Ward’s Super Market

Stopped in to see if there were any untouched shelf surprises here like BCS or something. Surprised to see a huge wall of craft mirroring another big shelf of bombers and Belgian/German brews. Looked carefully through the nice selection and spotted about 5 Old Stock Cellar Reaerve Brandy bottles. Grabbed one and am having it now. Unexpected and probably worth a stop if you missed out on a release at the shops that get immediately cleaned out. Overall plenty of standard craft stuff like CCB, DirtWolf, Hop Ranch, etc. didn’t really check out the rest of the store but seems like a Whole Foods kind of place for the super hipster. Prices seemed normal for what they had.

Wards...before Tipples existed and before Gatorbev started stocking up on craft beer, this was really the only show in town. Wards is small and ridiculously cramped local super market mainly for finding Whole Foods-like specialty items. But about 1/4 of the store is beer for some reason. There is your run-of-the-mill refrigerated six packs and then cases of random beers including, my personal favorite, Cave Creek Chili Beer! But in all seriousness, there is a giant shelf in here of all single, large format bottles- lots of German and Belgian bottles (and even some random British ones) and of course a few American ones. I’m listing the bottles that come to mind in the "available at this location" part of this page. I haven’t been there recently enough to know if they stock Cigar City like Gatorbev and Tipple’s but I highly doubt it.

One of the only decent places to get craft beers in Gainesville. They have a good selections of European beers and a couple domestics other stores don’t carry.

Ward’s is a grocery store that carries a large beer selection. Their selection of Belgian beers is the best I have seen around, and they also stock many IPAs and Stouts. It’s a grocery store so not all of the workers know about beer, but I guess that’s to be expected. Prices are pretty competitive as well, so I come here a lot.

Ward’s has a better beer selection than some of Gainesville’s designated liquor stores, and it’s only a supermarket! They have an excellent microbrew selection along with imports. Very helpful staff as well. Price: Cheaper than other liquor stores around.