I will be in town Tuesday. Looking for any brewerys, beer stores or brewpubs that are can't miss for my first and maybe only trip. Any info appreciated. Cheers!
By now I guess you've noticed that you haven't gotten a whole lot of responses from your post. I don't mean to bash the city (I went to Law School there and still have a number of friends from the area), but I'm not sure the words "can't miss" and "Memphis" should ever be used in the same sentence (at least not from a beer standpiont). Places that I guess I would recommend include Bosco's in Overton Square and the Flying Saucer between Main Street and 2nd street. While nothing extraordinary, the Bosco's brewpub has a decent selection of beer, and will occassionally even have something on cask. Be sure to try the flaming stone beer there if you go. The Memphis version of the flying saucer pub chain is the preeminent multi-tap pub in town, and so worth a visit as well I would argue. Don't expect to find anything extraordinary there, but they do have a good selection of craft beer, which on occassion will include some of the local and regional offerings (stuff from yazoo and lazy magnolia for instance). Just to put things in perspective for you, at one point there was both a Gordon Biersch and a Breckenridge brewpub in town (same location in fact), both of which quickly went out of business. Bosco's squared has been around for a while now, but I think that has more to do with it's location and the sort of food it serves, rather than the quality of the beer. On several occassions I've seen waitresses ask a patron if they would be interested in one of the house beers, with the customer expressing surprise or puzzlement over the question ("you guys make your own beer here? really?). My point being that there really doesn't seem to be much of an ardent craft beer customer base in the city (and so not much of a craft beer presence). Also, I used to work at a liquor store at one time here, and at the time liquor stores could not sell beer. If you read over some of the reviews of Joe's and Buster's, you'll see that's no longer the case, provided the beer in question is over a certain alcohol level (which if I understand the law correctly, is how those stores got around the "no beer" sales prohibition). On the other hand, beers like SNPA, samuel adams and anchor steam can be purchased at the local Krogers, Piggly Wiggly, etc. Hey, things are a lot better in Memphis than they used to be. When I lived here in the late 80's, we had to drive over to West Memphis to the local Walgreens there, just to be able to purchase exotic beers like Shiner and Chimay. Have fun...
I think you'll find that the South regional forum has less posts than any other. Shrug, I live in MS and driving to Memphis to get beer is a treat For beer stores - Busters for high gravity and Raffe's Deli for the lower gravity stuff. They're pretty close to each other - their addresses should be in the "places" section here. I'd say look for the regional brews - Yazoo, Lazy Magnolia, Abita, Ghost River among them.
Thanks to you both. I did do a search on BA, but wanted to see if there was anything new. Went to Bosco's and Flying Saucer in Little Rock so this trip will focus on BBQ. If you ever head up to Cleveland let me know. We are spoiled. Thanks again. Cheers! Dan
