Bring Good Brews Home From Craft and Growler

The owner invented a technology for filling better bottles. (Photography by Sean McGinty)

Each month Moira Muldoon walks into a bar and writes about it. Here Muldoon paints a picture of Craft and Growler.

Every fall during grad school, my husband would gleefully announce: “Home brew party!” He and his fellow engineering students made their own beer, then brought bottles to share and swap. It was fun—some of the beer was good and some truly, impressively bad—and it always made sense to me in terms of the larger cultural zeitgeist. In an era of Michael Pollan and locavores, homemade anything (everything?) was a reason to throw a party.

All of Dallas now has a chance to have “homemade” beer. At least five new craft breweries have opened in the last 18 months: Deep Ellum Brewing, Peticolas, Revolver, Lakewood, and Four Corners. Four Corners is the youngest, opened in November just past the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in West Dallas. Given the surge of craft beers made locally, it makes sense to have a space like Craft and Growler.

Craft and Growler opened in November and is part bar, part retail space. One wall is shelves filled with empty growlers, which are large, reusable bottles for taking home draft beer. If, for example, you want some of the Peticolas Brewing Company’s Wintervention, you may be able to go out and get a pint at a bar, but the beer itself is made in small batches, so you likely can’t buy bottles at your corner store. If you want to take some Wintervention to your spouse who watched the kids while you went out, that’s where the growler comes in handy.

Stay with her.