“Too often people have buyer’s remorse. They buy a six-pack of pretzel mocha stout because it sounds like a good idea.” For about five minutes. “Or they buy a bottle of wine because they like the label.” Sam Short, president of Dexter’s new Beer Grotto, feels for those hapless customers–and also for the place that sold the stuff, since a customer who buys an undrinkable ale “will maybe never go there again.”
The Beer Grotto is a preemptive strike on those mismatches. The front is a tasting room, where you can sample any of the forty-eight beers on tap. About 75 percent of those beers are brewed in Michigan. “People seem to be responding to hyper-local beers, like Jolly Pumpkin and Arbor Brewing Company,” says Short. “They like it that their kids go to school with kids of the brewmaster.”
The tasting room also displays twenty-four wines for sampling, and the staff will open any of the eighty varieties now in stock. Wines are sold by the bottle, and beer is sold by the growler: sixty-four ounces, or roughly the contents of a six-pack. Bring your own, buy a simple glass growler for $3 (the vessel, that is, not the contents), or–and this is really veering off into the world of collectors rather than simple beer drinkers–buy a handmade ceramic growler from the Goosecreek Growler Company for $80, stamped with the Beer Grotto’s indicia.
The back room of the Beer Grotto is a pub where you can enjoy a pint of beer or a glass of wine. The fifty-seat room can be rented out for events.
Short downplays the food because he doesn’t want the Grotto mistaken for a restaurant. It’s “enough to get you through happy hour,” and in a pinch, “you could put together a sort of meal,” he says. What he’s talking about is such fare as arugula pesto grilled cheese bites, stuffed peppadews, occasional sliders from Hotel Hickman’s BBQ across the street, and the ever-present truffle-oiled popcorn.
Beer Grotto, 8059 Main St., 253-2194. Sun.-Thurs. noon-11 p.m., Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m.-midnight. Beergrotto.com
