Your Dream Beer Bar

[bhoshour]

This has got to be the best place to ask this question. I have considered opening up a beer bar in Charlotte and I was thinking of the line-up of brews today. With that in mind, I pose a question to all of the beer enthusiasts and self-proclaimed experts in the house. If you could design your own beer bar, what would your line-up be? What would you have on tap and what might you have available in bottles? I am very curious to see the response and get some ideas. Personally, I want see some names for a plethora of styles. I will list my own ideas near the end of the post. So let's have it, fellow beer lovers. If you could walk into a beer bar and have whatever you wanted, what would it be?

[tjthresh]

Back 2000 is was in Denver for the GABF. Falling Rock haad a bunch of great specials in for the week. The one that excited me the most was Unibroue's Trois Pistoles. They also had cask conditions Fuller's Porter. Also, anything from Dogfish head seems to be hot these day.

[steveh]

Variety, variety, variety - and maybe Nicole Kidman or Julianne Moore to tend bar! ;)

S.

[bhoshour]

Originally posted by steveh
Variety, variety, variety - and maybe Nicole Kidman or Julianne Moore to tend bar! ;)

S.

Steve, you dissapoint me! I expected a few people to actually LIST the various brews of their choosing. I thought some good tap brews might include, Dogfish Head 90 min IPA, Arrogant Bastard Ale, St, George Brewing Company Porter, and Mackeson's XXX. I thought having 5-10 excellent tap brews with a variety of bottles might work best. I am seriously conisdering this move so tell me what you think!!! I'll see what I can do about the girls

[skahtboi]

5-10??? Seems like you are limiting yourself too much. A local pub in the small town that I live has 30 brews on tap, and that seems to still be insufficient. You will have to carry some of the more common draughts like Guinness or Murphy's Stout, Newcastle, Bass and Harp. You may even consider one or two yellow fizzes on tap just to please the feint of palate. Then you branch out into lots of specialty beers, especially regional favorites. You may even want to have a guest beer or two on tap, one that you can switch out on a regular basis that would be ideal for the season.

[beer editor]

Originally posted by bhoshour
[B I thought having 5-10 excellent tap brews with a variety of bottles might work best. I am seriously conisdering this move so tell me what you think!!! I'll see what I can do about the girls [/B]

I think you are wise to limit the number of beers you have on. Let your regulars determine what the "house" beers, those always available, are and then rotate the heck out of the other taps.

Until North Carolina changes its silly abv laws what you can do on the special taps will be limited, but post a list of what's coming on next on the special handles.

A great promotion, if the law allows, is to pour a free one (or give a coupon for one the next day - don't want to promote overdrinking) of the "next" beer to the person who gets the last pint of the "old" beer.

Keep your lines as short as possible and keep them and the faucets impeccably clean.

Don't sacrifice serving your beer in as good of condition as possible for impressing people with the size of the menu.

Prosit,
Stan

[wortchillergoal]

I would say it depends on you as to how manyu taps and bottles you want. You must design to fit your personality. Some like the KISS idea, keep it simple stupid. This works for a great bar near me that has 2 brew pubs and a bar with 60plus taps. The 60plus bar does a great job and business too, and they are all within a football field of one another. Still here are some beers I like to see when I go into a pub to certify the taps are still working:
Brooklyn EIPA
Geary's Pale Ale
Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
Geary's hampshire ale
any Belguim beer of note
Siera Nevada pale Ale
Anchor Liberty,Porter,and Foghorn
Brooklyn Monster
Any Middle Ages product
Thank you and remember that beer can be food but food can never be beer.

[Beerconnoisseur]

This has got to be the best place to ask this question. I have considered opening up a beer bar in Charlotte and I was thinking of the line-up of brews today. With that in mind, I pose a question to all of the beer enthusiasts and self-proclaimed experts in the house. If you could design your own beer bar, what would your line-up be?

You are aware that there is a Flying Saucer in Charlotte, right? Visit their web site here. (http://www.beerknurd.com/)

I would do quite a bit of research before getting into the industry as more than a hobby. There's a great book,Brewery Planner (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0937381519/qid=1059904936/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-0197650-2685470?v=glance&s=books&n=507846),
, that is mostly useful for setting up a small brewery or brewpub, but also has good advice on other aspects (business plans, marketing, etc.) that you'll need to know about.

I would include a variety of styles, especially those which the masses might be less familiar with, such as various lambics (Lindeman's Kriek and Frambois, for example), a good example of Berliner Weisse (like Schultheiss), and perhaps even a Rauchbier or Maibock to round things out. You might also want to stock some of the typical yellow swill, and a few wines to keep the snootier guests happy, too. ;)

[Richard English]

If you intend to serve beers like "Guinness or Murphy's Stout, Newcastle, Bass and Harp." then it matters not how many you serve. These are all mediocre beers (all made by mega-fizz conglomorates) by the standards of the best and what they do all have in common is their blanket dispense. Carbon dioxide with a worst ones and nitrogen for the less bad.

If you wish to serve the very best draught beers, then they will be dispensed from a cask (not a keg) and will have no gas blanket. They will also keep for only a few days.

This is why pubs in England restrict their range to that which can be sold within a week; obviously the bigger the pub and the greater its turnover, the more beers it can stock. One reaon why the J D Wetherspoon chain has a good range of draught beers is that its pubs are all large and busy.

If your pub is to be a relatively small one - more like an English local - then three real beers is probably as many as you can keep.

Bottled beer is a different matter, of course, and I would, were I in your situation, keep as many as I could fund and stock.

I would start by making sure I had an example of all the BCAs I could get, making sure that all styles are covered. Then, to satisfy the wants of those who like light beers, I would get in stocks of some of the better lagers. Real Budweiser (sold there as Czechvar), will take care of those who ask for a "Bud"!

[kapital]

I agree with what some others have said, variety is a great thing. Set aside a few taps for your "house beers", then rotate the other ones. Something like this would probably work well:

Non-rotating: Widmer Hefeweizen, Sierra Nevada Pale, Guinness nitro. Not the greatest beers, but passable crowd-pleasers. Maybe rotate every six months, switch Pyradmid Hefe for Widmer or Murphy's for Guinness, but these should be mostly stable.

Rotating: Assign a style to each tap, so you have a brown ale tap, an IPA tap, a porter tap, etc. Then have one or two "seasonal" taps with varying styles - barleywines in the winter, witbiers in the spring, etc., and one or two taps where you can rotate other various styles, like rauchbiers, schwarzbiers, milds, etc. Try to rotate every month. If something sells well - say it's gone in 2 weeks - bring it back in about a year. If something isn't selling, try pushing it more, offering happy hour prices all the time on it or something, but no matter what you should take it off the tap after two months.

Don't waste tap space on fyb's, but keep some bottles of Coors Light and PBR on hand, just to keep everyone happy.

Oh yeah, and get 1 Liter steins. I love those, but no place seems to have them anymore.

[steveh]

Originally posted by bhoshour
Steve, you dissapoint me! I am seriously conisdering this move so tell me what you think!!! I'll see what I can do about the girls

Sorry BH, but when I read the question - then thought about all of the beers available - as well as all of the beers that are so similar, my head just swam! There are quite a few places in Chicago that keep numerous tappers going, but the menu changes quite often as new or seasonal beers become available.

Here's the link to a favorite that lists what they have available (at least a week ago), just to give you an idea: http://www.maproom.com/beer.htm

A bit overwhelming, don't you think? And based on Stan's feedback, quite a few would break the rules in SC - a shame. But variety is still my answer - I'm happier being vexed by a huge list than deciding over 3 American Pale Ales and an ESB.

S.

[Bman]

what ever you choose to put on tap-charge a reasonable price- When I first moved to Ann Arbor, MI 4 years ago-I would hang out with friends at Ashley's-however, most of their MI beers are $5 a pint-even though this is Ann Arbor-this more than I am willing to pay-thank god for brewpub happy hours!

[sallad]

i like the suggestions for a few "house" beers, like sierra nevada pale ale, guiness, harp and the like. plus a few rotating featured taps and seasonals are good. i'm sure you've got a few local micros who would love to supply you with a selection of seasonals and features!!

other things that i like at some of my favorite bars are, as richard english always raves about, the cask conditioned ales! there are a few places in philly that feature 1 or maybe 2 local micros from the cask. if i'm at one of those bars, i rarely order anything else!

if you must cater to the masses (which i suppose is a good idea if you want to make $$...), carry some bottles of yellow fizz. but if you want the reputation of being a "beer" bar (as opposed to a "lets get trashed" bar), emphasize the quality brews!

plus as many others as you can keep fresh!! i guess you'd just need the experience to see how many of which beers move how fast...

how many bars have i run? zero. but i'd visited quite a few! maybe someday! ;)

[wortchillergoal]

Have you given thought to non drinkers, safe drivers, and food? Where I live bars must serve food. Now pickeld eggs count as food so you don't have to have a kitchen, so do bags of chips. One of the bars I mentioned in my first post for this site serves just one sandwich, roast beef ans is town reknown for it. The other bar, 50 to 60 taps, runs cask conditoned beers from the local micro and peoplw line up on those delivery days to get it. Thsy usally empty the cask in a day ans a half. Do your homework,alot of it, before you sink your money into the venture so you do it right. I owned an ice cream store and there are always head aches and even more so with a pub, but well worth it.

[Richard English]

One of the things that the USA generally does better than the UK is its provision of good value eating places - from fast-food to gourmet restaurants. It was the relative paucity of good-value eateries in the UK that led, I suspect, to the remarkable inroads of the likes of McDonald's.

However, increasing affluence has led to far more demand for catering and one significant change that I have seen in the past 25 years is the massive growth in pub food. Whereas once a pub would have little more than packets of crisps (chips) and scotch eggs, now almost all pubs serve good food and the better ones will have restaurants offering full meals of very high standard indeed.

It is very likely that the best, and best value, food in any UK town will be in the pub and it is a rare establishment now that will not provide good-quality catering, at least for part of the day.

[Fast_Eddy]

As much as I enjoy good food to accompany good beer be careful or you'll be managing a restaurant and a pub.

In the beginning, I would only have the bare minimum in the food arena but have many nights where catered food was brought in. Then if you recognize the demand for better food and you're making a little scratch you could address the food issue.

I guess I agree mostly with everyone else - few 4 taps of "regular" beer (A Stout, A Pale, An ESB, A Pils) then rotate out the others. Keep Coors, Bud, etc off the taps but in the bottle.

[wortchillergoal]

I was not suggest that you need a big menu, but check to see if there are laws that require food to be available as I know in some areas that is the case.