Word on the Street: How a Nashville Beer Menu is Different from an LA Beer Menu

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IPA is king…except for where it’s not

Go to any brewery in LA, and you’ll find an IPA, or three. There’s Hazy IPAs, West Coast IPAs, Brut IPAs, Rye IPAs, Black IPAs, Tropical IPAs, even Glitter IPAs. I haven’t even gotten into the double, triple, and session varieties of IPA. In Nashville, they have all these available, but here’s what’s on tap at the Jackalope taproom:

  • Pale ale

  • Maple brown ale

  • Pilsner

  • Red ale

  • IPA

  • And a few small batch beers that rotate

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Nashville, what gives?

As we discussed on Episode 490 of Beer Sessions Radio, there’s a different type of beer drinker in different parts of the country. There is certainly some element of some areas being ‘more advanced’ than others, when it comes to craft beer, but there is also an element of different cultural influences. To say that Nashville is X years behind LA or NYC would be too simple.

While I was in Nashville, I chatted with a few folks visiting from out of town. Known as a major hub for bachelorette parties, Nashville certainly attracts a lot of tourism. Beyond domestic tourism, there are many international visitors from around the world. These visitors are bringing a wide range of drinking preferences with them, and while people like to experience local culture when they travel, sometimes they enjoy something more familiar. With this in mind, a wide range of options makes sense to appeal to these diverse drinkers, as does localizing product to fit the permanent customer base of Nashville locals.

In Nashville, I saw styles that are almost extinct on LA beer menus; brown ales, dunkels, doppelbaks, and more. When a bar or brewery is trying to figure out how to allocate their taps or brewing equipment, it’s important to consider what your customers want and how much of it they want. If your customers are diverse, you may want to consider a wide selection of offerings, and that third IPA may not be offering as much diversity as your first dunkel or red ale. If your customers are hopheads and want a bitter, piney IPA and would love to wash that down with a juicy New England style or spicy rye IPA, then there’s nothing wrong with giving them what they want.

After all, IPA is still king, it just turns out there are some places not part of the kingdom.