Looking for the original Bar Towel blog? You can find it at www.thebartowel.com.

We have a trivia question in order to register to prevent bots. If you have any issues with answering, contact us at cass@bartowel.com for help.

Introducing Light Mode! If you would like a Bar Towel social experience that isn't the traditional blue, you can now select Light Mode. Go to the User Control Panel and then Board Preferences, and select "Day Drinking" (Light Mode) from the My Board Style drop-down menu. You can always switch back to "Night Drinking" (Dark Mode). Enjoy!

Nashville, TN

Discuss beer travel and regional information, including the best bars and places to check out around in Canada and around the world, and other chat that is not specific to Ontario.

Moderators: Craig, Cass

Post Reply
User avatar
cannondale
Bar Fly
Posts: 745
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 1:58 pm
Location: Barrie, Ontario, Canada

Nashville, TN

Post by cannondale »

Any recommendations for good beer and good BBQ?
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

User avatar
cannondale
Bar Fly
Posts: 745
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 1:58 pm
Location: Barrie, Ontario, Canada

Post by cannondale »

Turns our I'll only be there for one night. Not exactly craft beer mecca, but I plan to check out Jack's Bar-B-Que for BBQ:

http://jacksbarbque.com/

and Flying Saucer Draught Emporium for beer:

http://www.beerknurd.com/stores/nashville/

I'll report back on my findings..
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

User avatar
cannondale
Bar Fly
Posts: 745
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 1:58 pm
Location: Barrie, Ontario, Canada

Post by cannondale »

I highly recommend Jack's BBQ. Located right downtown on Broadway (where every other shop specializes in cowboy boots. Literally). I had pulled pork, baked beans, mac & cheese and cornbread washed down with:

New Belgium Fat Tire (bottle)

By all accounts, Flying Saucer is the beer destination in Nashville. It is located in a converted train station on 10th avenue at the edge of the downtown tourist district, an easy walk from the downtown hotels. ~50 taps, and a decent bottle list. Apparently I was there on trivia night..very fun and boisterous young-ish crowd. I had:

Boulder Mojo IPA (draught)
Victory Golden Monkey (draught)
New Belgium Kick (draught)
New Belgium Snow Day (bottle)

While sitting belly up to the bar, I noticed that throughout the night they pulled almost as many pints of Bluegrass Bourbon Barrel Stout as all other draughts combined.

I ate supper at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge at the airport before flying home. Was not impressed with the pulled pork sandwich. Not much of a tap or bottle list, but I had:

Sam Adams Boston Lager (draught)
Yazoo Pale Ale (draught) (I thought that this was much better than the ratings out there indicate..good clean malty body, and plenty of hops aroma/flavour for an APA)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

User avatar
S. St. Jeb
Seasoned Drinker
Posts: 1044
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2011 11:44 pm
Location: Burlington, ON

Post by S. St. Jeb »

cannondale wrote:By all accounts, Flying Saucer is the beer destination in Nashville.
I was on vacation in Tennesse back in July and meant to update this post a little sooner than now.

I fully agree about the Flying Saucer. Great place. And popular! It was quite full when we arrived late dinner hour on a Wednesday, and people continued to come in even as we were leaving some time later.

I have a .pdf of their 4-page beer menu. PM me if you would like to see it.

Went to Frugal MacDoogal Wine & Liquor Warehouse as it was just a few blocks away from our hotel. Didn't have much time so only did a quick run in, but I liked it. Can't compare it to the other store (Midtown) that gets good reviews on BA as I didn't go there.

Also on BA, someone commented "The atmosphere is kind of run down and you feel like you are on the wrong side of town if you know what I mean." I can understand why they said that, but it's not that bad. Don't let that comment stop you from going there. And they do have lot's of parking.

dwt
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2011 12:09 pm
Location: KW

Post by dwt »

Heading to Nashville shortly, last was down in '09. Ended up checking out Flying Saucer, Yazoo and a brew pub down the street from the saucer. Am I missing anything down there?

hopdevil
Posts: 93
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 8:05 pm
Location: Mississauga

Post by hopdevil »

Broadway Brewhouse - right in the middle of all of the action, downtown on Broadway

User avatar
dale cannon
Posts: 331
Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2012 11:46 am

Post by dale cannon »

That's the way she goes. Sometimes she goes, sometimes it doesn't. She didn't go. That's the way she goes.

User avatar
Cass
Beer Superstar
Posts: 3828
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2001 8:00 pm
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Post by Cass »

Resurrecting an ancient thread here. Heading down to Nashville next week for a family road trip. Any fun recommendations?

User avatar
Cass
Beer Superstar
Posts: 3828
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2001 8:00 pm
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Post by Cass »

Back from a fun trip where I got to spend three nights in Nashville. Will type up some notes for posterity soon. One strange thing about Nashville is I got carded at just about every taproom. They seemed to indicated it was a state law but no bartender seemed too sure of that. It was pretty strange.

Anyway, a fun city with weird politics which of course nobody talks about. Enjoyable but not sure I’d be rushing back.

User avatar
Cass
Beer Superstar
Posts: 3828
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2001 8:00 pm
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Post by Cass »

Some notes on Nashville. Nashville is very 'neighbourhood-y', so there's clusters of stuff separated by areas of nothingness, be it highways, industrial or residential. When I was there it was extremely hot, so it made it tough to walk from area to area with the fam, so many Ubers were taken. Within the clusters, though, there's lots of fun stuff.

Wedgewood-Houston:
Re-developing neighbourhood south of downtown with condos going in on older industrial lands. Found two breweries here - Jackalope and Fait la Force. Both nice spots, Fait la Force had a raised patio so got to see a bit of the hood. Nice pizza place here called Dicey's and the vast Soho House is here if you happen to be a member.

12 South:
To the west and a bit south of Wedgewood is 12 South, a strip running through a residential neighbourhood. Felt very 'local' here. No breweries, but found a growler fill & bar called the Filling Station, and two fun pubs, 12 South Taproom & Embers, which strangely was a ski-themed bar. I happened to be there on a Tuesday and they both were running "2-for-1 Tuesday" promotions on beer, which was quite welcome as things aren't cheap in Nashville.

Freeway Loop:
It's walkable from Wedgewood to downtown, about 30-40 minutes. On that route, you go under the freeways that circle downtown, and I found a couple of breweries there. I quite enjoyed New Heights Brewing, which was kind of in a strip of nothing but the area is quickly re-developing. Evidently the little area is calling itself "New Heights" because of the brewery, which was so named after University Heights in San Diego where the brewery founders are from or lived. I enjoyed the beers here and friendly bar staff and patrons. Tennessee Brew Works is close, which is your standard taproom but had a nice selection of beers.

Downtown:
Downtown Nashville is a bit crazy, with Broadway being the main strip. It's lined with loud honky-tonk bars, neon & tourists. It was loud and somewhat dizzying on a Monday afternoon - I can't imagine what it is like on a weekend night. The closest comparison would be Bourbon Street, but you can't walk around with a drink here. We did have lunch at one of the bars, and they didn't even have beer on tap! So I don't think it's a place for craft beer. There's one brewery I found that was close to the strip - Yee Haw Brewing. It was a cavernous place that also had a distillery. I could tell it attracted a ton of tourists and there were armed security guards patrolling it, so not a terribly friendly place in my opinion.

East Nashville:
There's a lot of new stuff out in East Nashville, on the other side of the river. We had a nice dinner at Jane's Hideaway, a quick stop at Dancing Gnome brewing, and found vintage pinball at No Quarter. There's more stuff here that I wasn't able to visit.

Other notes:
Although it's a chain, we did have an enjoyable Nashville hot chicken lunch at Hattie B's. It's kind of like upscale fast food a la Shake Shack. But they did have about 6-8 beers on tap which took it up a notch for sure.

If you are a fan of music poster artwork, be sure to do a tour of the Hatch Show Print which is located in the Country Music Hall of Fame building downtown. Really great.

And if you like country music, I was impressed with the Bluebird Cafe, which is a well known spot where Taylor Swift and others were discovered. A cool, small listening room space located in a commercial zone. Worth a visit for sure.

Anyway, I was only there for three nights so really didn't get a ton of time to explore - it's a pretty decent sized city and a lot of stuff is spread around. The beer isn't terribly unique, but the culture and people definitely are. A memorable visit and I'm glad I finally made it there.
Attachments
IMG_6741.jpeg
IMG_6711.jpeg
IMG_6707.jpeg
IMG_6706.jpeg
IMG_6702.jpeg
IMG_6679.jpeg
IMG_6670.jpeg
IMG_6647.jpeg
IMG_6645.jpeg
IMG_6641.jpeg

Post Reply