World Series beer battle: Suds taps give insight into Tigers, Giants fans

While the Fall Classic between the San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers pits clubs from two very different cities, the distinctive style and taste of each team’s partisans also pours through the beer taps at their ball yards.

In a trendy, gourmet food-and-drink obsessed place such as San Francisco, a generic “cold beer” at AT&T Park often doesn’t cut the mustard as a companion to the stadium’s pungent garlic fries or a Caribbean-style concoction called the Cha-Cha Bowl. Revelers can choose between 56 different beers inside the waterfront ballpark.

  At Wednesday’s Game 1, hundreds of Giants fans crammed elbow-to-elbow into an adjoining ballpark bar that sells dozens of craft brews ranging from high-octane Belgian Trappist ales to a full suite of city-brewed Anchor Steam concoctions.

“Because San Francisco is such an eclectic city and so diverse, and with all the different foods, people just like selection and they just support local beers,” said Sandie Filipiak, AT&T Park’s director of concessions. “There’s room for a lot, and not every city is that way.”

At Detroit’s Comerica Park, where only a couple of locally made beers are on tap, die-hard Motor City fans are just fine with the unpretentious, established American beer brands.

Detroit is a “blue-collar, domestic beer town” said Bob Thormeier, who oversees food and drink services at the Tigers ballpark. “The younger segment of people are going toward the (craft beer), but a lot of our fans around here grew up on domestic beers. They grew up on your Miller Lights, your Coors Lights, Bud Lights.”

Thanks to scott.