The Ultimate Guide to Des Moines Breweries

I moved into brewery coverage the way most people discover the Des Moines beer scene: by accident, at a birthday party, at a place with a patio that turned out to be way better than it needed to be. That’s kind of the whole story of craft beer here. Nobody’s chasing hype the way they might in Denver or Asheville.

Des Moines breweries mostly just quietly make good beer, put it next to a bike trail or a river or a dog park, and let word get around.

There are more than a dozen breweries and taprooms worth your time in the metro right now, spread from Sherman Hill to Ankeny to a converted train depot in Bondurant. A couple of well-loved spots have closed in the last year or two — more on that below, because pretending otherwise would just get you standing outside a dark building. But the scene as a whole is healthy, a little scrappy, and very much still building.

This guide covers where to go by neighborhood, a walkable East Village crawl if you want to do it car-free, where to sit outside, and a nod to the festivals that deserve their own guide. Consider this the map. Bring a jacket for the patios and a designated driver for the rest.

If you want the one-sentence version: Des Moines beer is unfussy. You won’t find a lot of $18 pours or velvet-rope taprooms. What you will find is a lot of breweries that treat their patio as seriously as their beer list — which makes sense in a state where the window for sitting outside comfortably is maybe five months long, and everyone knows it.

The other throughline is geography. A striking number of DSM breweries sit on or near a bike trail — Confluence backs up to the trail along Gray’s Lake, 515 Brewing sits on the Clive Greenbelt, Firetrucker is a short pedal from the High Trestle Trail. That’s not an accident. Breweries here grew up alongside the metro’s trail system, and a lot of regulars will tell you their favorite taproom doubles as a turnaround point on a ride.

Heads up: the metro brewery map changed again in 2026. Twisted Vine Brewery ended service July 5, 2026, and HiFi Brew Lounge closed June 27, 2026. Peace Tree’s East Village taproom, Kinship Brewing’s Waukee taproom, Mistress Brewing’s Ankeny taproom, and Fox Brewing in Valley Junction are also closed. The active recommendations below exclude those locations, but hours still change, so check the linked brewery page before making a special trip.

This is the tightest, most walkable stretch of the scene, and it’s the one I’d point a visitor to first.

Just west of downtown, the Sherman Hill neighborhood punches absurdly above its weight for a few blocks of historic houses.

Confluence Brewing Company (1235 Thomas Beck Rd) is the closest thing Des Moines has to an institution at this point, and its beer garden is the reason. The outdoor space holds 350-plus people, has its own 12-tap outdoor bar so you never have to go inside, and looks out over Gray’s Lake and the downtown skyline. It’s bike-trail-accessible, proudly dog-friendly, and doesn’t serve food — bring your own, order delivery, or catch one of the food trucks that show up on busy nights.

Live music runs Thursdays and, in warmer months, Fridays too.

Barn Town Brewing (9500 University Ave, Suite 1110, West Des Moines) has been going since 2017 and built a loyal following on its farm-motif taproom, dog-friendly patio, and a fruited sour program that gets genuinely weird in a good way — cotton candy, peanut butter and jelly, caramel apple. Twenty-six taps, six year-round core beers, and enough gluten-free options that it’s an easy pick for a mixed group.

Ankeny has quietly become a genuine second hub for the metro’s beer scene, helped along by the High Trestle Trail running right through it.

515 Brewing Company (7700 University Ave, Clive) is easy to drive past — it’s tucked into an unassuming strip mall — but it’s become a real neighborhood living room, with live music on Thursdays and “Art Nights” on Mondays. Its back patio sits right on the Clive Greenbelt Trail, and the taproom snack game (ice cream sandwiches from Thelma’s, cheese boxes from a local cheese shop) is stronger than you’d expect from a place with no kitchen.

Here’s a loose, walkable route for a Saturday afternoon in the downtown/East Village core, best done on foot or by bike so nobody has to be the designated driver the whole day.

Start at El Bait Shop on the downtown side of the river for a flight. Walk east to Iowa Taproom for a broad sampler of Iowa-made beer, then head south toward SingleSpeed’s Des Moines taproom near Principal Park. This revised route uses currently operating stops and keeps the walking portion manageable.

Realistically, three stops is a good afternoon. Four is a good day. Don’t be the person who tries to do all five and remembers none of them.

If outdoor seating is the whole point for you, a few places rise above “has a patio”:

Des Moines has a real festival calendar built around beer — most notably Des Moines Beer Week, a multi-day citywide celebration that’s been running since 2014 with tap takeovers, brewery tours, and special releases across the metro, and the Iowa Craft Brew Festival at Water Works Park, which pulls in dozens of Iowa breweries plus regional guests for a single big Saturday of sampling. Both happen annually, though the exact dates shift year to year, so I’m not going to guess at them here.

We’ve got a full festivals and events guide in the works that’ll cover dates, tickets, and what to expect — this piece is just here to point you toward the taprooms themselves.

I’d resist the urge to treat this like a scavenger hunt. The fun of the Des Moines beer scene isn’t checking off all fourteen places in a summer — it’s finding the two or three that feel like yours. Maybe that’s Lua on a Tuesday because it’s close to your apartment and the smashburger is genuinely great. Maybe it’s Confluence on a Thursday because live music and a lake view is exactly what a Thursday should be.

Maybe it’s dragging your out-of-town friends to Backpocket for duckpin bowling because nobody believes you that a brewery has a bowling alley until they see it.

Go find yours. And if a favorite of mine has closed by the time you read this, forgive me — this town’s beer scene moves fast enough that even a well-fact-checked guide has an expiration date.