Ballpark Beer Review: Dodger Stadium
Depending on your goals, Dodger Stadium is either a boom or a bust from a beer perspective.
If you are looking to alter your experience through the use of a society-approved liquid drug, then the stadium is ready to provide. Their prices and sizes are very pocket-friendly: you can get a 24-ounce ‘tall boy’ domestic draft beer for $10.25, which is better value than most stadiums provide. These are large beers for a good price.
If your aim is to drink the best-tasting beer that you might want to drink while facing the pitch, well then Chavez Ravine might have the worst beer selection in the bigs.
Any review assumes a position of authority, and all this author can say is that he’s soiffed a lot of mash-based bubbling alcoholic drinks and that his basic stance is craft-leaning. The basic tenets if Big Beer are easy to spot: Velocity and Mass Appeal. The basic tenets of craft beer are Uniqueness and Boldness. If you pick the side that desires unique, bold tastes, you’ll want craft beers at your ballpark.
I found few craft beers at the stadium in downtown Los Angeles.
You can’t count Shocktop or Blue Moon — they might be better than your traditional Coors Lights, but they are owned by the same company and therefore suffer from the save time- and cost-saving corner-cutting tactics as the other beers brewed by their company. The “Premium Beer” huts at Dodger Stadium boast Dos Equis and Hite. Foreign Big Beer does not usually count as craft, even if it might be a step above the “Alumitek” Bud Light cans that sat right next to them on the counter. You can pay extra to get into the Prime Ticket Club but then the best beers you’ll add to the list are two InBev global specials on tap: Stella Artois and Heineken. To recap: so far we have a choice between Budweiser, Hefe Budweiser, Korean Budweiser Dutch Budweiser and Mexican Budweiser. In a simpler time, that might suffice.
Today, there are too many craft beer aficionados to assuage with this selection. Of course, there are a few craft beers if you looked hard enough, but the reward didn’t quite match the effort.
For instance, you can walk all the way to the end of the Stadium Club Level to the Stadium Club TM, and you’ll be treated with Kona Longboard and DBA from Firestone Walker on two taps. There was a lonesome Pyramid Hefeweizen tucked behind a Heineken bottle, too. I saw a Gordon Biersch Mardzen in a bottle somewhere. There were rumors of Sam Adams on tap at the Carl’s Jr. After a full tour of the stadium, that was the best I could find. It doesn’t match up to the beer offered in San Francisco or San Diego. It didn’t even come close to the offerings at Citi Field in New York, which was a stadium dominated by beers distributed by Anheuser Busch.
I’ll drink a Kona Longboard lager, or a DBA from Firestone, sure. I won’t even complain that much about a GB beer, or one from Sam Adams. But if you make me walk to the farthest reaches of the park to find these beers, maybe then I’ll complain. And if they are the best craft beers that your park has to offer, well then I’ll dock your park a notch or two in the beer review.
But that’s just because I’m always on the lookout for new, unique, bold craft beers, and I feel like a baseball stadium is a perfect venue to continue such searches. Especially when, after I left the stadium, I easily found a couple Los Angeles craft beers at the local liquor store — the Dodgers don’t have to stock their Saison Extra, but another Brouwerij West beer, or even better, one from Eagle Rock Brewing, that would at the very least be a nod to the local craft scene, and maybe even enough to assuage serious Beer Tourists.
And there are Beer Tourists out there, I assure you. Beer sales overall are stagnant, but craft sales are up. The Dodgers would do well to broaden their appeal with just a few more selections in easy-to-find spots around the stadium.
“Their prices and sizes are very pocket-friendly”
Really!? Glad I don’t live in LA
The Domestic Draft Small is a better deal than the Domestic Draft Large. I guess they figure if you drink Bud Light, you probably aren’t so good at math.
whoah by four cents an ounce! didn’t even occur to me. and I wasn’t drunk!
At this moment I am feeling very fortunate about living in Seattle and going to games at Safeco. Never mind the baseball team.
They have Red Trolley on tap at the stadium.
Really? Where?
On the lodge level near home plate area. I believe.
Yup, that’s right. Had one last night.
They have Red Trolley on tap at the stadium.
I was under the impression that despite Shocktop being owned by Busch (or whoever), the parent organization did little to shift the brewing practices of the acquired brewery. That is, that despite Shocktop being bought out, their brewing process had remained untouched. I could be wrong though… very wrong…
This could be true. I don’t love the beer either way, but id rank it among the better tap choices at the stadium.
Wait a minute, Shock Top was completely fabricated by Bud in response to Blue Moon. At least Blue Moon can say they were a real craft beer before it garnered wide distribution by Coors and it was also the first beer ever brewed at a baseball field.
Shock Top uses high fructose corn syrup. Blue Moon is at least a few notches above Shock Top even if BM isn’t “authentic” craft.
People say AT&T has amazing beer choices, and they are exceptional for a ballpark, but all of the real winners are only available in the attached pub, and getting service during a game there sucks and trying to take it back to your seat when it’s crowded in the pub really sucks and if you’re sitting in the upper level in left field then buy two because you’ll have the first one finished by the time you get to your seat because that ramp does its best to approximate the feeling of climbing Nob and Russian Hills.
Outside of the pub, you’ll find Anchor, Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada, and Mendocino. No surprises, but all still tolerable or better. The real disappointment is the amount of flat beer I’ve had there. That’s the real odd thing.
Camden Yards and Citizens Bank are the two best, I think. I’ve heard great things about the Nats home too.
C’mon. When you start complaining about Lagunitas and Mendocino being flat in a ballpark setting, you are spoiled, fer crissakes.
I don’t know what you’ve heard about Nats Park, but it’s much worse than what you’ve described in San Francisco. Perhaps now that people are actually going to games it’ll improve, but I doubt it.
To be fair, if I ever found Anchor Liberty on tap in the park, I probably wouldn’t even watch the game.
I was afraid I was. :P Well, I am moving from the lovely beer-loving climes of SF to a small town in northern MN where the best liquor store’s import selection is Corona, Heineken, and Bass, so I’ll have ample opportunity to get off my high horse there. (Though, in my defense, flat beer will always surprise me in a setting that sells a lot of beer, i.e. a ballpark.)
I’d heard Nats Park had Flying Fish, Dogfish, and Flying Dog. Nope?
Oh, come on. As a Texas resident, I would choose AT&T’s “no surprises” over the Arlington lineup any day.
We found a couple of other beers on-tap at dodger stadium recently, it seems at the field level has better craft options than the loge or reserve levels: http://www.beeroftomorrow.com/craft-beer-at-dodger-stadium-in-2012/
Stan Kasten has asked for fans input on how to improve the ballpark experience in Los Angeles, so we gotta let him know that better beer is important!
Here is our call-to-action: http://www.beeroftomorrow.com/craft-beer-for-dodger-stadium/
Signed.
It just feels to me like there’s no reason not to have craft beer at a baseball stadium at this point. I’m not asking you to get rid of all the Bud Light, but in L.A. there are 50 million fantastic breweries and people will drink it. And like you said, I’m more than happy to suck back at least a Boston Lager. I just don’t understand what the disadvantage to having the option is.
As much as I love the Dodgers as my team, their selection is poor. I’ve been to 34 parks, and oddly Kansas City, Anaheim, and Oakland had the widest selections. Even the beer stadiums (Busch) have better selection and easier availability to get. Hopefully the new owners fix this. I think Shea, the Vet, and Busch II were the worst, but I agree. Ballparks should always try and feature the local craft brews.
I thought they had Fat Tire?
That mighta been Anaheim…
85% of beer consumed is a lager. Add in summer, hot temps, then that number is probably 95%. The demand of lager, esp American light lagers far, far outstrips craft ales at the ballpark. If craft tried to make more lagers, then maybe you’d see more craft beer at the ball park. The dirty little secret of craft is that making a dark beer or ale is much easier than making a lager. There is that.
All true, but lager still tastes like piss, even “good” ones.