I know, it’ll depend on your definition of a good bar as well as how big and busy the bar is. I’ve been hanging out all week at a fairly large sports bar in South Carolina and they have 25 beers on tap. I’ve tried several and they’ve all been good. That makes sense as this place is always busy. 25 tap beers would be way too much for my regular bar back home, there’s just no way they’d sell enjoy of the craft beers to get through a keg in 3 months.
Two or three that I like. A local bar that I don’t go to any more has about 20 beers on tap and only one or two that I’d drink. Plus, dozens more available in a bottle that are wretched. Notice that I don’t go to this bar any more.
Not so many that they won’t clean their lines and taps.
Two of my favorite bars in Houston, Anvil, and The Petrol Station, have IIRC, fewer than your 25 tap total. But they’re clean, and are invariably amazing, distinctive selections.
Eight to a dozen seems about right to me for a nice bar that is not a “beer bar.”
It’s a hard question to answer, because if you live in a big city, there are so many bars to choose from. Each bar caters to what you’re in the mood for.
There’s a for beer snobs at the micro brew.
Sports bars (should have at least 6 or 10)
Cleavage bars (All you need is bud and bud light on tap)
Neighborhood bars (4. One of them has to be Shiner if it’s in Texas)
Several years ago my wife and I decided to go check out a new brew pub that opened downtown. When I asked the waitress what kind of beers they had, she said “Stout.” I stared at her with an “And…?” look, but nope that was it. Stout.
So my answer is, more than one, if that one is stout.
By the way, that brew pub didn’t last six months.
From recent observation: one pilsner; one stout; one Porter or brown ale; a couple of domestic large brewery lagers; one tap of Shock Top for some ungodly reason; and 6x10^23 versions of IPA, all undrinkable.
I particularly like to drink beer in Germany and Ireland, so I’m going to say “one.”
Seven, ranging from Bud Light to a local “Firkin Thursday” stunt brew.
1 bog standard lager, 1 premium lager, 2 bitters, an ale and a stout, so 6 minimum.
Depends on the kind of bar. If it’s a dive bar, then like 6 (1 cheap lager, 1 APA, 1 IPA, 1 stout, 1 wheat beer, 1 brown ale) since 95% of it is going to be Natty Bo and shots of cheap whiskey. If it’s a beer bar, then probably like two dozen.
There’s a bar around me that has (or had, haven’t been there in years) 48 beers, mostly craft, on tap. It was a great place to go to try all kinds of new beers, but I’ve heard from people that can tell the difference that they weren’t cleaning their lines often enough and with that many choices, if one goes unused for a few weeks, it’s pretty noticeable. I believe some of my beer vendors said that cleaning the lines there was such a big undertaking that they didn’t do it as often as they should.
I think the answer is that they should have as many beers as they can support.
Maybe this place, that had 48, should have knocked it down to 30, that way the keg of some unheard of imperial porter gets used up in a month instead of 6 months and they can put the next obscure thing in, instead of having it tapped for 6 months as well.
:eek:I think you need to differentiate between bars and breweries, and even breweries should be evaluated in light of their production. The smallest brewery I go to (Spigot) has 6 excellent beers on tap. Larger breweries (YellowBridge, ConnyCreek, Devout) have 8-15. Huge breweries (HellTown, VooDoo, Levity) have 15-20. The beer bar I like (House of 1000 Beers) has ~40, and kegs are constantly kicked. My current favorite beer bar (Point Street Tavern) has 10 beers on tap, but they are all from local microbreweries.
To summarize: mmmmm, beer.
I know a guy who has a pretty cool niche occupation as a beer-line technician. You can hire him to come in every X days to disassemble and clean your taps/lines. He also carries/sells oddball hardware and does home installs (he chats up bar customers).
If the unheard of imperial porter isn’t moving, you need to do some kind of special with it. Sell it at cost and it will move, include it in a pairing dinner, or maybe offer it with a scoop of ice-cream (seasonally) as a float.
My favorite brew pubs tend to make about eight distinct kinds of beer and offer a wooden plank with eight shot glasses with a sample of one each. A lager, a stout, a lambic, an IPA, etc. They rotate out whatever sells the poorest and rotate in some seasonal beer every few months. A lot of these places seem to be in Colorado or rural Washington.
In June I visited a place in Austin called Banger’s that had over 200 beers on tap. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a place with that many.
Of course, I don’t drink beer at all so I ordered a root beer instead. (They also had some sort artisanal root beers and other soft drinks on tap, though I don’t recall being too impressed with this one.)
The sad thing is when a bar has 30-50 taps, but does not offer a single cask-conditioned beer.
That’s the right answer- I’d much rather go somewhere with 4-5 quality beers that are well kept and dispensed through well kept equipment, than go to somewhere with 20 beers, but who doesn’t replace their kegs often enough and/or keep their equipment clean.
Assuming that’s done, I’d say that probably 4 beers is the minimum- at least one domestic light beer, one common import, one common domestic craft brew ale/IPA, and the fourth can be anything else- another one of the previous three, or even something off the wall.
That should satisfy any beer drinker out there- it may not be exactly what they’re looking for, but it’s also not far off either.
Five.
Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light, and one for the weird guy that comes in every so often that doesn’t like “American” beer. Maybe Michelob.
In my town, if you’re not a beer snob, you better be attending your 12-step meetings. Around here, a bar will probably have, at least:
-A bog-standard ale, pale or golden or blonde or something, that’s unassuming and good with food.
-Something light, either a lager or a kolsch or something like that.
-An IPA.
-Something dark, probably a porter but maybe a stout or a brown.
-Something weird, like a sour or a fruit-infused
-Something hipster, like PBR.
Lots of places have more than this, but these are the basics for around here.