Originally posted on April 10, 2024 - bumped back to the top on April 13.

Hi. I was going to do an “introductory” post where I talked about who I am and what I do, but I don’t actually want to do that and you don’t want to read it. I’ll just speed right through introductions and tell you my name is Christopher, I organize a bike club called GIVE UP with a couple of my friends, and most people in the local bike community call me “Bingo” for reasons you don’t care about.

Now you’re up to speed and we can dive right in.

Spring is here, I guess. I mean, sure, we are still seeing below-freezing overnight temperatures somewhat regularly and I am still wearing hoodies from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed, but winter is technically now behind us. Right? We’re allowed to start getting excited about this, I think? I feel like once baseball season starts, you’re allowed to get excited about spring. You don’t necessarily need to get excited about baseball*, but you’re allowed to get excited about spring.

If you’re having a hard time getting yourself in the mood for spring, I’ve done you a favor and produced the following guide to drinking beers outdoors in Pittsburgh. As somebody who does a fair amount of biking around the city though, I haven’t just produced a list of places you can pick and choose from: I’ve mapped out a bicycle route that will provide you with an all-day outdoor beer adventure. Most of this route is flat and four out of five of the stops are very close to our city’s trail system. You don’t have to be a strong bicyclist to do this.

A fantastic patio beer bike route map: 1. Roundabout beer garden; 2. Voodoo North Shore; 3: Helltown taproom; 4: Strange Roots; 5: Trace Brewing

I made this above map to rough out a course to follow. It’s available on Strava as well if that’s how you prefer to do things. The first stop is the Roundabout beer garden off of the North Shore trail. It’s easily accessible, has great beers, and a nice view of the river. Outdoor beers just objectively taste better if you can see bodies of water while you’re drinking them. This is science, you can trust me. While it’s probably best to not spend a lot time thinking about how clean the water you’re looking at is, it does provide a wonderful backdrop. Roundabout scores additional points for having the best shade for sunny days, using large tents instead of umbrellas. This makes them an A+ stop for excessively sunny days (which hopefully we will start getting regularly soon.)

The Roundabout beer garden typically opens for the year in May, but will announce one-off popups to their Instagram stories somewhat regularly.

From there, I suggest rolling down the trail about two miles to Voodoo Brewery / North Shore. Like Roundabout, they also have great beers, and some of the best outdoor seating in the city. On top of this, they add glittery cocktails and a permanent kitchen that offers an unusually great menu. Seriously, I never expected to be legitimately excited about a quinoa burger from a taproom, but now I go out of my way to stop there regularly for one while I’m out biking. Well played, Voodoo. With all that said, this is a good place to get lunch during your bike+beer adventure, as their menu has great options, including some for folks with dietary restrictions. Depending on where you’re sitting you can also see the water and/or people visiting from surrounding counties stumbling out of Tequila Cowboy, which really sets the atmosphere.

This isn’t a beer, but it’s delicious and it’s at Voodoo North Shore

If you’ve not figured it out by now, the name of the game here is pacing yourself. I feel like the best approach is to start early and really stretch the day out. Don’t spend too much time drinking beers at any given stop and be sure to drink plenty of water. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Also, if you’re going to really commit and spend a day doing this, bring sunscreen to apply liberally and often. Trust me on this, I’m speaking from experience.

Once you’ve wrapped up lunch at Voodoo, it’s worth going a little bit further up the trail to take the 16th St. Bridge over to the Strip. Here, not far from the other end of the bridge, you’ll find the Helltown taproom, which has an enormous outdoor seating area. Do this on a weekend and you’ll get prime people watching along with your beers. You’ll also learn how wonderful it is to get to and around the Strip on a weekend without a car. Seriously, I have no idea how people put up with driving to the Strip. It’s absolute madness, but it’s also absolutely avoidable madness. Yes, you can bumble your car around for half an hour spiking your blood pressure while crawling from street to street and lot to lot looking for a place to park, or you can just casually bike in.

If I was just a little bit more mean-spirited, I would describe people who drive into the Strip on weekends just to fight for parking so they can buy cheese at Penn Mac as “urban lifestyle LARPers” but I’m not that mean spirited. Right?

Okay, getting back into our real story here: Are you drinking enough water? I worry about you. Drink some water. Then get back on your bike and head right back across the 16th St. Bridge, down to the trail, and go all the way to the end into Millvale. Not too far off of the trail is the Strange Roots taproom: One of the best patios for drinking beers in the area. I like throwing Strange Roots into a day of patio beers because you really never know what they’re going to have on tap. They really lean into that whole “experimental ales” part of their name. Pittsburgh Sandwich Society has a permanent residence here as well, which is good for many folks who want to eat with their beers, though my vegan friends will probably be disappointed by the lack of options.

My wife got a pretty sick e-bike a few years ago and now I always have company when I want to bike to beers. Shout out to Thick Bikes for recommending the one she ended up buying.

Optional from here (depending on your willingness to bike up hills,) you can leave Millvale, go across the 40th St. Bridge, and head up to Trace Brewing. Trace is possibly tied with Roundabout as my favorite place to drink beers outside. The outdoor space is great, the beers are some of the best in the city, and the people who work there are all just wonderful. Trace usually has a couple non-alcoholic options available too, along with coffee service in case you didn’t heed my warning earlier about this being a “marathon” and not a “sprint.” If I had to make a list of reasons it’s worth developing the leg muscles needed to bike up hills, biking to Trace would be the top of the list. Alternatively, you could skip all of that if you lived in Bloomfield, but we can’t all be hip East Enders now, can we?

Yes, our bike club regularly stops at Trace

If you’re still with me reading this, I’d like to offer a possible alternate final stop that I didn’t put on the map because I was trying to make an easy bike route: Before you leave Trace, put in an order for takeout at Spak Bros. Personally I go for the vegan buffalo seitan melt and some buffalo seitan wings, but you can do whatever you prefer. It’s a free country. Once you put your order in, cut through Bloomfield over to Garfield’s Two Frays brewery and have a drink while you’re waiting for Spak (which is conveniently located next door to Two Frays) to text you that your order is ready. You can eat your food outside in Two Frays’ courtyard while drinking beers (including non-alcoholic beers if that’s what you need at this point, Two Frays makes the absolute best NA beers around) before wrapping up your day, going home, and taking a well-deserved nap.

One final bonus section here: You might be thinking “Bingo, I’m a real cyclist. I’m not going to waste my time with a short easy ride like this.” First off, if this is you, you sound like a real bore who doesn’t know what fun is. You also sound like an unrealistic strawman that I created just to present content that didn’t fit anywhere else. For you, I offer this map:

Oddly enough, 62 miles isn’t the farthest I’ve ever biked for a beer.

A bit outside of the city in Oakdale there is a brewery called Helicon. It’s right off of the Panhandle trail and about 31 miles from my front door, resulting in a 62 mile round trip day. You get there by crossing the McKees Rocks bridge, taking 51 up Neville Island, and then following the Montour Trail to the Panhandle trail. I’ve made this bike ride a bunch of times and it’s a great out-and-back for a nice spring day if you’re the sort of person who is into biking 60 miles for a beer. I am that sort of person. I try to do this a couple times per year with our bike club. My only recommendation is to not do it if it’s rained recently, as the Montour trail gets a peanut butter-like consistency after rain, and that makes the ride a lot less pleasant. On top of a great beer selection, Helicon also has a ton of pinball machines, which can make you feel less like you’re biking 60+ miles for just beer. You’re biking 60+ miles for beer and pinball.

That’s all I got for now. If this is the kind of biking you think might be up your alley and you think you might get along with bike people who plan routes specifically to drink beers outdoors in warm weather, check out our bike club (GIVE UP) on Instagram. We are also on the world wide web at https://giveup.bike. We do about 3-4 regularly scheduled group rides a week and will meet up for beers to go along with bike rides when there’s nothing else going on.

* Early on in this article I suggested that it was okay to not be excited about baseball. That was just a lie. I told you that just to keep you engaged. The Pirates are the only entertaining professional sports team in this city and I will die on this hill if need be.