Community Beer Works

Came here as part of a tasting tour. Made arrangements ahead of time for flights. When we arrived, they claimed not to do flights and pushed people to order pints instead. Later, they admitted they do offer flights once people already ordered. Not good business practice. I like flights to try a variety.

Came here along with some other local breweries to celebrate my 40^th birthday. This place more than the others intrigued me and I was excited to try their beers. Unfortunately, I think I picked a bad weekend to visit. They really didn’t have much of a selection and none of their specialty beers were available. I enjoyed the beers but none of them stood out on my day of tasting many beers.

One of my favorite (along with Bid Ditch) micro breweries in Buffalo! You can taste the quality when tasting ALL their beers. The Community Beer Work IPA’s are my favorite. The staff if cool and hip. Love stopping by for growler fills/​tastings. IF I go to a bar and they don’t have Community Beer Works on tap I ask, «Why?!» Cheers to GREAT beer!

These guys are talented, warm hearted, full of soul and have great passion for delicious beer. Conscious of sustainability and supporting fellow local businesses. Stop by the brewery on Lafayette and try everything you can. CBW is often at many farmers markets around town to help you get your fix. Drink and enjoy local.

Not really your traditional Buffalo brewery like Flying Bison or Resurgence but totally still worth checking out. This place is located on Lafayette Street right off of Niagara Street almost directly across from Santasiero’s Restaurant. The place is small when you walk in. They have one table to sit at and a few stools at the bar and some standing bar space. This is definitely a very simple brewery but they have some really interesting brews on tap no doubt. Their Seasonal Creep: Smoke brew was an interesting brew for sure. Just go and check out what they have on tap that day as their selection frequently changes. The workers here are pretty cool and are really nice. They’ll totally chat you up about the brewing process, their operation, their best brews and definitely ask them for a recommendation if you can’t decide what beers to try. If you are all about trying craft beers then this is totally your place. Don’t expect the frills and decorative atmosphere that other local breweries offer but rather go to truly try some different locally brewed beers. This place is big on selling growlers too. While I was there several different people came in with their own containers to fill up with beer. If you plan on coming definitely be sure to check whether they will be open because their hours vary by the day.

CBW isn’t fancy. It’s more like someone’s homebrew setup writ a little larger. They define themselves as a «nanobrewery» because of their small capacity, and this is pretty accurate. Small means fresh though, and the beer here is the tops. During the event, I managed to sample every single one of their beers, and I wasn’t disappointed with any of them. I even enjoyed their stout, and I am not a really big stout fan.
The staff and brewers are really friendly and willing to talk about just about anything, from beer to history to hockey. They held little tours and were happy to answer everyone’s questions.
I’ve run into the staff at events around the area as well, and their staff was just as friendly then, answering questions about the IPA and the brewing process. If you want a nice, intimate experience with people who know their stuff, then this is a must visit location.

I’m a Buffalo native, and was VERY happy when I heard a new brewery was coming to town. I’ve been to so many different breweries… over a 100 now and I saw what a brewery can and should be. Unfortunately I have never really been a huge fan of what my city has to offer us beer wise… Ithaca and Southern Tier are great but far away. Fast forward 2 years and now we have Community Beer Works just killing it!
–Their IPA finished second in the national IPA contest. and I will say I have tried the other 3 beers in the final 4 and I believe they deserved their spot. The IPA. coming from a big IPA fan is very good. I do feel like some batches are better than others but I have never thought it was bad and sometimes it’s been incredible.
–The Frank is better than most Pale Ales you will find, most people I know like the Frank, it’s light and easy to drink.
–I’m not a brown ale fan but my girlfriend is and loves the Whale.
–Their operation is small, only open 2 days a week, but I’ve been in there many times and they’re nothing but polite. You can taste the beers in the small area and fill up half or full growlers. So glad to have these guys in Buffalo and my only request would be is to pump out a few different varieties like maybe a Choc Stout, a pumpkin beer and Christmas beer.

I’ve heard about Community Beer Works for a while but only recently was I able to give these guys a visit. This brewery is located on Lafayette Street, only a short detour from the 190 making it an easy stop for me on my way home. Upon entering what appears to be an old firehouse I was warmly greeted. I explained that this was my first visit and was promptly offered some samples. You can tell that these guys are passionate about what they do and not afraid to kick back and converse about their history, the brewing process, and all other things beer related. I felt a little weird talking to a guy wearing a t-​shirt and a piercing while wearing my professional work clothes but it was all good. We spoke the same language — beer.
All of the beers were smooth and highly drinkable. I consider myself more of a stout or porter guy but was impressed with the quality of the beer here. All of CBW’s brews were true to their styles. The surprise star which was the Frank, an American Pale Ale. I’ve heard mixed reviews of it, and I’m not usually a big fan of APAs, but I found it tasty. The IPA is definitely a standout. It had a nice citrusy bite to it with some complexity. The Whale was a very good interpretation of an English brown ale. Very smooth with some chocolate and coffee flavor. Defintiely recommended over the typical New Castles of the world. De Mass, a Belgian Amber, was the weakest brew in their lineup but I’ll admit that I’m not a huge fan of the style.
Ultimately I decided to purchase two 32oz growlers. I had the first growler filled with the Frank so I could share with my wife (she loves APAs). The other was filled with «No Information», a Guinness-​like experimental brew I found enjoyable. I’ll keep a star in reserve for if/​when these guys add some higher ABV stouts or aged beers to their lineup. Overall, a must stop for any beer lover.
TIP — This is a small operation so check their website before heading over to be sure they’re open.

Just realized I never rated these guys when I first stopped in to check out the place and grab a growler. Setup is nice inside, as you get to see the brewing system setup and belly up to the tasting bar at the same time.
As to the beers, they definitely do a good job here. Frank and the Whale seem to be the staple beers found at other Buffalo bars. Both are easy drinking goodness. Then one of their newer creations, The IPA, is absolutely delicious. It actually just recently took second place in an National IPA competition beating out very tasty competitors like Founder’s and Bear Republic. Seek it out if you haven’t tried it, you will not be disappointed.
A welcome addition to the micro-​brew scene in Buffalo, allowing me to get my drink on and buy local at the same time.

I remember this group when they were doing samples at the Bidwell market and trying to drum up interest. I consider it a point of pride to have helped on the Kickstarter and been one of the first people to sign their board.
They are, in my mind, one of the best models for what the city of Buffalo needs: a group of friends with a shared hobby, who make a business out of it. The group tentatively started looking for support with Kickstarter and they found overwhelming numbers of people who wanted them to do it. Buffalo is a city that LOVES BEER and these guys are a tribute to that.
But let’s move onto the important thing: the beer. While in general I’m not a fan of Pale Ales (I know, revoke my beer nerd card) and therefore not of Frank, I am a HUGE fan of The Whale, which I make a point to get whenever possible. Their prices are reasonable, especially considering that now that I live in Philadelphia it costs almost twice as much for the same growler fill.

Time was, before the rise of prohibition, your beer came from a local brewer. The brewery would have a series of taverns it delivered to, and everyone was happy. After prohibition, the large breweries who survived rigged the state laws to make it impractical for for small breweries to rebuild… and America became a great beer wasteland for generations.
Well, thankfully we live in a slightly better age. Buffalo has seen a resurgence in breweries, and no group is as scrappy and small as Community Beer Works. Small batch brewing by people who do it as a labor of love.
CBW has some alright beers, some good beers and every now and then a beer that’s almost great. It’s exciting to see where they go from here. I never had a CBW beer I hated, and that itself is an accomplishment.
Stop down and visit. Great, friendly owners who love what they’re doing. Try a pint or two of DeMaas. Excellent beer! I may have to go get a growler filled right now!

This past weekend my friend Anthony and I went to Buffalo… simply for the sake of visiting Buffalo. This was a bit confusing to most of our friends, and even the locals, but we saw something in the city, and by the time we left, we were already planning a return trip. Aside from checking out some Buffalo night life and architecture, we planned to hit up some breweries. After visiting Flying Bison for a tour on Saturday, we met some friendly New Yorkers from outside the city who invited us along to check out another local brewery just five minutes down the road. That brewery was Community Beer Works.
Community Beer Works describe themselves as a nanobrewery. This means they are too small for even a microbrewery. Apparently microbreweries actually have industry standards that determine how large they can be, but the same does not go for a nanobrewery so at what point one becomes a microbrewery is up for debate. There is, however, no debating that Community Beer Works is small. The operation is honestly small enough that it could theoretically run out of a garage (they brew 1.5 barrels per batch — tiny!), but the actual facilities are much nicer than your garage would be.
You enter the building from the side, and a small tasting area is immediately to your left. They’ve fashioned some pipe into stands for two giant slabs of slate that make up their bar tops/​counter space, giving a cool industrial vibe to the area. They brew only four beers, and the «tour» (not a legitimate tour, but I asked to be shown around) took all of twenty seconds. Over to the right are a couple of brite tanks, and around the corner are the brew kettles — all much nicer than your standard home brew kit, but nowhere near the size of your typical microbrewery’s tanks. This was really pretty much all there was to it.
As for the beers, they were good. There was a pale ale called Frank, a Belgian style called De Maas, a brown ale, I think, called The Whale, and an IPA that was billed as a «West Coast IPA». Whether this referred to the West Coast of NY, which would entail Buffalo, or whether it meant it was styled after literal WC IPAs is beyond me, and I can’t remember if this was the full name or not. Being that there were only four, it was fairly easy to sample them all. Anthony and I both started with The Whale, while our two new friends started with De Maas. The whale was good. Next, I said «I’ll do Frank», which went over well with the small crowd gathered around the taps, even though no double entendre was intended. Anthony one-​upped me by saying «I want some Frank in my mouth.» Pretty sure he meant for that to have a double meaning. Frank was kind of average, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for an American pale. De Maas was a nice interpretation of a Belgian Amber, but ultimately, it was the IPA that really stole the show. The floral notes were robust, and there was a really good balance of sweet and bitter. I ultimately ordered a growler of it to take back home with me (note — it was a lil pricier, by a few dollars, than other breweries I’ve visited, but given the size, that’s fine by me).
And folks, a few last notes … I will upload a pic soon, but I should tell you that I collect koozies, and these sons’a’bitches sell growler koozies!!! They didn’t market them as such, but seriously, that’s what it is. So you know I dressed up my growler in a jacket. Lastly, I should comment that the gentleman working the retail shop was super accommodating and friendly. He was proud of what they’d accomplished, happy to share more detail than normally requested when I prompted, and genuinely invested in what he’s doing. Best of luck to these guys in the years ahead.
P. S. These beers are vegetarian!!!