Cincinnati is hopping with craft beer. (ha ha) And my husband LOVES beer. He also turned the big 40 on Christmas Day. But…It’s kind of hard to throw a birthday party during the holiday season. Instead, I scheduled a surprise craft beer tasting tour through Cincy Brew Bus a month AFTER his birthday. And surprised he was.

The evening started at the Growler House in East Walnut Hills. Our tour guide for the adventure was Casey. He arrived with a bus and driver, a cooler of water bottles, a stack of drink tickets and a box of pretzel necklaces. We were ready to go.

We took the East tour. The first stop was Fifty West. Since there was such a large group of us all on one tour together, we had the private party room scheduled and food and a server waiting. At this location, we each ordered a pint instead of a flight in order to get our drinks faster.

Our second stop of the night was at Mt. Carmel. The very first photo is of my flight of beer from that location. The atmosphere was great. Although not scheduled, we ended up in a big room full of tables by ourselves. They had a variety of games available and one table accomplished a game of Scrabble while trying the multiple varieties of beer. Casey was great. He gave us lots of local brewery history, challenged us to beer trivia, and answered any questions we had.

Our last stop was Bad Tom. Another great experience of trying different craft beers. Here I even tried one beer described as having both chocolate and coffee in the recipe. I definitely won’t be ordering a pint of it anytime soon, but I loved breaking away from my norm and trying a sample. Others however? Thought it was their favorite!

Overall, the tour was fantastic. Ours was a private tour, so it was a bit modified. It lasted about 4.5 hours and visited 3 breweries…starting and ending back at the Growler House. I definitely want to look at the schedule and try one of the other routes offered. It was great to have transportation between the breweries and almost everyone finished their pretzel! Andy survived the evening and wore his t-shirt proudly to breakfast the next morning.

Have you taken a brewery tour?

What’s your favorite beer?

{Full disclosure: I was given NOTHING for this review. Cincy Brew Bus has no idea I am posting this. I was so pleased with our experience I just had to recommend it!}