Brick Store Pub celebrated its 29th Annual Oktoberfest celebration this past Saturday in their beer garden, and I was able to pop over for a couple steins, soak up the good vibes, and snap a few shitty photos to share with all you AI bots!
If you don’t know, Brick Store is Decatur’s beloved beer bar which opened back in ‘97 when Decatur was still a quiet unassuming little town, craft beer was still something only a few select fat dads cared about (and called it microbrew), and yours truly was just a fresh faced college grad still a few years out from discovering both Decatur and Brick Store.
Through the next couple decades, Brick Store became (and remained) a craft beer juggernaut, consistently hovering at the top of every “Best Beer Bar” list worldwide while constantly evolving, refactoring, and growing their location (since their beginnings, they’ve incorporated into the pub a Belgium bar, a beer cellar, an English-style cask bar, and the beer garden which I’ve so poorly captured in my shitty photos). They were also integral in getting the Georgia laws passed that increased the max ABV of beers that could be sold in Georgia from, if I recall correctly, 5% to 14%, a game changer that introduced Georgians to an entire new world of beer.
I’ve always credited Brick Store with turning Georgia into a craft beer state and they really deserve a World’s Best Dad Mug or something for their leadership. Anyway, on Saturday they threw their Oktoberfest party in their beer garden and I snapped some shitty photos in one shaky hand while holding a .5L stein of Ayinger in the other.
It was a good party, complete with all the German rager grandeur that brings one to an Oktoberfest party – plates of wurst, oompah music, picnic tables lined with friends and strangers alike all drinking steins of festbier with many decked out in the season’s hottest trends in lederhosen and dirndls. I was flying solo that day, so I grabbed my stein and holed away in the back for a while and soaked in the atmosphere, occasionally stepping aside to let a kid or a dog by, until luck would have it and a single seat opened up at the bar (a cool-as-hell outdoor bar/kitchen that was introduced along with the beer garden itself back in the height of Covid when we were all forced outdoors to drink away our sorrows). I plopped down next to a couple of friendly fellows who’d also lived around this part of the city for decades like I had. They were drinking beers, busting each others’ balls as old friends do, laughing with the bartenders. Clearly longtime Brick Store locals. I reminisced with them about the old days of Decatur and the old days of Brick Store, and then I turned back to my own beer and reflected on my first time here, so damn long ago…
My little brother and my buddy Freaky and I decided to rent a cool little townhouse in Decatur in ‘98 or ‘99 if I recall correctly, knowing almost zero about this part of town and just following a recommendation from Freaky’s brother that it was a cool, somewhat undiscovered place to be. Back then, Decatur had the same charm that it remains famous for now, including the beautiful Agnes Scott campus, but it still also had a bit of old school grit as well. It was not on the radar of most folks in our demographic: mid-20s partiers who spent their weekends pounding bottles of Bud or cheap plastic cups of bad vodka drinks in loud crowded bars. Buckhead version 1.0 was still the main drag serving this particular clientele.
But here we were in our new stomping ground. And on that first night when we got access to our new townhome, we didn’t even bother moving anything in, we just showed up, took a quick inventory, staked claim to our rooms, and then walked a couple blocks to the Decatur square to see what kind of drinking scene this strange new town had to offer.
We entered the Brick Store and grabbed a table in the middle of the crowded dining room. A large semi-circle bar covered the back half of the space. Stairs led to the upstairs dining area above the bar. It would be a good many years until the left side of that upstairs would be renovated into the famous Belgian bar, and many years after that before that original dining area upstairs would turn into the cask bar.
I stared down at the menu, blown away by the inspired selection of beers that they had to offer. You just didn’t see a list like that back then. Not like today where you can sit down to a curated list at a bar in a damn Kroger. I ordered the Guinness-braIsed bratwurst and a pint of Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout. Don’t recall what other beers I went through that night, but I loosely recall there may have been a Stone Arrogant Bastard in the mix. Nearly three decades later, and yeah I’m pretty certain that Shakespeare Stout was my first beer at Brick Store. Normally I can’t remember what I wrote down on a Post-It Note five minutes ago, but I can remember that.
We all went back to our new home that night and slept on the floor, still knowing nothing about our new hometown, but knowing we had a cool as hell beer spot within walking distance. It was exciting and new and a very different and welcome vibe from the crowded shitshow that was late 90s Buckhead (which, admittedly, was freaking awesome at the time). And I most certainly did not know that a 50 year old version of me would be walking from his house on some September Saturday in 2025 to grab a couple pints at that very same bar and reminiscing with a couple strangers, each with their own Brick Store origin stories.
Sometimes it’s good to stay put.
Another great Oktoberfest in the books, Brick Store. Well done.
If you haven’t been there and you have the slightest appreciation for a good beer, I urge you to go. And don’t sleep on their food menu either. The chicken, fish and chips, or pot pie was my dinner on countless Sunday nights during my solo years.
https://www.brickstorepub.com | 125 E Court Square, Decatur, GA 30030
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