Good or bad? I'm considering a job here and I know nothing of the place. Comments about the city as a beer city and just in general are welcome.
pros: the bayou is a really cool beer bar/live music/'creole' food place uinta makes great beers it is absolutely beautiful looking it is a fantastic place to visit cons: you cannot drink beers on tap that are over 4.2% abv it is difficult to purchase beers to go on sundays if you are not mormon, things may seem strange to you the pollution there is the worst in the us
I have been there many times and enjoy Red Rocks & Squatters. Both have good food and good beer. You can get the higher octanes beers in certain stores.
Since I don't know where your from I can't compare. But I can say, Utah isn't the beer wasteland many think. The beer doesn't flow like it does in Denver or Portland, but it'll keep you in your "happy place". Check out http://utahbeer.blogspot.com there's good info there on the local beer scene.
I lived in SLC for 9 years, but haven't been back for awhile, so take this with a grain of salt. Compared to Arkansas, the beer scene is fantastic (my dad lives outside LR). There are a lot of odd alcohol laws, but they get circumvented to some degree. Uinta and Epic are turning out some world class beer; I really love Uinta's Crooked Line series. You can even do a good pub crawl downtown. There are many, many great places to eat, some of which have respectable beer selections. The biggest PITA is the 4% draft law noted above. There are a couple of really good homebrew shops too. As I've said on these forums before, there is no better place on earth for year round outdoor recreation. Trails everywhere, beautiful scenery, a very agreeable 4 season climate, fantastic skiing in winter, but you won't have to shovel much if you live down in the city. Places as diverse as Yellowstone, Las Vegas and Moab are within a day's drive, or less. The smog is a bummer, but you can be out of it and in the mountains in 15 minutes. As for the local culture, it can be strange and frustrating at times. Utah often seems like a displaced piece of the deep south, or maybe a middle eastern country. SLC is getting more normal by the day, but rural UT can be a real shocker. Definitely visit for a week or so before making any commitments, but I think you will like it better than LR.
