The 10 Coolest Murals You'll Find at Breweries
Here are 10 of our favorite brewery murals to ponder while pounding your next pint.
Joshua M. Bernstein1/10Burial Beer
At Asheville’s Burial, two of the most popular pieces of artwork are a framed, graduation-style picture of Sloth, the Goonies goodhearted monster, and a velvet Tom Selleck. “People take pictures of those two pieces of framed art obsessively,” says Burial cofounder Jess Reiser. “They’ve become icons of our taproom.” So when she and her co-owners were batting around ideas for a mural, the answer was obvious: Sloth and Selleck, together forever. “It’s all part of our sense of humor,” she says. “We’re not all morbid at Burial.”
Wiseacre2/10Wiseacre Brewing
To liven up the landscape outside its Memphis brewery, Wiseacre brewing dropped an old railroad container over a ditch and enlisted local street artist Nosey. “We thought a mural would help bring it to life,” says cofounder Kellan Bartosch. Vintage comics inspired the first piece, which debuted last year. The newest mural—a collaboration between Nosey and Birdcap—depicts Jerry Lawler and other professional wrestling greats, the first in a potential series of nefarious Memphis characters. “The textures and colors are just amazing,” he says. “People just pull up and take pictures all the time.”
Patrick Owens3/10Right Proper Brewing
At Washington, D.C.’s Right Proper, you’ll find complex farmhouse ales, fragrant wheat ales, and chalk artist Patrick Owens’ whimsical mural of our country’s capital besieged by attacking animals. Godzilla-size pandas grapple atop the Lincoln Memorial, a flamethrower-wielding chipmunk lays waste to the White House, and birds shoot laser beams willy-nilly.
Joshua M. Bernstein4/10Modern Times
The San Diego brewery, which specializes in hop-charged ales and coffee-infused brews, operates a highly whimsical, wholly creative taproom. The bar is built from books, one wall is plastered with comic books, and, for the crowning touch, there’s a massive Post-it mosaic of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp, Bubbles. (The artwork satirizes Jeff Koons’ classic sculpture.) The endeavor required nearly 11,000 Post-it notes, as well a week’s worth of work for Modern Times’ Derek Freese and Amy Krone.
Patrick Owens5/10Sierra Nevada
To commemorate its new North Carolina brewery, Sierra Nevada commissioned designer Ben Johnston to create a 1,600-square foot mural depicting the ins and outs of beer production, from brew kettles to the bottling line and hops, which undergo a scientific dissection. Created with Sharpie China Markers, the project took Johnston three weeks to complete.
Keith Nelter6/10Crown Brewing Company
In the 19th century, Cincinnati was a brewing powerhouse, with upward of 40,000 people in the Over-the-Rhine district employed by breweries or related industries before Prohibition ruined the fun. Today, Cincinnati is experiencing a brewing rebirth thanks to the likes of Rivertown, MadTree, and Rhinegeist—that is, "Ghost of the Rhine." To honor the city’s brewing past and present, ArtWorks Cincinnati and the Brewery District Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation commissioned Keith Neltner to create this five-story mural of brewery workers crowning a pint of beer, which adorns the bygone Crown Brewing Company.
Bryce Widom7/10Mountain Sun
Since 1998, Boulder, Colorado’s Bryce Widom has been adorning the Mountain Sun brewpub and its sister locations with colorful, vibrant chalk art that explores the interplay between mankind and nature, myth and magic. Like Mountain Sun’s beer, Widom’s drawings change frequently, with new works—they take upward of 14 hours to complete—created seasonally. This piece, Renaissance, was devised for Denver’s Vine Street Pub & Brewery for spring and summer.
Brooklyn Brewery8/10Brooklyn Brewery
Pop by the brewery’s Williamsburg headquarters (fun fact: it used to be a matzo ball factory), and you’ll encounter eye-catching artwork decorating the outside walls. One wall features both Egyptian hieroglyphics and its translated quote (“Beer has dispelled the illness which was in me,” it reads), while legendary designer Milton Glaser—he’s responsible for the brewery’s logo—devised the infographics explaining the brewing process, with windows cleverly pulling double duty as brew kettles. Glaser also worked on a new tasting room mural, which isn't quite done yet!
Eric Grohe9/10Miller Brewing Company
Painter Eric Grohe is no stranger to the brewing industry, with photo-realistic murals enlivening Washington’s American Hop Museum and Sierra Nevada’s Chico, California, brewery. At Milwaukee’s Miller Brewing, Grohe beautified the industrial brewing and fermentation facilities with time-traveling, tromp l’oeil murals that colorfully depict the brewery’s history, from hop picking to grain selection and bottling beer.
Ed Trask10/10Hardywood Park Craft Brewery
One of Richmond, Virginia’s leading breweries is Hardywood, which draws droves to its brewery to drink the Belgian-style Singel, refreshing Cream Ale, and the Great Return, a West Coast–style IPA. To decorate the taproom, the brewery turned over a wall to local artist Ed Trask, who created a colorful mural that chronicles Hardywood’s story, starting with cofounders Eric McKay and Patrick Murtaugh falling under the sway of hand-crafted beer at a sheep station in Australia. Its name? Hardywood Park.
