I’ve been traveling recently and expect to go out on a few more trips this summer. Like many business travelers, I’ve developed a few tips for the road over the years. They’re little secrets that make life away from home more bearable.
Geography topics on Twelve Mile Circle sometimes bleed into other topics that interest me and this is no exception. So today I’m offering my favorite travel tip. For a decent meal far from home in a distant land, head towards the local brewpub. I did exactly that on my recent visit to southern California. Naturally I used techniques described in my Automatic Geolocation on a BlackBerry entry. The photos demonstrate some of the results of those efforts.
The Brewpub Concept
A brewpub, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is a restaurant that brews beer onsite(*). It doesn’t travel long distance from St. Louis or Milwaukee in tractor-trailers. It’s brewery fresh and crafted by hand, born from copper or steel tanks resting a few feet away. Brewers design if for local consumption.
Quality and style will vary based upon the skill and imagination of the resident brewer. However, generally speaking and as one would imagine, it’s often better than what’s sitting on the local supermarket shelf.
Now here’s the unexpected result. Brewpubs usually have pretty decent food too. Cuisine ranges from pub fare all the way up to fine upscale dining. The same group of people who demand high-quality beverages also demand high-quality food. The two go hand-in-hand. So it’s very difficult for a place with great beer and lousy food to remain in business for long. There aren’t enough pure beer snobs (said affectionately) to keep such a place afloat.
Brewpubs tend to be either single-location businesses or small chains. You will not find cookie-cutter formulas designed to recreate identical experiences from sea to shining sea. As a class they provide a staggering amount of variation in cuisine, atmosphere, architecture, and of course, beer.
As a frequent traveler, I’ve grown tired of the sameness of the big national chain restaurants. Thus, brewpubs provide an excellent counterbalance. It’s something a little different than the standard fare. I’ve passed this tip along to many fellow travelers and they say it works for them too. Even teetotalers I know who have no interest whatsoever in beer conclude that they can find a decent meal. They take joy in reporting the results of their (dry) brewpub hunts.
Finding Brewpubs
Brewpubs are easy to find once one becomes familiar with some of the basic tools. Beer Me! has been my “go to” website for at least the last decade or so. The “Regional Brewery Guides” box on the left column provides a breakdown by geography. The person who maintains this site also has a blog that is worth perusing.
Visitors can combine this with other sites such as the Beer Mapping Project. This one provides options such as City Beer Maps and Location Lookups using Google Maps. Of course don’t overlook Google itself. Just query the name of the city and add “brewpub”. So all these tips should get you started.
Ideally you can plan these visits prior to departure. It’s also feasible to do this while sitting in a hotel room. You’re bored with nothing better to do after a long day of work far from home, so why not? Use the resources described above to get a general layout of the geographic area. Then check out some of the online reviews from people who have commented about the local brewing scene. Finally, start building some maps.
Go to the individual brewpub websites to look at menus, driving directions, and hours of operation. I would recommend checking at least a couple of sources. Websites tend to lag reality. Nothing is more disappointing than arriving at a place only to find it closed for the day. Or worse, closed forever. I’ve had that happen more times than I care to admit.
In Conclusion
So you’ve learned my best travel tip. Now you can find good food and beverage while out on the road, guaranteed. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. That’s how I’ve ended up visiting 225 different brewpubs over the years. It already includes the three new ones I hit in southern California last week.
12MC Loves Footnotes!
*OK, the purists will point out that technically a brewpub doesn’t have to have food service. I can think of only two examples from my many visits over the years. One of them provided a stack of menus from nearby restaurants that would deliver to the brewpub, which I considered a pretty novel idea. However both of these establishments went out of business so I think this supports the general conclusion. Do your homework ahead of time to avoid surprises.
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