A second iteration of my favorite beer store in Indy has opened up shop on the north side to go along with its long-standing south side location. If you have been to Parti-Pak before, then you know that their calling card is their massive craft beer selection, and this store certainly follows that blueprint, and quite possibly exceeds it. This location was most recently Brandywine Liquors, which was then converted to Parti-Pak in October of 2014, per the guy working there when I visited. Due to a poor social media presence and seemingly no website, it took over a year for me to realize this store even existed. It immediately shoots into the #1 spot of places to get craft beer in the area, unless there is some unknown gem that I haven’t been to. They have rows and rows of craft beer, arranged in sections of both domestic and foreign. They group the beers together by brewery, so you have to search through the entire selection if you are looking for a certain style, but you are bound to find what you are looking for. They have a little bit of everything, from high alcohol, super hoppy, and unique flavored beers, to more normal styles that are nice to sit around and sip on anytime. They have plenty of local options, along with a ton of beers from breweries that I never knew existed from all over the world. Everything here can be sold by the bottle, and it is nice to be able to select single bottles from such a large variety of options. It bothers me that they don’t put prices on anything. The store on the south part of town had prices for most things the last time I was in there, but this store didn’t have a single price on anything in the beer aisles. That’s the thing keeping me from giving this a 5 star rating. I got a few mixed 6 packs of all craft microbrews that included plenty of doubles, imperials, and unique beers and I ended up right around $ 15 a 6 pack, so you are looking at around $ 2.50 a beer, which isn’t bad for buying everything in singles. That being said, the prices for the beers I bought seemed to jump between around $ 1.70 and $ 3.50 each, so you could certainly have a cheaper or more expensive trip depending on what you happened to grab. Be careful, since they also sell bottles of the really rare and crazy stuff for $ 7+ for a 12 oz bottle, so you don’t want to end up with a whole bunch of those. The staff was nice. There was one guy there who was really helpful in recommending beers based on the style. This store is a lot nicer than the other one, and given the same distance to drive to one of the other, this new store is definitely the one I will choose. Although I was just here for the craft beer, they also have all of the light domestic stuff, hard alcohol, mixers, and everything else you could be looking for in any other liquor store, so it is definitely a one-stop place to get something for everybody.
