The Magic City Beer Trail: Good People, TrimTab, and Birmingham's Craft Renaissance
· By The Taproom Team
Birmingham was built on iron and steel, and for most of a century that's how the city drank — cold, industrial, and mass produced. The past fifteen years have rewritten the story. The Magic City now has the densest, most rewarding craft beer scene in Alabama, and most of it is poured inside the very buildings the industrial era left behind. This guide covers the essential stops. Southside: Good People Brewing Start where modern Alabama beer started. Good People, founded in 2008, is the state's oldest operating craft brewery, and its taproom sits directly across the street from Regions Field — on a Barons game night there is no better seat in the city than a picnic table with an IPA. If you see Snake Handler on the board, the double IPA that built the brewery's cult following, don't hesitate. Avondale: A Neighborhood Reborn A short drive east, Avondale Brewing occupies an early 1900s building that has been a firehouse, a bank, and a streetcar stop. The brewery's Belgian leaning lineup — try the Miss Fancy's tripel, named for the elephant that once lived in Avondale Park — helped turn 41st Street into one of the liveliest strips in the city. The back lawn on a spring evening is Birmingham at its best. Lakeview and the Gin Works TrimTab, in the Lakeview district, made Birmingham a sour beer city — the Paradise Now raspberry Berliner weisse has converted more Southern drinkers to tart beer than any other single pour. Finish big at Cahaba Brewing in the old Continental Gin works, where the Cahaba Blonde — Alabama's unofficial river beer — flows under a ceiling built for cotton gin assembly lines. Planning Your Trip All four breweries sit within a fifteen minute drive of downtown, and rideshares between them are cheap. Come on a football or baseball weekend and the taprooms hum; come midweek and you'll have the brewers to talk to. Either way, bring a growler — Birmingham fills them proudly.