Drinking Diaries
We dare you to try and drink all 500 beers at the shiny and new World of Beer
World of Beer has a big tap selection, but the bottled beers put it close to 500overall.Photo courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski
World of Beer opened mid-December on SMU Boulevard by Torchy's and Barley House.World of Beer SMU / Facebook
The app is perfect for finding new beers, even if you're not at World of Beer.You can search by filters like ABV, country and style.Photo by Jonathan Rienstra
We stopped by the new World of Beer that just opened up on SMU Boulevard next to Torchy’s. It’s the second location in Dallas-Fort Worth; the first, in Arlington, opened in 2011.
There’s not much to say here except that if you like beer at all, you must check out World of Beer. The selection is mind-boggling. As in, there is a loyalty card with rewards for drinking as many as 500 different beers.
You get a shirt for signing up for this card, which we did, but the shirt is pretty terrible. There are promises of more shirts at future benchmarks, which is not the reason that we’ll keep drinking there.
The menu not only delves into the different, very specific types of beers, but it also has information about what those types mean. It’s educational, you know?
The space is comfortable, seating about 75, with a handful of long tables and a few plushier corner spots. The size ensures you won’t be getting pushed up against the bar. If you want that, you can head to Ozona on a Wednesday night.
The other thing that’ll curb the general influx of SMU students getting stupid drunk is that World of Beer is not cheap. You won’t find any of the “major” beers here — a pleasant sign, along with the Common Table’s recent move to remove its Bud Light, etc. taps, that Dallas is starting to look at beer with a sharper eye. Instead, World of Beer does craft beers from across the country and the globe, with a few exceptions for foreign brews such as Guinness.
The bottled beers are actually broken up by country in refrigeration and on the beer menu. Said menu, which is something like 12 pages, not only delves into the different, very specific types of beers, but it also has information about what those types mean. It’s educational, you know?
I know this place is a chain — and perhaps that should matter when there are so many places around Dallas doing the beer thing. That’s fair. After all, Meddlesome Moth, Common Table, Ginger Man, even Katy Trail Ice House are killing it with their craft beer selections. By all means, they are worthy of your time.
But 500 beers. It’s borderline cruel to give a man that many options. And let us not forget that the Flying Saucer, which is Texas’ original ’roided-out beer joint, has locations in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missourah.
WOB has plenty of local beers too, from Revolver to Peticolas to Franconia. The drafts rotate, and there are more bottles than you can imagine. The “Out of Stock” sign is even a bottle. Not to mention the World of Beer app that keeps track of your beers, helps you find new ones and gives in-depth analysis of each brew carried. It’s like a Pokédex for beer, and we’ve been playing with it all day.
World of Beer is all so shiny and polished and franchised, but I don’t care. It has good beer here and plenty of TVs and six types of sausages on the menu. If this is selling out, then I’m in.
