Georgia beer just keeps getting better and better every time we come back!

From new favorites to familiar faces, we always love spending time drinking beers in Georgia.

With family and friends in and around Atlanta, Georgia is ALWAYS a stop on our route around the southeast. This trip out though, we spent more time than ever in the area and ended up going to so many great breweries we can't wait to get back

First up was a standard go-to whenever you're close to Athens...Creature Comforts!

As usual, we go to friend's places first and that was no different this time out. We made our way over to Athens, GA to check in with our buddy Daniel at Creature Comforts. If you're not familiar with Creature, their Tropicalia IPA was the stuff of legend for years around Atlanta. There was a scarcity and purchase limit like Pliny still gets in some places, and basically not a drop left the state except for festivals here and there while they were constantly growing and expanding at an insane rate. The beer is tasty as shit, and its influence in the region is undeniable. It's big juicy citrus but with a healthy malt backbone and hop bite somewhere between a west coast and a juicy IPA. They're expanding with an addition in LA this year (a project Daniel is knee-deep in, so we missed him this time out) and I have no doubt they're going to somehow explode in an even greater way, but honestly, everybody already knows how damn good these guys are, I'm not saying anything you don't already know. So after the quick trip to Athens, we got back to Atlanta and cities surrounding it to find some of our newest Georgia favorites.

If you drive 20-30 min outside downtown Atlanta, you're about to have some of the best beer Georgia has to offer!

Bekah's family lives north of the city, and so most of our time is spent catching up with friends that still live around there or close and it turns out that two of the new-to-us breweries we found were just a quick trip from her family's home. Make your way over to Roswell, GA and you'll find two places that are blowing up the Georgia scene in different but equally kick-ass ways: Variant Brewing and Pontoon Brewing. Our good friends Nic & Kelly took us on a beer tour around Roswell and they started at Variant. If you want a damn near flawless hazy IPA, sour, or stout, you really don't have to look much farther than here. They're huge fans of Cashmere and Nelson here, so expect those peach, tangerine, lime, melon, and white grape flavors at every turn. Add to that some of the softest, round mouthfeel you could want from a hazy in their Cashmere NEIPA and Secret Nelson Imperial NEIPA. But don't sleep on their West Coasts like Norcross St WCIPA with effortlessly combines those juicy hop profiles with a dry bite you want from a West Coast.

Ryes Or Dir Trying from Pontoon Brewing

After going through a couple flights at Variant, we were taken to our next stop: Pontoon Brewing! Funny enough, my old boss at New Image Brewing, Brandon, was there a few days earlier brewing a collab so I knew we were in for something tasty and out of the box. Couldn’t have been more correct! First up, their awesome rye IPA (and Four Year Strong pun) Ryes Or Die Trying had that spice and body from the rye but with a great citrus/piney hop flavor and smooth NEIPA finish tying it all together. Then it was on to some super interesting and delicious sours - specifically the Franken Smiggles - holy shit…this beer was wild. I get the whole “beer-flavored beer” critique of heavily adjunct beers, but I also think there’s something cool about aiming for and killing a flavor - that’s Franken Smiggles. It straight-up tastes like a sorbet mix of strawberries, marshmallows, and cream all melted together and poured into pint glass.

A new favorite in the GA scene!

On the advice of the great Ale Sharpton, we hit up one of Georgia's newest spots, and it pretty much immediately became our favorite - Inner Voice Brewing! Inner Voice is in Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta, and was started up by two dudes who worked at Monday Night and then Variant, so it makes sense that their beer is next level. Honestly, every IPA and sour we had was a banger. One of the IPAs we loved in particular was Magic Dust, a hazy with Nelson Sauvin and Phantasm - one of the best beers we've had that uses the hype new ingredient perfectly. Round, soft and tropical NEIPAs, nice bitter westcoasts and flavorful, fruit forward sours - we could've spent every weekend here. The amount of people we've pushed this brewery on is nuts, it's the first place we mention when someone asks us about Georgia beer. You can't really get it anywhere but their taproom, so make the trip and you won't regret it.

One last trip outta the city for another killer brewery!

Speaking of making trips, we can't recommend enough that if you have the time, drive a couple hours southwest of Atlanta to LaGrange, GA to try out another of the amazing new school breweries in the state - Wild Leap Brewing Co! We got turned on to them last year with their Alpha Abstraction series which gets released periodically through the year. We had the Series 13 last year and were blown away by the flavors they pulled out of Sabro hops for that one. When we got to GA this year, they just had their 5th birthday and were in the middle of releasing a million great beers, chief among them being the Birthday Month Hop Latte Cold Brew DIPA and the Alpha 19. Hop Latte quickly took space in our fridge as we're suckers for a good coffee IPA and this one didn't disappoint in the slightest. The cold brew and vanilla's roast and sweetness paired perfectly with the citrus hops and went down almost too smoothly. If you find their stuff around Georgia, grab whatever you can find, but if you can make it to their beautiful taproom to have it straight from the source, even better!

Where should we stay?

We kept this one easy and stayed with friends or family for the most part.

Although we did chill in Athens at the ol' standby when in doubt - Cracker Barrel! Honestly, it's turned into one of our favorite places to stay on the road cause there are usually 4-6 other vans/RVs and it makes it all feel a little safer to have some other road lifers next to you in a city you don't know. #craftbeer #atlanta #athens #atl #creaturecomforts #variantbrewing #pontoonbrewing #innervoice #wildleap