How Brewery Culture Is Moving Beyond the Taproom

For years, the taproom has been the center of brewery culture. It is where people taste new beers, meet the brewers of the beer, go to events, and become regulars. However, breweries want to expand communities beyond the walls of the brew house. With social media, partnerships, festivals, merchandise, and local partnerships, and events that occur far beyond the brewery walls, a brewery can connect with drinkers today. But while the taproom remains vital, it’s no longer the land of just the taproom.

Social Media Has Become Part of the Brewery Experience

Many drinkers’ first experience visiting a brewery is now a cell phone trip instead of a visit to a bar. Media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other sites allow breweries to post updates on new beers, “Between the Beer and the Brew” moments, introduce the brewery team, and post photos of events. While there are people visiting a small brewery on a less frequent basis, it is possible to maintain their interest.

That visibility can matter especially when breweries are promoting limited releases or upcoming events. Building an active audience and, in some cases, using services designed to help brands grow their Facebook followers, can make it easier for breweries to put updates in front of more people and keep their wider community connected. The result is that brewery culture continues between visits rather than disappearing the moment someone leaves the taproom.

Beer Releases Are Becoming Events

Increasingly, Breweries are making releases an experience. Release parties, food trucks, DJs, ‘food and beer’ specials, beer-themed giveaways, artist collaborations, and even somewhat limited merchandise may be possible with some beer. Some even create their own leading image via can artwork, photographs, and brief-form video. One can drink along with the story of a beer before he or she enjoys the drink. This offers breweries greater avenues to generate a buzz around an offering, and provides customers yet another driver to engage with the brand.

Collaborations Are Connecting Different Communities

It’s always been about collaboration in craft beer, but it extends beyond one craft brewery collaborating with another. Breweries make frequent beer-brewing alliances with coffee roasters, restaurants, musicians, artists, sports groups, charities, and local businesses. It has created partnerships to introduce beer drinkers to other communities and brought wholly new audiences to the world of the brewery.

For instance, a “collab” beer with the neighborhood coffee shop can attract drinkers who perhaps don’t normally hear from the brewery, creating an unforgettable experience around both local brands. An artist’s artwork on a can can link up a brewery with the local arts community. The emphasis is still on beer, but the surrounding culture spreads out.

Festivals and Pop-Ups Bring Breweries to New Places

Don’t all have to come straight to the Brewery. So breweries aren’t only wining and dining locales; there are town and beer festivals, pop-up bars, tastings, food markets, concerts, or community gatherings to meet drinkers in a new setting. In addition, these events can be particularly valuable to smaller breweries as they can help them grow their operations beyond their local scope. Maybe at a festival they discover a brewery, find it posted online afterwards, and decide to visit it and check out the taproom. This could be reversed; that is, a taproom could be a place to go and not a place that starts the day.

Merchandise Has Become More Than a Souvenir

You can also find some that are different from the beer now. While a simple logo T-shirt remains popularly worn, many breweries have started considering apparel as a lifestyle item more than just a promotional shirt. Fashion can become part of the brewery’s personality as it shows up through T-shirts, caps, glassware, totes, prints, and artist collaborations, among other avenues, and it’s nice to see that being done.

But good merchandise takes brewery culture into everyday life, too, giving beer culture a constant on-deck presence. The brewery shirt is still embodying a piece of community to those who wear it hundreds of miles away from the taproom. Brands that have recognizable branding or distinctive artwork can be almost as memorable as the cans themselves, and merchandise serves as a great way to distribute. Stylized artwork or recognizable branding can go so far with breweries that a lot of times, they forget that things other than the cans are there for them to distribute.

Breweries Are Becoming Community Spaces

Modern breweries also often function on a broader level in their community. Attract people not just visiting for a pint, but for trivia nights, running clubs, markets, fundraisers, live music, workshops, and community meetings. That is what a brewery represents. It turns into a spot where beer is present and not one that is the sole reason for people turning up. These activities can also lead to enhanced customer relationships with locals. Others might have problems on a single occasion, and then they become regular drinkers.

Brewery Culture Can Travel

The single biggest development: now the culture of a brewery is not limited to a single location. The customer can simply find a brewery in a collaboration, watch the beer brewing online, purchase merchandise from them, go for a festival performance with them, follow new beers from them, and ultimately visit the taproom months later. Each interaction is a relationship of its own. There are still very successful brewery communities that have spaces in the heart of the community. 

There’s a hard-to-beat thrill to sipping a beer from where it was brewed, speaking to the people serving it, and sharing a table with other wheezy sons-of-pittas around you who are just as captivated as you, and who don’t mind in the least. For many enthusiasts, those moments often inspire plans for the next visit or even memories of the last brewery they discovered. But the culture around those spaces has expanded. The taproom may still be home base. It just is not where the brewery experience has to end anymore.