Yeah, RBC adds a ton of mileage. I’ll put another one together at some point.
Little City just hired a new brewer so it should be on there.
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Thanks! That’s a decent ride, but probably not doable with stops at every place lol.
The Road Hazard is one of my favorites.
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Pitch that to Crank For A Cause next year
True that it’s further out but I do like RBC. It’s one of the breweries I already bike so.
In general, I actually thought RBC is a good stop when biking the Art to Heart trail for people visiting. Bike from DT to Art Museum, visit the art museum and bike back using the Cardinal bikes. Can hit 3-4 breweries on the way including Crank Arm, Wye Hills, Trophy, and RBC. The advantage is the trail that goes from Pullen Park to RBC is a nice section.
Realistically trying to hit more than 3-4 outside of downtown is going to be a long ride/time regardless. If you wanted to hit a whole lot more, you’d literally need to chug the beer down and move on. Wouldn’t necessarily be a relaxing ride or sampling. Given what we already have, there’s already three trails we can do:
4 stops
- Crank Arm
- Wye Hill
- Trophy
- Raleigh Brewing Company
Opportunity to grab the 100 bus back
7 stops
- Crank Arm
- Wye Hill
- Trophy
- Clouds
- Tobacco Road
- Little City
- Brewery Bhavana
(short ride = more stops)
5 stops
- Lonerider
- Neuse River
- Nickelpoint
- Lynnwood
- Big Boss
I’m sure not everyone agrees with the stops, but this is a general idea. The goal is places that have their own beer and that the ride isn’t too long (for relaxation). I’ll ride 4-5 hours, but that’s biking and trying to stop makes my whole day longer.
I’m not the biggest fan of Wye Hill. I only like the view. Little City is always weird to me. I like their indoor area. They don’t really have a lot of their own beer options. Tobacco Road feels just like a sports bar, but it’s ok even though I haven’t been in a while. I most frequent RBC, Clouds, Lonerider, Neuse River, Lynnwood, Little City. I don’t have anything against Crank Arm, it’s just a little further from me.
Sadly I have yet to try Big Boss, Nickelpoint, Tophy, and Brewery Bhavana. Not sure why I haven’t tried these yet. I’ve been limiting my beer intake to try to cut my weight down.
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The trifecta same day sounds like a challenge. 
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Maybe I’m just snippy since Durham (the obvious #2 city) got snubbed from the list but I feel experienced enough with all of NC’s major cities to say aside from Asheville at the top, I disagree with the rest pretty strongly. There is no universe in my mind in which Raleigh is worse than Charlotte, Wilmington, or Greensboro in this metric.
In terms of raw #s Raleigh, depending how you measure, has the most breweries of any city in the state. The problem is clearly a matter of quantity over quality, and the fact that most of the best ones (Gizmo, Funguys, etc) are not downtown.
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@dtraleigh’s post below gave me an idea:
Big Boss moves into the event space in City Market…
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While a brewery/taproom there would definitely be sweet, I gotta imagine Big Boss is a little too Big (boss) to fit there.
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I mean, you’d keep brewing operations in a warehouse somewhere else but the public-facing taproom could go anywhere. A brewery in City Market almost requires a nice-sized food menu so therefore Big Boss in collab with some restaurant could be pretty epic.
Crazy idea, put Big Boss in the new building (yet to be built) behind Transfer.
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Even crazier idea…Brewery Bhavana opens up a taproom in that space (City Market)? Not far from either of their other two restaurants?
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ooooooooooo now I’m seeing your vision. That would be awesome. @ahops0428 I don’t see the benefit of that when they have their taproom at Brewery Bhavana literally across the park from City Market.
A good local example is down in Fuquay-Varina. Aviator Brewing has basically all the most popular food and beverage spots in their downtown. They have their restaurant, smokehouse, and pizza place all within walking distance of each other. Not sure if you’ve been, but they are all literally next door and across the street from each other. They are also in the process of building another, even larger place in the same area. They are building a huge new brewery right off downtown FV. I know comparing Raleigh to FV is nowhere close to apples-apples, but it seems having all their stuff super close works down there.
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I’d prefer variety and create a brewery concentration vs having a Fuquay-Varina type takeover. Would you want that or 5 different brewery representatives taking up the same space (in the FV example)?
In other words I don’t want to walk across the street to go to the same brewery.
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I’d take any laid back environment with fun beers where you could watch sports and while away a Saturday afternoon.
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I don’t think Brewery Bhavana taking over the City Market space would be on par with what Aviator has done down in FV. Downtown Raleigh already has way, way more options for drinking and eating already in-place vs the small footprint of downtown FV with way more limited options. Sure, I’d take some variety but I was pointing out how a food/bev group having multiple spots in close proximity can work if done right.
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Some Aviator wings in DTR wouldn’t suck…
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Well, to stem from your and @dtraleigh’s idea- how about an Aviator taproom in the City Market space?? And to stem from @NoRaAintAllBad - get some wings in there and you got yourself downtown’s hottest new brewery spot
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There’s a lot of breweries from the 'burbs around Raleigh that I would personally love to see open a Raleigh tap room in that space. Just off the top of my head someone like Bond Brothers, Vicious Fishes, Norse Brewing, Bearded Bee, Bombshell, etc. Or maybe convince a bigger brewery from another city, without a Raleigh taproom, to give it a whirl? Someone like Fullsteam, Wooden Robot, OMB, NoDa, Wicked Weed, etc.? Red Oak would be the dream for that space IMO however.
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