Decatur Spot On 'Best Beer Bars In U.S.' List

DECATUR, GA — If you're a beer lover in Decatur, it probably won't take you too many guesses to pick which local pub made a new list of the best beer bars in the United States.

The Brick Store Pub — serving up a huge list of pints to beer fans for two decades now on Decatur Square — has been named one to The 31 Best Beer Bars in America list recently released by Thrillist.

With beer love (some would say beer snobbery) running rampant, writer Andy Kryza notes that it's no easy task to rank among the nation's best beer spots these days.

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"These days, good beer bars are everywhere. But to achieve greatness, it takes more than a double-digit tap list," he writes. "The bars on this list vary wildly -- some boast cellars with bottles numbering in the thousands, some have more than 100 taps, and some simply feature a couple dozen expertly curated offerings. But each is doing its part to elevate beer drinking into a world-class experience."

For its part, The Brick Store, opened in 1997 by UGA college buddies Dave Blanchard, Mike Gallagher and Tom Moore, has been "supplying the fine folks of Decatur with more pickles, pimento cheese, fried grit cakes, and world-renowned craft beer than you can shake a stick at," Kryza writes.

The article notes the downtown pub's two fully stocked bars, one upstairs and one downstairs, cool architecture and variety of offerings.

"The historic building is centered around the main bar, a super-chill sunlit pub with soaring exposed brick, high-backed booths, and a massive horseshoe bar lined with 29 gorgeous taps, a handful of which are reserved for Georgia favorites like Creature Comforts, Steady Hand, and Cherry Street," the list says.

"Upstairs there's the Belgian Bar, an intimate, eight-tap ode to the owners' life-altering trip to the sudsy motherland. And don't forget to peek into Brick Store's ridiculous upstairs beer cellar, where the guys have been casually aging nearly 900 different vintages. No big deal."

The Brick Store really took off in 2004, when Georgia's legislature lifted the limit on the state's alcohol-by-volume law, allowing more craft beers from around the world to be sold. We're also fond of its environment. As proclaimed on the Brick Store website, the pub provides "an environment that boasts no televisions, no neon, no obnoxious music and no major domestic beers."

To read the entire Thrillist "31 Best Beer Bars in America" list, click here.

Photo courtesy The Brick Store Pub