City Swiggers
“So much more convenient than schlepping downtown to pick up and refill a growler, and worth the cost for convenience.”
“It's just a great neighborhood spot to grab a beer/cider, sit down and drink it without a lot of hassle and then buy some more to take home.”
“Also, they have a nice little 16-tap bar where you can get flights and try 4 beers at a time.”
City Swiggers
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range Moderate
8 reviews
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I really like this place. Massive selection of beers, some of them are on the hard to find side so it's my go to place for the rare stuff. Staff is always friendly and extremely knowledgeable. They always make great recommendations and know what's on tap inside and out. The have 14 taps with a pretty extensive variety. The atmosphere is relaxing and laid back. People on their laptops, people doodling on their phones. Great place to kick back and have a few. They also have a few light snacks if you want to nosh. Always stop by when I'm in the area which is quite often.
99 bottles of beer on the wall…
99 bottles of beer…
Wait, that's not quite right; there's much more than that here.
If only Sublime knew about this place they may have written a song called "400 Brews to Freedom". Hundreds of different craft brews from the world over including a beer bar filling pints and growlers alike from an ever-evolving draft menu at prices unfit (ie inexpensive) for the UES make this a salvation from your typical liquor store blues.
They even cater to the season, seeing as how it was early September when I came (thanks to a hat-tip from Phil H.) they carried an enormous selection of pumpkin brews! Seriously, anything you can imagine and more. It's like walking through an orange-ish vortex into an Alice In Wonderland-type acid induced euphoric world where buildings are made of delicious booze. AKA heaven.
Don't wait until you die when heaven is just a few steps from the 4,5,6 trains.
Had a great time here last night, granted I was only supposed to have one and that didn't happen, anyway, the selection of bottles and cans are great as well as the tap selection was very interesting, cool space kinda like Astoria bier and cheese. Met some cool people, the bartenders were great and I got a free glass since they were doing a tasting of this new Icelandic beer which was very good.
If you love beer, you'll love this place. No question about it.
Pretty much EVERYTHING you could possibly want. I've never seen such an extensive selection at pretty reasonable prices.
If you love IPAs, try Victory Golden Monkey ($2.99) and Ithaca Flower Power.
So so so many ciders! Try the Kopparberg pear cider for ~$3-4
All the Belgian ales you could want too.
Of course they rotate their selection, so the one time I was there, they actually did not have Dogfish 90 minute in stock but they did have pretty much everything else. A little disappointed, but pretty sure that doesn't happen often.
I have absolutely no complaints about this place and I'm super excited to try everything!
A very cool bottle shop/tap room that isn't too far from our normal base of operations in the UES. Yeah it's a bit pricy, but it's New York. It's expected.
I didn't load up too much. I'd done that at OEC in Oxford CT on the way down. But I did see two forelorn cases of Westbook Gose sitting on the floor all alone. So I saved a six-pack from it's lonely existence. It will be much more happy in my belly (update from when I started this review in June….the Gose was much happier in my belly)
I also gained a small window into the types of people who buy beer there, both good and bad. All the patrons were cool, enjoying their beers, asking questions. The beer I chose on tap was from Other Half Brewing in Brooklyn, one of their brett-based sour ales. I was asked if I knew this was a sour, I told them I knew exactly what it was and throughly enjoyed it.
I was asked the same thing while checking out with the Westbrook by a different employee. I asked him if this was an ongoing problem and he laughed that it was, that a lot of people don't know a thing about sour beers (or that they even exist.) We started chatting and it turns out his brother runs Enlightenment Ales (now on hiatus as he does a guest brewing gig in Denmark.)
Small world, it pays to be friendly 🙂
I haven't written a review of City Swiggers yet? I don't know why I haven't. I've brought in out-of-town friends, bonded with co-workers and even been there for the BCS release and drank myself silly over glasses of Madame Rose. I think as a bottle shop and a tap room it's a good place to come to and even when it gets super crowded it's, well okay, it can get super crowded but when it isn't it's pretty easy to strike up a conversation with folks.
The staff there is nice and friendly even during some pretty hectic times (BCS raffle) and honestly, never had a bad experience. My only hang up is that if I want something to eat I have to close out and go somewhere else, although they recently started serving empanadas but I've yet to try them out.
Oh also, collapsible mylar growlers.
Excellent selection of beer! They have many bottled beer that you can create your own 6 pack (mix and match style) or just purchase individually.
The bottled beer a piece is pretty cheap ~$3.
They offer beer flights that change each day, and plenty of space to sit, like a normal bar. (They also sell beer by the growler if you're one of those type people).
We came with a big group and had plenty of space at about 2pm on a saturday. They had a few food options, but no one ordered (pretzels, empanadas).
I would recommend the grapefruit hefeweizen, suuuuuuuuuper good.
Only had a chance to drop by and pick up a few bottles of beer, but I can tell this place is a keeper. Whenever there are flowing taps and flights available, it can't be all that bad.
Bottled beer prices did seem on the expensive side to me- but I'm hailing from Georgia, so I can't compare apples to oranges.
Next time we visit our friends (who literally live across the street), we're going to sit down for a flight (or two).