mathbabe

I’m visiting my good friend Aaron in Atlanta, Georgia, this week, with my youngest son. So far we’ve gone swimming twice in an incredibly large pool (100 meter lanes), had ridiculously delicious barbeque (Daddy D’z), and checked out the local “growler shop” to prepare for last night’s NBA finals game.

Don’t know what a growler shop is? Neither did I, but if you like beer, you’re going to want to learn. It’s basically a take-away bar, with an enormous number of beers that you can sample and of course purchase, at great prices. The growler shop we went to is called My Friend’s Growler Shop, and two very adorable and friendly sommeliers named Camric and John:

Can you see all those beers in the background? Yum. Camric is wearing the light blue shirt.

We ended up tasting a bunch of beers but taking home Eventide Kölsh, which comes from a local brewery and is a variation of Grolsh, and Left Hand Milk Stout, which is as close to a meal in a drink as you can get if you’ve been weaned.

Why doesn’t New York have growler shops? As Camric and John explained to me, each state has different interpretations of a federal law that prohibits reselling of beers in anything other than their original containers. Law is weird, but what it means is that New York State laws would only allow a shop to sell beer from a single brewery, which is super disappointing.

Also, if you don’t love beer, there are also such things as growler wine shops, but also in Georgia and not New York.