A pleasant surprise, this one. When I found myself assigned to a three-day business meeting in Williamsburg, I rather anticipated a pretty uninspiring beer scene--after all, AB has both a brewery and a theme park in the immediate vicinity; and the one local micro, Williamsburg B/C, is apparently no longer brewing.
Instead, right next to my hotel, the Wiliamsburg Hospitality House, alors! I found the Green Leafe, a rather collegiate bar (William 'n' Mary is just across the srreet) with 28 taps, one hand pump, and dozens of bottles. Their beer selection runs toward broadly-regional stuff: say, roughly, Pennsylvania through North Carolina; but there are also a number of draft and bottled Belgians, other international beers going far beyond the HeinBeckPauli axis, and nationwide American craft beers. Altogether I ran into 26 brews not on my 40-year lifelist; didn't get to try all of them in the three evenings available to me, but I made a good dent, I did.
Nice crowd (including a coven of homebrewers one evening, some still in costume from their day jobs in Colonial Williamsburg), and at least one beer-savvy bartender. Glassware selection is not always appropriate (generic pints, ten-ouncers, and snifters), and a few items were overchilled for the style, to my taste.
Best new-to-moi discoveries, Victory V-Twelve and Bluegrass Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout.
Best bargain: $1.50 pints of Virginia drafts on Tuesday evenings. Legend, Old Dominion, Tupper's, I forget what else. A new tap beer is rolled out every Friday.
Website:
Alan Follett Hercules, CA.