Just as that old paisley tie in the back of your closet may come back into vogue, a 150-year-old way of buying beer has caught on all around Metro Atlanta.
Businesses dispensing imported and domestic draft brews in glass “Growlers” have been popping up to the delight of connoisseurs. With names like Woodchuck from Vermont, Sweetwater made right here in Georgia or Lazy Magnolia from Mississippi, there are beverages to suit any taste.
Chip Crawford owns “Tap It Growlers” in Alpharetta and has operated his business for just under a year. He typically has 24 beers, 2 hard ciders and even several gourmet non-alcoholic cream sodas and root beers that the kids can enjoy. The brews run the gamut from pale ales, stouts, pilsners and wheat beers. According to Crawford, “Traditionally everybody loves draft beers, so what we offer is a wide variety of draft beers right from the keg.” It’s a growing business and as with just about every successful retail venture, word of mouth and the buzz on social media help to propel sales.
Rather than the old galvanized metal bucket in which your grandpa brought his beer home from the saloon, modern growlers are glass jugs of either 32 or 64 ounces, specially sealed to keep in freshness and ensure compliance with the state’s open container laws. When you’re finished with the product, bring back the jug and they replace it with a new one to fill with your choice of beverage. Prices range from a low of about around $5 for 32 ounces to $10 or $15 average for the 64 ounce size.
Up the road in Cumming, It’s Steven Yi who caters to growler fans. Yi and his family operate “Cumming Growler” which is adjacent to their Cumming Beverage Mart business. The way Yi sees it, it’s the ability to get unique tastes that make the growler customers return. For instance, this week there’s a peach-flavored wheat beer, a watermelon flavored beer and a rye-flavored wheat beer.
What makes craft beers special according to both Crawford and Yi is that they are brewed in smaller batches so more care goes into their products than those of the giant national brewers.
Drew Stipe of Atlanta is a typical growler customer. For him, it’s the variety of beer types, brands and flavors that keeps him coming back. He said, you won’t find these in the grocery store. Adding, “It’s fun to try something new – it’s about the variety.”
The advent of economical bottling techniques ended the growler soon after WWII. However, as with the aforementioned necktie, what was passé can become cool again.
Marty Farrell lives in Cumming and can be reached at martysyracuse@yahoo.com.
