The parking lot off 13th Street doesn’t give much away — a converted industrial building, a hand-painted sign, a couple of picnic tables that suggest someone thought about outdoor seating and then got distracted. Walk in anyway. Recess Brewing has been operating in Columbus’s Midtown corridor since 2019, and it’s grown into one of the more reliable spots in town for a pint that didn’t travel far to reach your glass.
The taproom is wide, high-ceilinged, and deliberately low-key. Bare concrete floors, exposed ductwork, a long bar running most of one wall. They’ve kept the industrial bones without dressing them up in Edison bulbs and reclaimed wood, which is refreshing. The clientele on a given Thursday skews local — a mix of off-duty soldiers from Fort Moore, young professionals, and a few regulars who clearly have assigned stools in their minds even if none exist in practice.
Recess rotates its taps often enough that you should check their social media before you go if there’s a specific style you’re after. That said, a few anchors stay on semi-permanently. Their pale ales tend to be clean and accessible without being boring — not an easy balance — and the darker options, when they have them, lean malty rather than bitter, which plays well in a Georgia summer if you’re eating something heavy alongside. They occasionally collaborate with other regional producers, and those limited runs tend to go fast.
Speaking of food: Recess doesn’t have a full kitchen, but they allow outside food, and several local spots deliver or you can bring your own. It’s the kind of detail that either makes you love a place or sends you somewhere else; if you need a full sit-down dining experience baked in, this isn’t it. But if you want to grab a pizza from somewhere nearby and spend two hours working through a flight, the setup is genuinely accommodating.
Flights run around eight to ten dollars for four pours, which gives you a reasonable survey of what’s on tap without committing to a full pint of something unfamiliar. Full pints hover between five and seven dollars depending on style. It’s not cheap-cheap, but it’s honest pricing for craft beer in a mid-size Georgia city, and the quality justifies it.
Weekend afternoons get busy — sometimes there’s live music, sometimes just a louder crowd. Weeknights are considerably more relaxed, and the staff has time to actually talk through what’s pouring. If you’re the kind of person who asks questions about ABV and fermentation schedules, weeknights are your window. If you’re just looking for a pint after work without a lot of ceremony, it works either way.
Recess doesn’t make a lot of noise about itself, and it doesn’t need to. For a city that’s lost a few of its early craft beer spots over the years, having an independent brewery that’s quietly gotten better at what it does is worth noticing — even if the parking lot still looks like an afterthought.
