American Craft Beer The Best Craft Beer, Breweries, Bars, Brewpubs, Beer Stores, And Restaurants Serving Serious Beer.
(Courtesy YouTube)
Benjamin Faure / ACB Social Media Director
The capital of Virginia boasts some serious craft clout, you’re going to need a plan to tackle a town like this. Luckily we’ve planned out all the stops for you on your trip to RVA.
Start your adventure at The Answer, a Vietnamese restaurant that loved beer so much they grew into a brewery.
Known for super-fruited sours, insanely adjuncted stouts, and bright, full IPAs, The Answer always has crowlers on deck and plenty of space. The service is also spot on and the food is really good. And there are very few places anywhere, where you can eat real Vietnamese and drink beers like these!
A truly great brewpub, The Answer is recognized as one of the best in the world for good reason. Crowlers of their sours usually sell out on Tuesday when they release them, but they are very good at keeping their Untappd updated.
From there we stagger onto The Veil…It’s a little far to walk over to its Scott’s Addition neighborhood location so you might be more comfortable ubering.
The good news is once you’ve arrived at The Veil, you’re at one of the hottest up and comers to date. Rumor is that their brewmaster spent time at Alchemist and Cantillon before setting up shop in Richmond and it shows.
The Veil’s fun and these guys do some crazy shit to their beers…
The Veil’s Hornswoggler Stout
From whole chunks of Oreos floating around in their Hornswoggler Stout, to brewing double IPAs with fried chicken thrown right into the mash, The Veil refuses to play it safe. But underneath all the crazy antics there’s a serious brewery that doing some incredibly inventive things. They’ll even throw in a koelschip sour from time to time and they’re not to be missed either.
Within walking distance of The Veil is a wild cidery called Blue Bee and there’s Black Heath for mead if that’s your jam. Their can releases are Tuesday and they tend to sell out that same day. But occasionally they have some available post release, check their Facebook or Instagram.
Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, reknowed for their seasonal offerings and barrel aged stouts is only 7 minutes away by car.
One of the older and larger breweries in the area, you’ll always find award winning Singel at Hardywood as well as a very decent German-style Pils if you’re at the point where you’d like something a little lighter.
In the winter we highly recommend Hardywood’s Gingerbread Stout, which tastes as good as it sounds and is ‘a must’ when you visit over the holidays.
But if you find yourself in Richmond and don’t necessarily have the time or flexibility to hit a bunch of breweries at least plan to catch a quick beer at one of the two Triple Crossing Beer locations. There’s one in downtown Richmond and they’ve another Fulton area.
Triple Crossing Beer produces fantastic double IPAs, intensely fruited sours and some pretty banging stouts as well….and they won’t disappoint.
