester CT is in a rattier building than Stubborn Beauty...but their beer is kinda ratty also.

 

Yellowhammer and Straight to Ale are planning on moving into the long vaccant Roy L. Stone middle school in Huntsville AL. The neighborhood is sketchy and middle school is its own kind of hell. I didn't attend that one but I know plenty of locals who did and it was particularly unpleasant. On the brightside I can take my older brother drinking where someone once threw his clarinet down the stairs.
http://www.waff.com/story/26251058/...y-cheers-to-former-stone-middle-school-campus

 

The Double Down in Good Old "Lost Wages"! $1 Miller High Life's!!! Went in at 11:00 PM... came out and there was a traffic jam...at 9:00 AM!!!

 

PT's in Vegas used to have 36oz mugs of Pyramid Heffy and and Petes' Ale (RIP) for $2.00...15 years ago!

 

Still better than all the bars near me. Also, on an unrelated topic, nice Jerry avatar.

 

Five years ago when I just turned 21, I had Hopslam on tap at my dumpy college bar. No idea what I was getting, I just thought it sounded cool. This must have been before Hopslam became a big deal, because this bar had no reason to carry it given the college crowd. I'm pretty sure I thought drank pure liquefied dandelions.

 

I will add to the Denver vibe, Great Divide is on the "wrong side of the tracks" in downtown. When I visited we saw two drug deals attempted. It was interesting but my girlfriend wasn't amused. I needed that Yeti glass though.

 

On my first excursion with Lordkat to Cooperstown and then VT back in January, two places stick out in my mind. The first was along route 28 on our second day. We were searching for somewhere open where we could get lunch and the barbeque place we tracked down was closed down for good. So we took a look for another one of the places I had scoped out called Council Rock. Could find barely any info on it online, and we almost missed it on the first drive-by. The place didn't really look open from the outside; old-ish building and very little in the way of obvious signage. Boy were we glad to find that little brewpub. Darned good burgers properly cooked to our orders (Lordkat asked for it rare; they cooked it rare and he loved it), and the 6-beer tasting flight totally hit the spot.

Afterwards, we roamed the area for a bit, hit up the beverage trail places that were open, and stumbled upon this little deli/market in the downtown area, if you could even call any part of cooperstown 'downtown'. Typical small-town Convenience store; everything looked pretty ancient. Then we found the back area with their beer selection. This place had Two-Hearted! This past January! Before Bell's officially got distro to NY!

And then there was last month when we dug around after stopping by Rock Art, and found Lost Nation Brewing stuck behind an abandoned looking barn and industrial lot. My god, those BBQ sandwiches...We've already resolved to go back there on our next VT outing.

 

They still serving ass juice??

 

Hahahaha that's in a great area of town, plus those drug deals are legal now