Breweries in Cottonwood

Belfry Brewery, 791 North Main Street, is on the Old Town strip, pairing its beer with food from a wood-fired grill. Being on Main matters: it means you can fold it into an afternoon that also takes in the tasting rooms without moving the car.

Two-Tailed Brewing Company, 529 West Mingus Avenue, is a brewery pub a few minutes away, off the Old Town strip and among the ordinary working part of town.

Beer in a wine valley

Two breweries is not a shortage, it is the honest proportion. The Verde Valley’s drinks industry is wine, for reasons of climate, elevation and the river, and everything about the visitor trade here follows the vines. Brewing has no equivalent local advantage, so what exists is here because somebody wanted to brew, not because the valley made it easy.

That tends to produce the better kind of small brewery. Both of these are independent, and neither is trying to be a wine tasting room with beer.

Fitting them into Old Town

Belfry is on the same half-mile of North Main as the tasting rooms, so the natural shape of an afternoon is to park once and walk: a couple of tasting rooms, then beer, then food. Our Old Town guide covers that stretch block by block, with the parking, and the Cottonwood things to do guide sets it in the rest of the town.

Two-Tailed is a short drive or a longer walk from that strip.

Getting home

The Verde Shuttle runs Cottonwood to Sedona hourly from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days, for $2 each way, which is the cheap answer if you are staying up the hill. Within Cottonwood itself, Old Town is compact enough to walk and parking is free, so the sensible plan is to leave the car where you started and collect it tomorrow if it comes to that.