The ideal Friday afternoon college town brewery
Growing up in Tampa, our family had annual passes to Busch Gardens, a theme park and zoo seemingly developed as the answer to the question, “What if we made a knock-off Disney World to market Anheuser-Busch beer to the masses?”
It had Clydesdales and everything.
My brothers and I liked it because of the roller coasters and thrill rides, plus the access it gave us to the neighboring Anheuser-owned waterpark, Adventure Island.
Our parents — almost all parents at Busch Gardens, for that matter — liked it primarily for the sacred “Hospitality House,” a mid-park pavilion where guests over 21 could obtain samples of free beer.
Even in 1990s dollars, that justified the cost of the annual passes for many.
By the time I was in college in the late-2000s, not much had changed. Anheuser-Busch beer still won hearts and minds. The difficult choices we made were not between hoppy IPAs and hearty stouts, but between Bud Light, Busch Light, and Natty Light.
If we wanted to really show off our snobby beer tastes, we’d order the occasional Amber Bock, Blue Moon, or — if we were feeling reeeaaal hipster-y — a “microbrew” called Sam Adams. If you were super cultured, maybe you’d find a place that sold German beer or Smithwick’s, which you would mispronounce for the first couple years it occupied space in your fridge.
Even right after graduation, as bars that sold hundreds of bottled beers from around the world began springing up, I couldn’t have imagined that just a little over a decade later, the craft beer revolution would lead brewers a fraction of the size of Anheuser-Busch to open massive taprooms with dozens of in-house concoctions in exotic-sounding styles like “West Coast India Pale Ale” and “Nitro Coffee Stout”, plus the occasional guest taps to highlight the unique variations produced by their own supposed competitors.
The Big Grove Brewery Taproom in Iowa City, just over a mile from Downtown and the University of Iowa, seems like a modern-day evolution of the hospitality house of old. There are no rollercoasters or Cyldesdales (and the drinks aren’t free), but instead a huge multi-room festhaus adorned with massive TVs and garage doors opening onto a large outdoor patio dotted with shade umbrellas, lawn games, and bar trucks.
While the differences are notable, the feeling I get walking into a place like this must be how my parents felt going to Busch Gardens. It feels like a sort of adult theme park all the same.
I arrived at Big Grove in the late afternoon on the Friday before the CyHawk battle against Iowa State. The early September weather was gorgeous, with light creeping into the main bar area as the sun slowly drooped into the western sky. I wasn’t the only enjoying it, as the place was already hopping with football fans ready to get the weekend started early.
I started off with Easy Eddy, the signature hazy IPA. Not the best I’ve ever had, but solid and very drinkable. Nice tropical flavor with a smooth finish.
After getting into a conversation with a couple sitting around the corner of the bar from where I posted up, I took their recommendation and opted for the opposite end of the color spectrum for Round 2: a small-batch porter. It was a great choice — maybe just a touch thin, but fantastic caramel flavor cut by a subtle nuttiness.
After my new friends decided to head out, I wandered out to the patio area. It was brimming with activity, overflowing with people who seemed excited to be done with the school/work week and eager to enjoy the late-afternoon sunshine.
While waiting in a short line at the bar truck, my queue mates provided me with some great tips on tailgating & pregame festivities and invited me to join them for a game of corn hole (or bags … or bean toss … or whatever you call it in your neck of the woods), only to find out that the boards had been overtaken by the time we got our beers.
After continuing to chat with them for a bit, I ventured back inside to a mostly empty side room where a bartender appeared to be setting up a secondary station to help ease the backup accumulating at the main bar. It turns out he was actually setting up for an upcoming private event in that room, but happily poured me a beer anyway. We continued talking as he got the bar ready, discussing the history of the brewery and how a guy from Florida ended up at the CyHawk for the second year in a row.
By the time he finished his prep work, he had poured me two more (both of which fell into the tasty-but-unspectacular category), telling me in a hush, “If anybody asks, you’re with the birthday party. They prepaid for these.”
So … uhh … thanks to the birthday girl for the free beers!
As the clock approached 7pm, the birthday celebrators began to arrive, and Big Grove seemed on the verge of hitting capacity, I decided to move on.
To put it simply, the vibes were immaculate. Big Grove is the epitome of what a college town brewery should be: fun, casual, lively, and communal.
It’s the kind of place where the only age limit is the minimum to drink. The kind of place where locals, grad students, and alumni can sip a few brewskis and reminisce about the good ol’ days before calling it a night earlier than their younger selves would arrive at the bar in the good ol’ days. The kind of place a student beer snob can now grab a Belgian Tripel to impress the sorority girls instead of a Blue Moon with an orange wedge.
It really is a modern-day hospitality house.
CFB Travel Guy 