Record-setting suds on tap at N.C. beer garden
RALEIGH, N.C. — Getting a glass of suds isn’t as easy as you think at Raleigh Beer Garden; you can’t vaguely gesture toward a tap handle and say, “I’ll take one of those.”
That’s because the tavern offers 378 varieties of draft beer, a few brews more than the 369 that won it a Guinness World Records nod last year.
RBG has a narrow storefront in the near-downtown Glenwood South district (www.theraleigh beergarden.com). The magnitude of its beer selection doesn’t register until you reach the long bar in the back and see 144 taps arrayed on four rows. Upstairs, 222 taps similarly dispense beers from other states and nations.
Another dozen taps await at the small, open-air rooftop bar overlooking the walled backyard that hosts events ranging from tastings to live music.
From a first-floor window you can see rows of steel kegs connected to the various taps by tangles of tubes. It looks like a big-city telephone switchboard from a 1940s movie.
Video screens describe current offerings. Staffers can help with informed suggestions.
On the first floor, one staffer, who’s worked at RBG since it opened in 2015, said the biggest seller is Red Oak lager, brewed in Greensboro, N.C. Also popular is barrel-aged Xibalba, brewed in Asheville, N.C., by Wicked Weed.
Is that the damnedestnamed beer here?
“I don’t think so,” Blair said. “That might be Wilco Tango Foxtrot, which comes from Chicago’s Lagunitas. Or DuClaw’s Dirty Little Freak.” That’s from Baltimore.
The biggest misfire to date may be an IPA from New Jersey. A patron ordered one glass; the rest of the barrel was booted back to the Garden State. John Bordsen is a freelancer.