Roswell went from zero craft breweries to a legitimate beer town in about a decade. Four breweries now operate inside the city limits, plus a meadery, a taphouse, a beer market and a bottle shop that together give you a full weekend of local pours without leaving town. If you have already read The Ultimate Local’s Guide to Canton Street in Roswell Georgia, this guide covers the part of the drinking scene that sits off the main restaurant strip.

Here is every brewery in Roswell, Georgia, what each one actually brews, what the room feels like, and which ones are worth planning a night around. Ratings and review counts are Google snapshots taken August 27, 2026. Taproom hours in this category change constantly, so verify before you drive.

Understanding Roswell’s Brewery Scene

Roswell’s four breweries are not variations on the same idea. They split cleanly into three different business models, and knowing which is which saves you a wasted trip.

Production breweries with taprooms. Gate City Brewing Company and Variant Brewing brew on site at scale and sell most of what they make through their own taprooms and cans to go. Neither runs a full kitchen. You go for beer, and food arrives from a truck, a delivery order, or your own bag.

Brewpubs. From the Earth Brewing Company and Voodoo Brewing Co. are restaurants first. Full kitchens, full bars, table service, and beer as one part of the offer rather than the whole thing. If you are bringing people who do not care about beer, these are the safer picks.

Beer bars that are not breweries. Proper Hop Taphouse, Roswell Beer Market and Oak Street Bottle Shop pour other people’s beer, often better and more variously than a single brewery can. They belong in any honest guide to drinking local in Roswell, but they do not brew.

One more distinction that matters. Not all “brewery” beer in Roswell is brewed in Roswell. Gate City, Variant and From the Earth brew on site. Voodoo Brewing Co. Roswell is a franchise of a Pennsylvania brand, and its core beer is produced by the corporate brewery and shipped in, with hard seltzers, hard sodas and hard kombucha made on site. That is not a knock on the beer. It is just a different thing than a local brewhouse, and the distinction is worth knowing if drinking local is the point of your night.

Roswell Breweries at a Glance

Brewery	Address	Type	Google Rating (Aug 2026)	Kitchen	Best For
Variant Brewing	66 Norcross St	Production brewery	4.8 (548)	No	Serious beer, NEIPAs, trivia
Voodoo Brewing Co.	1010 Mansell Rd, Ste 180	Brewpub (franchise)	4.7 (328)	Yes	Food and beer, lakeside patio
Gate City Brewing Company	43 Magnolia St	Production brewery	4.6 (594)	No	Downtown walkability, events
From the Earth Brewing Co.	1570 Holcomb Bridge Rd	Brewpub	4.5 (878)	Yes	Live music, full dinner
The Artillery Room @ Gate City	932 Canton St	Cocktail bar (Gate City)	4.8 (23)	No	Cocktails on draft, private events
Proper Hop Taphouse	587 Atlanta St	Taphouse	4.9 (169)	No	Rotating guest taps, quiet
Roswell Beer Market	1186 Canton St	Beer bar and bottle shop	4.8 (131)	No	40+ taps, cans to go
5/4 Meadery	35B Oak St	Meadery	4.9 (80)	No	Mead, something different
Oak Street Bottle Shop	75a Oak St	Bottle shop and events	4.8 (125)	No	$5 Fridays, private events

Ratings and review counts are as of August 27, 2026. Refresh before reshare.

Gate City Brewing Company

43 Magnolia St, Roswell, GA 30075

Gate City is where Roswell’s beer scene starts. Founded in 2015 by Brian Borngesser and Pat Rains, who met through the Roswell Rotary Club and bonded over home brewing, it was the city’s first craft brewery. The name comes from Atlanta’s 19th-century nickname as the Gate City of the New South, and the phoenix in the logo follows the same thread.

The space. Two former Roswell mechanic shops at the corner of Canton and Magnolia, converted into a 30-barrel brewhouse and a roughly 3,000 square foot taproom pouring up to 20 house beers on draft. The taproom is down the stairs and around the back from street level, which trips up first-timers. A roll-up garage door on the Canton Street side opens the compound in warm weather.

What else is on the property. Gate City is really three venues. The taproom is the beer. The Artillery Room at 932 Canton Street, roughly 3,700 square feet with a terraced entrance, pours eight house-crafted cocktails on draft plus Gate City’s packaged beer. The Backhouse handles private events, and reviewers who have thrown parties for 50 or 60 people there consistently rate the bar staff highly.

Programming. Live music on weekends during the warmer months is the constant. Reviewers also reference comedy nights, a cornhole league and salsa nights, though the schedule rotates, so check their calendar rather than trusting a review from last year.

Go if you want to walk to a brewery from dinner on Canton Street. Nothing else in Roswell is this close to the restaurant district.

Variant Brewing

66 Norcross St, Roswell, GA 30075

Variant is the beer drinker’s brewery in Roswell, and at 4.8 stars across more than 500 reviews it is the highest-rated brewery in the city. Family owned and operated, established in 2017, with owner and brewmaster Matthew Curling running the brewhouse and Lauren Curling as general manager.

The beer. The name is the mission statement. Variant works through traditional and non-traditional styles by modifying recipes with unusual adjuncts, grain bills, hop schedules and yeasts. The house lineup includes Seraphic, an approachable blonde ale, Cashmere, a New England IPA that regulars rate against the best in metro Atlanta, and Nitro Coffee Dark Alchemy, an oatmeal stout infused with cold brew. Sours, goses and seltzers rotate through. The tap list runs to roughly 18 draft options, essentially all brewed on site.

The room. New construction that reviewers repeatedly compare to a church, with covered outdoor seating and picnic tables. It is not a big room, so inside seats go fast on weekend evenings. Dog friendly, kid friendly, TVs for sports.

No kitchen. Variant serves beer, seltzer and water. Snacks are available for purchase, food trucks park outside regularly, and bringing your own food or having delivery sent in is normal and accepted.

Programming. Trivia runs Tuesday nights at 7:00 PM.

Parking. This is the one real friction point. Variant has limited parking of its own. Regulars park in the library lot across the street or find a spot in downtown Roswell and walk over, which is an easy five minutes from Canton Street.

Go if you care about what is in the glass more than what is on the plate.

From the Earth Brewing Company

1570 Holcomb Bridge Rd, Roswell, GA 30076

From the Earth was Roswell’s first brewpub and it remains the most complete night out of the four. Located in the Connexion Shopping Center in East Roswell, run by the Stevens family, and built on a farm-to-table philosophy that shapes the menu as much as the beer. It won USA Today’s Readers’ Choice award for Best Brewpub in 2020.

The food. This is a real restaurant, not a brewery with a fryer. The signature From the Earth plate, beer can chicken with mashed potatoes and collards, shrimp scampi skillet, a house-grind burger with pimento cheese and bacon jam. Reviewers rate the bar program among the best in North Atlanta, which is unusual for a brewpub.

The beer. A rotating seasonal lineup rather than a wall of IPAs. Revolution, a Mexican lager, gets named most often as the summer pick.

The music. This is what actually separates From the Earth from everything else in Roswell. Thursday nights are the weekly live music staple, and the Back Porch Concert Series brings in touring acts for outdoor shows. Past and recent lineups have included Leftover Salmon, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Cowboy Mouth, Dogs In A Pile and The Producers. Tickets for Back Porch shows are sold in advance and gates typically open around 7:00 PM.

Know before you go. Closed Mondays. The Back Porch shows are staged outdoors in the adjacent lot rather than inside the brewpub, and seating policies for those shows have drawn complaints, so read the event email carefully rather than assuming you can bring a chair.

For a fuller look at the East Roswell dining and music corridor, Roswell Pulse covered it in East Roswell’s Premier Destination for Craft Beer, Fine Dining, and Live Music.

Go if you want dinner, drinks and a show in one stop.

Voodoo Brewing Co. Roswell

1010 Mansell Rd, Ste 180, Roswell, GA 30076

Voodoo opened December 14, 2024, as the Pennsylvania brand’s first Georgia location and its 24th brewpub overall, run by franchisees James and Betsy Rouse. Roughly 3,300 square feet with 86 seats inside and a patio seating around 30 more.

What is brewed where. Core Voodoo beer is produced by the corporate brewery and shipped to the location. The Roswell store was set up as the first franchise in the system to make alcohol on site, specifically hard kombucha, hard sodas and hard seltzers. The taproom runs roughly 24 taps curated across styles from hop-forward IPAs to stouts and seasonals.

The room. A storefront space in a Mansell Road center about a mile off GA-400 Exit 8, with a patio overlooking a pond that most reviewers rate as the best feature. Dogs are welcome on the patio. Large TVs for sports.

The food and the ordering. Full kitchen with elevated pub fare, pizza and mussels showing up most in reviews. Ordering runs primarily through a QR code and app, with servers circulating as backup. That system draws the most consistent criticism in reviews, so if you dislike app ordering, know that going in.

Worth noting. Voodoo runs a genuinely broad non-alcoholic program including a full mocktail menu and NA beers, which is rare in this category and makes it the easiest of the four for a mixed group.

Go if you are on the east side of town, want food and beer in one place, or need a venue that works for people who are not drinking.

Where Else to Drink Local Beer in Roswell

These are not breweries, but leaving them out would give you an incomplete picture of the city.

Proper Hop Taphouse (587 Atlanta St) holds a 4.9 rating across 169 reviews, the highest of any beer destination in Roswell. Rotating taps that lean toward Georgia breweries, a whiskey selection, and a downstairs speakeasy area. Owner Patrick is known for remembering regulars by name. Closed Monday and Tuesday, and it does not open until midweek afternoons, so check hours.

Roswell Beer Market by the Stout Brothers (1186 Canton St) sits at the north end of Canton Street with more than 40 taps plus a deep bottle and can selection to go. Half-price wine pours on Tuesdays and $5 pints on Fridays. Dog friendly. This is the single best selection of beer in the city.

5/4 Meadery (35B Oak St) is the outlier and the most interesting stop for anyone who thinks they have already tried everything Roswell has. Traditional mead plus experimental batches, darts, a small rustic room, and an owner who will walk you through the styles if you have never had mead before. It also runs watch parties for F1 and other events.

Oak Street Bottle Shop (75a Oak St) is only open to the general public on a limited schedule built around $5 Friday, with an outdoor space and live music. The rest of the week it functions largely as an event venue, and it gets strong marks for parties of 50 or more.

The Artillery Room @ Gate City (932 Canton St) technically belongs to Gate City but functions as its own venue with cocktails on draft rather than beer. Beer selection lives at the taproom around the corner, not here.

Worth the Short Drive

If you are building a longer crawl, four more breweries sit within about 20 minutes.

Six Bridges Crabapple (1850 Heritage Walk, Milton) is the second location of Six Bridges, with frequently rotating taps, a courtyard that works for kids and dogs, and a full cocktail menu. Closed Mondays.

Hyde Brewing (3300 Heritage Walk, Milton) pairs a brewery with a Mexican kitchen in the Crabapple market district. Tacos, elotes, a house Mexican lager, and a much larger space than the exterior suggests. Closed Mondays.

Pontoon Brewing (8601 Dunwoody Pl, Sandy Springs) is the biggest room of the group, with a large taproom, games, rotating food vendors and a strong outdoor area.

Round Trip East Cobb (4475 Roswell Rd, Marietta) is Round Trip Brewing’s second location, notable for a genuinely good kitchen including schnitzel and standout vegetarian options.

A Note on Closed Breweries and Stale Listings

If you search for breweries in Roswell, you will likely see Abbey of the Holy Goats Brewery at 4000 Northfield Way. Do not drive there. The Belgian-style brewery, founded by Kathy Davis, closed its taproom and listed its brewhouse and foeder for sale, and Yelp and multiple beer industry directories now carry it as closed. Its Google listing is still live with no operating hours attached, which is the tell. Several aggregator sites also still publish old tasting hours for it.

This is a running problem with brewery listings generally. Taprooms open and close faster than the directories update, and Google, Yelp, Untappd and the aggregators frequently disagree. If a brewery’s listing shows no hours or has no reviews from the last year, call before you go.

Building a Roswell Brewery Crawl

The four breweries are not walkable to each other. Gate City and Variant are about a five minute walk apart in the historic district. From the Earth is roughly four miles east on Holcomb Bridge, and Voodoo is about three and a half miles northeast on Mansell. Plan on a rideshare or a designated driver if you want more than two.

The walkable version. Start at Gate City on Magnolia, walk five minutes east to Variant on Norcross, then finish at Roswell Beer Market at the north end of Canton Street or 5/4 Meadery on Oak Street. All within the historic district, no driving between stops.

The full-city version. Start with dinner and a show at From the Earth on a Thursday, then move west into downtown. Or reverse it: afternoon beers at Variant, dinner on Canton Street, nightcap at the Artillery Room.

Parking. Downtown on-street parking in the paid zone runs $2 per hour with a $16 daily maximum under the city’s pilot program, currently scheduled through December 31, 2026. Free options remain, including the Southern Post deck with roughly 600 spaces. The Roswell Downtown Parking Wizard maps which lots are free and which are paid before you leave the house. For Variant specifically, the library lot across the street is the local move.

How to Choose

If you get one brewery visit in Roswell, make it Variant. It has the best beer, the highest rating, and the clearest point of view, and it is walkable from downtown.

If you want the full evening rather than just a beer, From the Earth is the answer, particularly on a Thursday or a Back Porch night.

If you want to fold a brewery into a Canton Street dinner without moving your car, Gate City is the only real option and it is a good one.

If you are bringing a group that includes people who do not drink beer, Voodoo has the broadest non-alcoholic menu in the city.

And if you have done all four already, 5/4 Meadery and Proper Hop are the two stops most locals have still never made.

Four breweries, one meadery, and a walkable historic district. Roswell earned its pint.