Roeg's Picks for 2012: Best Bottle Shop

Best Bottle Shop: As a new fad, you can often get a draft or a growler to go at today’s beer stores.  Having a continual selection of new, top quality beer is a plus, but the place must also offer rare vintages of hard to find brews too.  This year list was hard to choose, but a few places seemed to rise above the others.

Gold: Julio’s Liquors, Westborough, MA – Julio’s (http://www.juliosliquors.com/) was first recommended to me by Dave Harding, the #1 beer drinker from Mahar’s, and I’ve been happy every time I’ve visited.  I’ve picked up many special beers here, but my favorite was the Smuttynose Ry(e)an Ale.  The selection goes on and on, and I’ve never even gotten to visit the rest of the store before hitting my own budgeted limit for the day.  For local microbrews, vintage specials or hard to find beers from out of state, Julio’s excels!

Silver: Pinocchio’s Beer Garden, Media, PA – Pinocchio’s (http://pinpizza.com/) wins a close race with Capone’s (http://caponesdraftlist.blogspot.com/), mostly due to the ease for me to visit the former location.  Both offer drafts, food, and hard to find brews.  However, Pinocchio’s was able to provide me with a magnum of Stone 12-12-12 for my Vertical Tasting.  Enough said.

Bronze: Glenville Beverage, Glenville, NY – Glenville Beverage is a local spot that I’ve benefited by stopping in periodically.  I picked up a Sam Adams Utopia, Goose Island’s Cherry Rye and Bourbon County Coffee Stout this past month, and I will continue to check them out in the New Year.  Their selection isn’t as large as Oliver’s Beverage (where I did fine the Goose Island Bramble Rye earlier this year) in downtown Albany, but they certainly have a good listing and their unique beers seem more available.  A smaller place, perhaps there are less beer enthusiasts to come in to snatch up the selections.

Honorable Mention: There are a lot of places that deserve to be mentioned, and they would include the following (in no particular order): Beverage Warehouse (http://www.beveragewarehousevt.com/) for their dedication to providing hard to find VT microbrews, DeCicco’s (http://www.deciccos.com/)  for the listing and specialties such as Alesmith Decadence ’11 found behind their bar, the Foodery (http://www.fooderybeer.com/) for such beers as The Bruery’s Fruet in the heart of Philly, and State Line Liquors (http://www.statelineliquors.com/) for their dedication to providing limits to our obsession as I found with my Stillwater Folklore The Tale of Van Winkle.

"40 dollars!? This better be the best damn beer ever. [drinks beer] You got lucky." - Simpsons