Which Beverages Deserve Their Own Taproom?

We at The Takeout have been dutifully tasting different hard seltzers to recommend the best ones to readers, and we're fans of most of them. For alcoholic beverages, they're mostly light and refreshing, and not loaded with sugar. It seems only natural, then, that Truly is now opening a dedicated taproom to America's favorite boozy drink, at an 8,000-square-foot location in downtown Los Angeles.

The Truly news got me thinking: There are so many beverages in the world that could use their own dedicated celebratory spot, are there not? I asked my coworkers on Slack to hear which drinks they'd want to see taprooms for.

"OMG, apple juice," my coworker Lillian Stone responded emphatically. "You're gonna tell me you wouldn't go to a Martinelli's taproom?! Get outta here."

That sounds pretty good. I like the idea of trying different apple varieties in apple juice form, for comparison's sake. Let's pit a Honeycrisp against a Macintosh or something. Or would we even be able to tell the difference?

Our editor in chief, Marnie Shure, suggests a root beer taproom (if it doesn't already exist). "There is such avid root beer fandom out there," she said, "and they could serve more or less botanical ones, try some interesting flavor infusions, etc."

The idea of having a root beer flight sounds intriguing. I'm wondering if I would be able to tell a difference between them.

My pick? Monster energy drink. I don't know if you keep up with Monster, but the roster of flavors is downright impressive. I subsisted off the stuff back when I was a restaurant cook, which in retrospect was a very bad idea, but trust me, a lot of cooks are powered by energy drinks.

There is, of course, the classic Monster flavor, which now that I think about it is fairly hard to describe—liquified Smarties, perhaps? But if you haven't been peeking at the energy drink aisle, there are a ton of different flavors of Monster now. There are various teas (I swear by the Dragon white tea variety, which is delicious). There's a coffee version. There's a Moscow mule flavor (ginger beery!). And there's a whole rainbow of colors, like blue, red, orange, violet... I know way too much about this stuff. Is that healthy?

Just picture it: you could go straight down the row of taps and ask for a sample of every flavor. Isn't that the dream? What do you think? Which kind of drink needs its own taproom?