Nashville: America's Rising Star In Craft Beer Tourism

Home to the top-selling American whiskey company on earth, it’s no secret that Tennessee is renowned worldwide for its booze - but the state’s success doesn’t end with barrel-aged spirit. Its bustling capital of Nashville, a city renowned for its significant influence on the nation’s music industry, is quickly developing into a hub for craft beer enthusiasts across the nation. Equipped with a wealth of innovative breweries and lively bars, Music City is well on its way to becoming a major player in beer tourism as travel becomes more accessible.

When it comes to lodging, few hotels are better equipped for immersing guests into Nashville’s beer scene than the Cambria Hotel Nashville Downtown, a property located steps away from the city’s iconic main thoroughfare, Broadway. While this venue is equipped with 255 rooms, an outdoor pool, and a fifth-floor entertainment stage, its most impressive feature can be found behind the bar - namely, a wide selection of local craft beers on draft, carefully compiled by Cambria’s own certified cicerone, Zach O’Haire.

“The process first begins with a survey of all local craft breweries within a 100-mile radius of the hotel,” says O’Haire, who’s tasked with crafting the beer menu at each of Cambria’s fifty-plus hotels. “We usually highlight and source beers closest to the hotel’s location to best represent breweries most directly embedded in the community.  We then arrange meetings with local brewers and distributors so we can explore their local favorites, the stories behind the brews, and their performance in the market.”

While O’Haire notes that Nashville’s craft beer scene emerged considerably later than cities on the east and west coasts, that doesn’t mean that Nashville has always been a stranger to beer - he cites Gerst Brewing Company as a prominent local operation that existed for almost a century. Founded in 1859 by German immigrant Jacob Stifel as Nashville Brewing Company, the company enjoyed moderate success for decades, undergoing multiple changes in name and ownership over the years.

By the late 1890s, Gerst Brewing Company had become one of the largest breweries in the American South - but the Temperance Movement would deal a crushing blow to business. The brewery would ultimately survive Prohibition by producing sodas and other malt beverages, but was eventually forced to close permanently in 1954.

In contrast to the mid-1900s, today’s Nashville isn’t dominated by a single mass producer - the city is instead dotted with a wealth of thriving craft breweries, each one offering a diverse array of beers to thirsty tourists and local Tennesseans alike. One particular brewery, referred to as “one of Nashville’s shining stars of craft brewing” by O’Haire, was an early mover within the city’s burgeoning craft beer scene. Founded back in 2003, Yazoo Brewing has become a local favorite, with an extensive menu that ranges from traditional pilsners to experimental wild-fermented sours to the Gerst Amber Ale, a product inspired by the first brews that took Nashville by storm at the end of the 20th century.

While Yazoo operates in the northern Nashville suburb of Madison, there’s no shortage of innovative craft breweries to be found in the heart of the city. For those exploring the neighborhood of Wedgewood-Houston, Jackalope Brewing Company provides visitors with sixteen individual beers on draft at The Ranch, a cozy taproom with a stately brewhouse attached to the back. For fans of hoppy IPAs, Bearded Iris is a prime destination located right next to Germantown, a historic district that was once home to a thriving German immigrant community.

Given Nashville’s vibrant culture and booming economy, one can assume that the city’s burgeoning craft beer industry is here to stay, providing visitors with a wealth of tasty brews to sip on all along Broadway. When it comes to Tennessee, beer may never quite reach the heights that whiskey has - Jack Daniel’s certainly has some massive shoes to fill - but one can rest assured that Nashville will serve as a treasured destination packed with crisp pilsners, hoppy IPAs, and hearty stouts for years to come.