Over four days in Dallas, I tried to drink up as much of the city as possible. My liver has been training for this type of work for years.
While my initial plan was to hit up all the area breweries, I quickly learned that, until 2013, breweries in Texas were not allowed to serve beer on-premise – unless they were also a restaurant. There was a slight loophole in that production-only breweries were able to offer paid tours on Saturdays that included tastings – but otherwise the best best for Texas brews was at a bar. What this meant for my trip was that, even now that it’s legal for breweries to serve their own beer, most of them were not equipped to open a taproom as soon as the new law went into effect, and some still haven’t. Many of the breweries still lacking their own bars continue to provide the Saturday afternoon tours and tastings, but as they’re mostly offered during the same time window, it would be pretty hard to get to more than one or two.
Fortunately, a few Dallas breweries have begun opening taprooms – combine those with visits to a few craft beer-centric restaurants and bars, and Dallas becomes an excellent craft beer drinking destination.
Community Beer Company
1530 Inspiration Drive, Dallas, TX 75207
www.communitybeer.com
Thursday 5-9pm, Friday 5-10pm, Saturday 5-10pm
When I got dropped off at Community, I was worried I was at the wrong place – maybe this was their production brewery and the taproom had a different address? As I walked into Community, I was CONVINCED I was in the wrong place, as ahead of me lay a massive, empty warehouse. As I rounded the corner, however, I spotted by a small bar, a few picnic tables and a Star Wars pinball machine, and I knew I’d be right at home here. Community’s Legion was definitely my favorite of their brews: a rich, chocolatey Russian Imperial Stout. Community’s taproom had about ten different selections spanning a wide range of styles, and their ESB, bourbon-barrel scotch ale Glenstemmons, and Ascension coffee porter (a collaboration with a local roastery) were also top notch.
Four Corners
423 Singleton Blvd, Dallas, TX 75212
www.fcbrewing.com
Monday-Friday 5-10pm, Saturday 12-10pm, Sunday 2-8pm
Four Corners, with its giant rooster mural welcoming you in, was the jam-packed place-to-be when I visited, and I was lucky to snag a seat at the bar. The taproom was small but colorful, with cool details like upside-down lamps functioning as pendant lighting. Local Buzz, a rye golden ale brewed with locally-sourced honey, had just the right sweetness to balance the spice of rye, and ended up being my go-to beer at another area bar later in the week. Boss Lady Rustic Red, a dry-hopped American red ale, was my favorite of the four in my flight from Four Corners.
LUCK
3011 Gulden Lane Suite #112, Dallas, TX 75212
www.luckdallas.com
Moonday-Thursday 11am-10pm, Friday-Saturday 11am-11pm, Sunday 11am-9pm
Luckily for me, LUCK is located right next door to Four Corners. Lucky for LUCK, I loved this beer-centric bar and restaurant so much that I ended up returning… twice. LUCK, which stands for Local Urban Craft Kitchen, boasts 40 beers on tap – 100% of which are from Texas. If you want to maximize your local beer sampling, this is the spot to do it. I fell in LOVE with one beer in particular here (it even came home with me in a growler): StrIPA, a Strawberry IPA from Firewheel Brewing Company in Rowlett, about 25 minutes from Dallas. I’m not big on fruit beer, but the strawberry sweetness in this one perfectly balanced the hops.
The Common Table
2917 Fairmount St, Dallas, TX 75201
www.thecommontable.com
Sunday-Wednesday 11am-12am, Thursday-Saturday 11am-2am
A great dinner spot with a picturesque patio. Look, when there is something called “Notorious P.I.G.” on the menu, you order it. You probably won’t feel good about yourself after, but that’s not the point. The Notorious P.I.G. was a 50/50 bacon beef burger, topped with pimento cheese, bacon (because more bacon), romaine and a fried egg, served on a duck fat-toasted bun. It was… everything you could hope for after a long day of drinking. Delicious. I also enjoyed a beer from Peticolas Brewing, which was unfortunately not one of the ones I got to visit this trip as they are only open for tours the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month. The beer was Velvet Hammer, an Imperial Red Ale with a creamy mouthfeel and hints of caramel combined with floral hops. It was one of my top two beers from this trip. If you find it on tap in Texas, order it.
Social House Uptown
2708 Routh St, Dallas, TX 75201
www.socialhouseuptown.com
Monday-Friday 4pm-close, Saturday-Sunday 11am-close
You can’t have a destination drinking trip without a good ol’ fashioned Drunk Brunch, and Social House was the place to be on Sunday early afternoon. A seemingly endless supply of sparkling wine bottles were continuously popped as carafes of mimosas and bellinis ($10) went out to tables. With 100 beers on tap, I skipped the predicable orange juice bubble combo to try yet another amazing Peticolas beer – this time, a refreshing Belgian dubbed Golden Opportunity. (I’m really bummed I didn’t have the golden opportunity to visit that brewery.) I placed another fat-kid-food order here, substituting the egg white omelet I had been planning to order for The Elvis in a moment of weakness. The Elvis, the polar opposite of an egg white omelet, was a Belgian waffle topped with bacon, bananas and peanut butter. Truly The King of Brunch Waffles.
Meddlesome Moth
1621 Oak Lawn Ave, Dallas, TX 75207
www.mothinthe.net
Monday-Thursday 11am-midnight, Friday-Saturday 11am-2am,Sunday 10am-10pm
An upscale, sophisticated gastropub, the Moth is an excellent spot to visit for lunch while in Dallas. The stained glass windows, backspash made of hundreds of quarters and chalkboard walls provide plenty to look at sipping a drink and waiting for food. The bar has 40 tap handles plus a cask, and Colorado-based Elevation Brewing’s Wild Flowers Imperial Saison hit all the right citrusy, floral notes for the style. I ordered The Mothinator for lunch, because anything branded with the name of the establishment in which it is served is bound to be good. And this twist on a reuben – made with confit pork, cheddar, pickled onion, witbier slaw, stout mustard, BBQ sauce and thousand island dressing on marble rye – was damn good.
Deep Ellum
2823 St. Louis Street, Dallas, TX 75226
www.deepellumtaproom.com
Monday-Sunday, 3pm-10pm
I’m saving the best for last here, partially because this is the order in which I myself experienced all these excellent bars and breweries, but mostly because, if I had started here, I probably wouldn’t have made it to any other bars or breweries since I had way too much fun… and maybe also drank way too much.
The taproom had just opened to the public five days before I visited, but right off the bat they are doing everything right. The space is warm and full of character, a brick wall behind the bar proclaiming the brewery’s name through missing bricks, sawed-in-half kegs doubling as light fixtures, bourbon barrels acting as tables. The staff was also warm and full of character, chatting me up all night and even lending me a cell phone charger and a laptop so I could order food delivery (they sometimes have food trucks, but not this night). The beer was the best of any of the three breweries I visited, including a really interesting chile stout, a barrel-aged Belgian, an amazing barleywine called Numb Comfort, and a quad named Four Swords – on the latter two of which, at 11% and 12% ABV respectively, I blame the next day’s hangover.
Dallas is definitely a drinking destination-worthy trip, especially as more breweries begin to open up their own on-site taprooms. North Texas beer week is October 31 through November 8 – sounds like the perfect time for a beercation to Dallas!
Special thanks to my friend Amber from AmericanCraftBeer.com for recommending many of these spots!