I live in Southern Indiana which is still a cultural backwater. My non-beer-drinking friends often pick restaurants based on the food (what are they thinking? priorities anyone?) rather than the quality of the liquid libations. Sadly, about 80% the local establishments including some of the more locally-renowned restaurants only offer the InBev lineup. I like dark beers and if I’m lucky they may have Guinness which is not my favorite but drinkable. Otherwise it’s only yellow beer.
We do have a few restaurants that offer a selection of good craft beer, but few and far between. What’s the situation where you live?
It’s the opposite here in Massachusetts. Most restaurants have solid craft selections, even places like fried seafood joints and pizza places will have at least one or two selections that are not InBev and often they are local.
I live in a rural town and even here there is a great brewery on a farm and every restaurant in the area has some beer I
like.
With the exception of Mexican and Asian, most eateries here in Northern Nevada have at least a couple of craft beer offerings. Reno has several craft breweries, so selections there are generally better.
re: massachussetts - yes, i’ve heard from someone i know there that they can take their pick of really good microbreweries and craft anywhere.
re: indiana - that’s surprising, considering there are so many huge names in craft beer from indiana (upland/sun king/3 floyds, etc), but understandable considering the way people are.
i really don’t know what will bring about the downfall of the industrial brewers, they seem to have regained some strength over the past few years.
here in medium-sized city ontario it varies from place to place a LOT. i will say, at least you can get cheap fizzy yellow water down there. here its about 6 dollars / 12oz bottle of budweiser/blue/canadian and goes up from there. most places do offer “craft” beer, but other than dedicated “craft beer” establishments, its basically a craft version of fizzy yellow water. its not a great scene.
In Michigan there is no shortage of craft beer. Tops on the list (even though they have corporate ownership now …at least its not inbev) are Founders and Bell’s. Then there is Shorts, Oddside, Jolly Pumpkin, Arcadia, New Holland, HopCat, and locally where I live are Frankenmuth Brewing, Tri City Brewing Co. and Oracle.
Munster, where Three Floyds brewery is located is a 5-hour drive (if you have a tailwind) from me. I think the other breweries you mentioned are in Indianapolis about 2 1/2 hour drive.
Most non-chain restaurants here serve local craft. I rarely go to breweries because my wife is not a beer drinker. But, I can get good beer all over town at restaurants so I am fine with that.
There are close to 90 craft breweries within an hour’s drive of where I live. A select few are good. Most I’ve been to are marginal or outright suck, AFAIC. (Disclosure: I have not been to all of them, nor will I ever be able to.)
My biggest problem with craft beer is the inconsistency. One pour one night might be good, the same beer some other night is undrinkable. This happens in a restaurant or at the brewery itself. I do not like paying ~$8 a pint for crap beer. It’s always a coin flip.
In my area at least, small craft breweries suck with consistency, and a lot of them make crap beer in the first place. With the macros, at least I know what I can expect for the money I’m paying.
I’ve experienced some of that inconsistency you mention, but I know I’m always going to think I’ve wasted my money on an industrial mass market yellow lager. I’m willing to take a chance on a craft draft. In this area, I can get a pint of most craft brews for $5 to $6. High ABV and barrel-aged selections cost more. Thanks for your comment.
I lived in Dallas until 2018 which still has a fairly small craft beer scene for the size of the metro area. Through the 2010s most restaurants carried a few industrial lagers, Shiner, maybe a few imports and if you were lucky two or three legit craft beers. For a brief moment at the very peak of craft beer when those 100 tap restaurants were popular you’d see a few more craft beers on lists but they were usually the bigger breweries. That has a lot to do with Texas distribution and restaurant ownership. Coors and InBev are the biggest distributors in the state and they sell what they can move in volume. Most restaurants in the state are chains or part of restaurant groups who want to buy what sells and what is easy to buy. That’s a market set up to sell Fat Tire and Sam Adams next to Coors. The restaurants don’t want to deal with a bunch of sales reps selling beer at a premium that they don’t know if they can sell when they can get a steady stream of SNPA.
Here in Denver it’s different because craft beer is baked into the state’s drinking culture and there is generally a more local and independent culture around restaurants. Most restaurants have a decent selection of local and national craft beer. You might find an industrial lager on tap but with how many breweries we have locally turning out lagers you’re just as likely at a non-chain restaurant to find a local craft lager instead. At the craft beer peak in the last decade you found a lot more of the insanely long bottle/can lists and thirty taps of beers at varying ages. As craft beer consolidated around pastry stouts and hazy beers in combination with more taprooms in convenient locations there has been some dialing back on the number of beers restaurants support. Rather than have a list of thirty bottles/cans there might be twelve and a handful of taps. The 100 tap restaurant/bars are mostly gone. It’s better to have a reasonable list of beers that turnover than 100 taps with 20 that move regularly and the others of questionable age.
With the way the craft beer market developed this is the new model at least for a while. Breweries pumping out pastry stouts, haze, seltzers and kettle sours don’t want to sell off premises because they can sell a $7-8 pint of IPA and cans to-go on site and make way more money from the taproom. Restaurants and bars are more likely to pick up what they can which will be some local beer, a lot more of the larger craft names and the industrial brewery conglomerates. People having a couple beers with dinner are more likely to want something more tame than a hazy kveik DIPA with marshmallow and coconut.