How to Tell a Great Beer Bar From a Lame One

Craft beer bars are everywhere now—which means some of them are total crap. Here's how to sniff out what's good.
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Never has there been a better time to be a beer drinker in America. More superb beer is available to more people in more places than ever before, with dozens of good options on draft at hundreds of craft beer bars around the country.

Concurrent with that surge, however, is the rise of bars that pretend to know good beer but in fact serve sudsy slop. These bars offer dozens of beers on draft—sometimes a comically vast assortment—from a variety of breweries around the country: dank double IPA’s from Vermont and tart sours from San Francisco that will etch the enamel right off your teeth. The bartenders are tatted and bearded, there’s probably some reclaimed wood or exposed brick somewhere, and pints cost nine dollars a pop. But the beer tastes vegetal and oddly buttery (these are not good things), and is often served flat or overly foamy in dirty glassware.

Fortunately, there are ways to sort the good from the bad without spending an arm and a leg upfront. Here are our tips for surviving the overgrown jungle that is the craft beer landscape.

The Beer

Not that long ago, a beer bar with fifty to a hundred taps was considered the ultimate experience. That’s no longer true—today, the best bars dial it back to focus on more concise, tightly curated lists. In fact, besides being overwhelming for even the most ardent of beer nerds, a huge fifty-plus beer list often means some of that beer inevitably sits around getting old and stale. A dozen or so draft lines is usually more than enough to cover the spectrum, and some bars get by with even fewer. One longtime favorite in Brooklyn, Spuyten Duyvil, has just six taps. SIX! And those six are always changing, always awesome, and always fresh as can be.

Besides sheer number of taps, notice how the list is laid out. Are personalized tasting notes offered (good!) or is it all generic descriptions (lame)? Is the list arranged by increasing strength and flavor or is it randomized? Is a diversity of styles, flavors, and alcohol percentages that span the beer spectrum represented? If you see seven imperial IPA’s and five saisons on a twelve-draft list, the bar probably isn’t doing a good job of managing or ordering its beer.

Two other indicators to look for beer-wise: the presence of local taps and a well-curated bottle list. We all know local doesn’t necessarily equal quality, but with nearly 5,000 breweries now making beer in the US, it’s hard to imagine why a bar wouldn’t carry at least a few that are made nearby. As for the bottle list, it should be populated with beers that can stand up to aging—barley wines, Baltic porters, and saisons, for instance—not fresh IPA’s and lagers which can turn bad quickly.

The Taps

Besides a constantly rotating selection, good bars clean and even replace their draft equipment frequently. Here’s why: beer is stored in a walk-in cooler which is located some distance away from the taps themselves. The lines that convey beer from keg to tap are made of plastic tubing, and over time, bacteria and mold can accumulate in the tubing, which—besides being totally disgusting—gives beer passing through it an off, stanky flavor. Airport bars—one of the newest frontiers for craft beer—are notorious for this.

Unfortunately, other than asking for a taste before ordering, there are few ways of knowing how clean a bar’s lines are going to be. You could ask the bartender how often the taps are cleaned. If they can’t tell you, chances are the answer is “not very often.” If you have suspicions that you’re in a place with dirty lines, opt for a can or bottle instead of draft.

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Glassware

A good beer bar will have at least two or three different types of clean glassware. Most use classic pint glasses—also known ass “shaker pints”— for a majority of their beers. These and are far from the best glassware out there, but for most beer styles they are adequate if a little clunky. (Bar owners appreciate their ruggedness and stackability.) Strong beers, though, should be served in smaller pours, so beware of bars serving full-size pints of 10% abv or higher beer—it’s a sure sign they don’t know what they’re doing.

Tulip glasses, snifters, and even wine glasses are a step up, nominal signs that a bar cares about, or at least has considered, an elevated beer experience. Don’t worry about feeling effete drinking beer from one of these glasses. There’s nothing highfalutin about it.

Cleanliness

Above all, glasses should be clean. Most bars nowadays are equipped with rinsing stations where bartenders spray the inside of an inverted glass with a quick shot of water before pouring the beer. Even so, that doesn’t mean the glass is clean. The easiest way to spot a dirty glass is to check the sides for carbonation bubbles sticking to it. If you see clusters of bubbles accumulating, like this, your glass is dirty and you should ask for another pour (or hightail it out of there!). Ditto lipstick-smudged or otherwise soiled glassware, a common problem. And if the bar itself feels grimy and smelly—no offense to our beloved dive bars—its beer probably isn’t the best.

The Serving

While the geekiest of geeky beer bars will serve different styles at different temperatures, that effort goes above and beyond what most would consider standard.

Far more important is whether the beer is being poured correctly. Is there a two-finger billowy white head on pilsners, IPA’s, and witbiers? This is an indication the bar has their carbonation gases dialed in. Few things are worse than being served flat beer. On the flipside, are bartenders dumping buckets of foamy beer down the drain or pouring glasses from pitchers of foam-settled beer? This means something’s off. Avoid.


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