Three Memphis Taprooms and a Van That Does the Driving
A beer guide drives, pours, and picks the stops on this half-day run through three working Memphis taprooms. The booking page names three breweries and then says they are a sample only, so the roster is the one thing you do not get to plan around.
City Brew Tours runs this one out of the Peabody Hotel entrance on Union Avenue, and what you are looking for is a van with beer taps painted down the side. It is called the Flagon Wagon. Over the next three and a half hours it carries you to three working Memphis breweries while a beer guide pours.
The breweries are not fixed. The booking page names three, then says plainly that they are a sample itinerary only. What is fixed is the shape of the evening: three stops, up to twelve pours, something hot to eat, and a driver who is not you.
Three and a half hours is the listed length, and the operator puts its own tour at approximately the same. Departures sit at 6:00 PM Thursday and Friday, noon and 6:00 PM Saturday, and 1:00 PM Sunday. The operator's own page lists this tour as Thursday through Saturday, while the booking calendar also sells Sunday. Dates are yours to pick at checkout, and the live slots show there.
Tickets are USD 69 per person. Transport, the beer, bottled water and the snack sit inside that figure. Gratuities do not.
Memphis Signature Guided Brewery TourThree Memphis breweries, up to 12 tasting pours and a hot snack, round trip in the van. USD 69 per person, 21 and over, 3.5 hours.www.viator.comWho Picks the Breweries, and Why It Is Not You
The booking page lists Grind City Brewing, Wiseacre and Crosstown Brewing, with stop times of 45, 50 and 50 minutes. The line above that list says these are sample itineraries only and all schedules are subject to change.
The operator's Memphis roster runs to ten places: Grind City, Soul and Spirits, High Cotton, Memphis Made, Wiseacre, Urban Consequence, Cooper House Project, Hampline, Crosstown and Old Dominick. Its own sample for this tour names a different three than the booking page does, and lists two more as alternates.
The real list reaches you 24 to 48 hours ahead, in the tour reminder email. That is the operator's answer rather than a shrug. The beers are the guide's call too. You get a handpicked selection, in the operator's words, instead of a menu to work through.
What Lands in the Glass, and What Lands on the Plate
Up to twelve samples across three stops. Tasting pours, not pints, which is how twelve becomes survivable in an evening.
The food is smaller than the booking page makes it sound. One line there calls it a fresh baked snack, another calls it a local hot snack. The operator is specific: fresh baked pretzels or pizza. Treat it as something to line your stomach. A six o'clock departure is worth eating before, not after.
Dietary restrictions are workable if you flag them when you book. Gluten is the hard one. Beer is mostly not gluten free, and the operator says it cannot promise a gluten free pour will be on hand at any given stop.
The Rules That Will Actually Stop You at the Door
Closed-toe shoes, no exceptions. The operator says the breweries themselves are required to enforce this, which means nobody on the tour can wave it through. In a Memphis summer that is worth reading twice.
Twenty-one and over, with identification. The booking page and the operator agree on that one.
Access is where the two sides stop agreeing. The operator says many of its stops are wheelchair accessible, but its seated passenger vans can only carry a folding wheelchair on a private tour, and this is a public one. The booking page says nothing either way. The van, not the breweries, is the part that does not work.
Four travelers have to be booked before the tour runs at all. One person can buy a single ticket, and the booking terms do allow a run to be called off when too few people book it.
Money, Weather and Getting There
Cancel at least 24 hours before departure and the refund is full. Inside 24 hours there is none. Booking closes four hours before the van pulls out.
Weather is the operator's call, made at least 12 hours ahead, and it says it refunds in full when it is the one cancelling.
Gratuity sits outside the ticket price. The operator says it often builds prepaid gratuity in for parties of four or more, and suggests USD 15 a person otherwise.
Driving yourself is the thing the operator would rather you skipped, for reasons this tour makes obvious. If you do drive, the Peabody has an attached garage, and there is a garage and a lot on Second Street half a block south.
Round trip is the operator's word for the transport, so the Flagon Wagon returns you to the Peabody entrance it collected you from. Union and Second puts you back in the middle of downtown Memphis with the evening still open, and whatever you liked best is now a name you can go back to on your own.