Hideout Brewing Company

This place was essentially a dirty basement. Everything appeared unclean and gross. The beers they claim as «nitro» are far from it and not one of the bartenders has any clue how to properly pour a nitro. I ordered a Hazlenut IPA and there was absolutely no hazelnut flavor at all. The waitress/​bartender was filling up pitchers of foam out the tap and pouring it everywhere. The beer made my mouth numb and it was disgusting the more i drank. The bathroom is a creepy, dark, dirty cellar. I used to be a fan until i visited the brewery myself and makes me wonder why I’d ever want to drink beer from a place that has 0 clue what they are doing. Get it together!

Loved this brewery. A little off the beaten path but worth the cheap über ride to get there. The standout beer here was the coconut almond one. Can really taste both these flavors and a unique taste. Sin’ amen another favorite as well as smash ale. Also really enjoyed the cream soda on tap. It’s non alcoholic but made for a good in between drink during the flight. They have a popcorn station with lots of seasonings which is a nice touch. They also have video games upstairs which is nice. This was hands down the most underrated brewery we visited in GR! Don’t miss it!

Beer is amazing! The atmosphere is like cheers, where there isn’t really any food to buy, but they have popcorn to eat. I would definitely come back here again to drink the awesome beer

Wife and I worked a beer festival here In Saint Joe. And had our first taste of beer from The Hide Out. At that point we were very impressed I believe it was called Tommy Gun Red Ale. So when we made it to Grand Rapids to visit our daughter and Son-​inlaw we decided to go to The Hide Out.
Walking in I found the place to be dirty and felt like basement bar. We ordered a beer each. I found my Hide Out Red to be sour and not cold, thier tap system looks like someone put it together out of old kegerator parts. I was disappointed this beer was not like what I had at our local festival. Thier beer menu is all over the place and until they get focused on the art of brewing beer, and not just a few home brewers coming together and play brewmasters. They will not move to the next level and consistency in thier beer. I have been to hundreds of brewerys in a five state area including Maine. and sampled thousands of micro beers over the last 30 years. I have to rate the Hide Out brew 5 out of 10 on my beer scale. Nothing special.

I gotta say, I love the vibe at the Hideout. Chillin downstairs and bringing in your own food is cool. Their beers are pretty good, some room for improvement, but pretty good.

A) This place actually is hard to find if you’ve never been there and it’s dark outside.
B) Their drink selection is, across the board, totally funky. If you call something Pumpkin Cider, I darn well expect it to taste like pumpkin — not grapefruit and strangeness.
C) Do not order food. Their «kitchen» area is a fully visible and fully scary looking microwave.
D) Their back patio area is delightfully weird and super adorable, especially at night in the fall when no one else is around. It’s rather whimsical and odd and fun to roam around in when you have the spot to yourselves.
Verdict: If it’s the only place open close by and you need alcohol, take a shot. Don’t expect anything magical — you won’t really find it here.

I did not try any food, just the beer. Varying levels of quality. The stouts were particularly excellent.
⁴⁄₅ stars in most cities. 3.5÷5 in Grand Rapids because you have to grade on a curve with such strong beer competition around here.

Beer, cider, and mead on tap are great. Looking forward to trying that delicious smelling pumpkin ale!!! Come on fall!

The Hideout.
Once there was a group of beer-​makers who decided one day to find a place where they could brew and drink and have a grand old time.
«Hey what about the abandoned Hubba Tubba building?»
«I heard it was haunted!»
«Yeah, they say if you listen at midnight you can still hear the sloshing of trashy couples paying for by the hour hot-​tubbing.»
«sounds PERFECT!»
So our brewers moved in, and literally with as few renovations as possible set up brewery.
«Sooo there’s a pool. Hmmm»
«No problem.» (busts out clean fill dirt wanted sign)
«Perfect! I’ll bring the horse shoes!»
Then they decided what to brew…
«I know, lets just brew whatever the hell we want.»
«yeah, like lets make a stout but with chocolate and peanut butter»
«and red velvet cake!»
«and coconut!»
«how about banana splits?»
«YEAH»
Then they said its not enough we have this totally awesome place we must share it with the masses.
So they opened it to the masses.
And the masses came and demanded hot pockets and pretzels, and popcorn. To go with their fantastical brewed beer.
And it was good.
Hella good.
Thank you Hideout.

This has been one of my favorite breweries for several years. The beers are delicious and usually the atmosphere is super casual and friendly. Like you’re hanging out at your friend’s house. Unfortunately, my last trip there this past weekend soured me a bit.
The bartender was very rude. Skipped over me several times for my order, made rude comments about my friend when (I guess) she thought she was out of earshot. She also kept sneezing and coughing while she was pouring and serving beers. Tasty.
We went outside to chill and had to listen to a girl with bright pink hair speak very loudly about her sex life. To make it worse, we’re pretty sure she works there.
We ended up leaving without buying glasses or growlers as we’d planned because we were just turned off from the place. I know I’ll be back because I love the beers, but I hope there’s at least a different bartender in place.

This brewery is appropriately named. It’s not super easy to find, but if you know what you’re getting into, it’s worth the work to find it. Here are a few tips from my experience.
1. If you’re sitting upstairs you will not get service, you’ll need to walk down to the bar for refills — just expect it and it won’t upset you.
2. A lot of things are a bit do-​it-​yourself here.
3. Dust is ok. Spiders are ok. General uncleanliness in the dining room is ok. It’s part of the atmosphere.
4. The beer is the reason you are here. So the fact that there is no kitchen shouldn’t bother you much. The beer is good.
Having said all that, for myself, I prefer good beer with a nicer atmosphere, better service, and good food all combined and GR has plenty of places where I can get it all together, so Hideout is not tops on my list.
If you’ve never been, you should go once. You’ll either love it and want to go again and again, or at least you’ll leave saying «That was an interesting experience and the beer was great.»

Hideout Brewery is well named, sequestered at back end of a secluded road that first appears to lead into a small forest grove, and then curves through some apartment complexes. The exterior even appears a little overgrown, the inside seems to wink at the Speak-​easy kitsch, but what comes out of the taps is polished, well-​crafted beer! The warren of pathways to the different seating venues adds to the secretive feel, but the staff is open & friendly, and so were most of the patrons. I arrived by bicycle, and though there was no bike parking, I didn’t feel unwelcome. I tried the Gangster IPA first, which was very good, but followed it with the One Upper Double IPA, and that’s the beer I would recommend: great malt flavor, smooth with a clean finish. You don’t want to miss Hideout on your tour of Grand Rapids breweries, and if you’re just looking for a place with excellent beer and a little less folderol, this is the place.

My favorite brewery in Grand Rapids. They always have a few staples that I love but have an ever rotating list of fun and interesting brews you will WANT to try. If you like the over hopped beers or a cider, they have what you want.
Great atmosphere and lots of nightlife type stuff including karaōke, trivia, bands, video game nights, etc.
I would highly recommend this spot. It’s one of our favorites.

When my friend and I pulled up to this place my first thought was, «Is it condemned or something?» After going inside, I saw that it was indeed open… but should be condemned. Absolutely disgusting. We walked in and were stared at, yet ignored by each and every person there. After standing in shock for a minute, with no interaction from the employees standing at the end of the bar, we found our way outside. We passed the overgrown grassy hole in the middle of the area to shaky little table. We sat, and sat. We had no idea if we were supposed to go inside to get beer or what, but clearly no one was coming to assist us and there wasn’t anyone around to ask. We walked out and I couldn’t sanitize my hands fast enough. Unfortunately the hand wash couldn’t get the smell of chlorine and filth off of my clothes. I continue to ask myself, how is this place seriously still in business?

Hideout is on the northwest corner of the Grand Rapids metro area, or at least it appears that way on a map. The cool thing about Grand Rapids is that their highway system is very good — nothing is more than about 15 minutes away.
Hideout brewing is a small brewery with grandiose creativity. They had I think 32 taps, all of their own beer on tap. Some mainstream styles, but some other gems like Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout, or a Coconut Almond brown (Maybe it was a porter. I drank a lot of different samples that day.) Flights were available and they even had a $ 35 «Around The world» where you got to sample 25 of their beers, or for $ 25 you could do the «Southern Hemisphere» and still try all 25, but with two ounce samples instead of four ounce samples.
The atmosphere is supposed to be prohibition that of a prohibition era speakeasy, and it does an OK job at that. It’s small, and somewhat divey, but that’s part of the character. The brewhouse also looks small — how they churn out that variety of beers is beyond me. What is cool is they have a lot going on there. They have chess on Saturdays, retro gaming on Monday, and other events to bring you in. There also seemed to be board games and whatnot to pull out while you enjoyed their beer.
Overall, the beer was good. Not my favorite, and by far not the best in GR, but definitely good. The creativity and unique flavors they bring to their beers definitely makes this place worth a visit. This place reminded me of a home brewery on steroids.
There was free popcorn too — with about 15 different flavorings you can doctor it up with all for the taking!
The place is about 3 minutes off of the expressway, but you will end up going down a long road with trees on both sides for a while, past some apartment complexes, and past the Fox 17 Television studios and transmitter lot. The outdoor «Beer garden» leaves a lot to be desired — as it’s pretty much an old pool that’s about half full of soil where weeds are growing. From the one view I took out the back, it looked like something American Pickers would climb through looking for treasure. I also head there was an old «soak and poke» hot tub club on site, which lends to the faint aroma of chlorine that is in the air in and around the brewery.
Definitely give this place a shot if you’re in GR!

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT skip Hideout!
On a brewery tour of Grand Rapids, this was stop number 8 and I’d probably rank it as my 2^nd favorite brewery of the trip. I liked it even better than Vivant and Bell’s. It smells funny, the back is really strange (empty pool with overgrown plants and outdoor games), but GOOD GOD, this is good beer!
My husband and I split a flight of 10 beers that included the Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout, Red Velvet Cream Ale, Coconut Almond Brown, Hazelnut IPA (I don’t like IPAs and loved this), Hazelnut stout, and some others. Obviously the ones described just now stand out to me the most, but of the 10, there wasn’t a single one we didn’t like.
The service was great, too. We just sat at the bar and the bartender was friendly and attentive and we couldn’t stop telling him how good the beer was. We bought 3 bottles to take home with us and I can’t wait to bust into them. I’ll definitely be back if I’m in the area and will keep my fingers crossed that they start shipping beers down south!

Sitting inside or outside of the Hideout is like hanging out at your neighbor’s basement bar. Maybe it’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s comfortable with strong beers and a laid back atmosphere.
Here’s what I mean: 5 stars for their beer. All the way! When I stopped in Saturday afternoon they had about 26 different beers, ciders, and meads, all made in house. They don’t let the question «What if» stop them either– in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s a direct challenge when they are making the beer. Like «what if we added coconut to this». Boom– you get the Coconut Almond Brown Ale that I tried that was surprisingly tasty. They have a cinnamon red velvet cream ale (sadly does not taste exactly like the cake but it still good), a peanut Butter Chocolate Stout, and a summer sweet, cider-​like mead (Mead is a honey wine which also happens to be gluten free).
Finding the brewery is a trip in itself. It’s off a side street on Plainfield, tucked back where the Fox 17 station is. It’s this long winding, tree-​lined road. It’s very speakeasy like that, which is probably why they have a loose roaring 20’s themed beer selection going on. Fun fact about The Hideout is that years ago there was a hot tub place next door — the kind of place you could rent a hot tub for an hour (yucky). The hot tub place isn’t there anymore, but there is still a faint smell of chlorine in the bar. Not the worst problem I’ve ever encountered a bar, but it’s notable. And they don’t have food. Well, other Hot Pockets. Like Hot Pockets that they open up from the box and put in the microwave– they do that.
Here’s where I’m torn on what to rate the place: the outside «beer garden». One– two stars. The «beer garden» is actually an empty, overgrown swimming pool surrounded by cement and some rickety iron chairs and tables. It looks like nature is taking back the empty swimming pool. It’s covered in snaking vines and tall grass. There is a moderate about of dirt in it for horseshoes though. Maybe they are trying to go for the «prairie look» around the patio, but to me the foliage looked overgrown and messy. Across from where we sat, there was some kind of tarp strung up to hide kegs, but it just looked like a make-​shift medic tent from times of war.
I’m going to say 3 stars for now, but since I like the beers I think I’ll be back. Hopefully, there will be some landscaping outside to boost the star rating back up.

Their beer is mediocre and the staff is horrible. Plus the place itself is grimy and smells like chlorine.

This was one of my stops on a (self led) beer tour of Grand Rapids. It’s a little too far from downtown to walk to, but it’s a very short drive. I wanted to stop here because they have a much larger beer selection than many comparable sized breweries. The selection stood out to me because there were a lot of interest flavors on the menu, as well as a couple types of meads and ciders.
My friends and I all got flights, so we had a large variety between us. The beers ranged from «ok» to «very good.» Not the best beer in Grand Rapids, but the unique flavors definitely make it worth checking out. The employees were friendly and service was fast for the most part. A large group came in not long after mine, and the two employees struggled to keep up. I could see service slowing down at peak hours.
Prices were good at the bar, but growlers, etc. were surprisingly expensive. The 16oz bottles were reasonably priced to fill, but the 32oz bottles were the same as I regularly pay to fill a 64 oz bottle elsewhere. So while I won’t be taking home their beer, I’d gladly stop in again the next time I’m in Grand Rapids.

Great place for microwbrew fans. Lots of original beer on tap. Some bar food but nothing spectacular. Go here for the beer not food. Chess on Saturdays and lots of old school games, n64, original Nintendo, etc…