The building itself will tell you something before you even order: a converted 1930s textile mill on the west side of town, brick walls thick enough to hold a chill in August, and a patio that faces nothing in particular except parking and sky. Hoots Beer Co. sits on Trade Street in the West End, and if you’ve been sleeping on it because Foothills gets most of the ink, you’re missing a genuinely different kind of afternoon.
Hoots opened in 2015, founded by a group of partners who wanted something neighborhood-scaled. The taproom reflects that intention. It’s not huge, not loud, and not trying to be. You’ll find maybe a dozen beers on draft on a given visit — their own plus a few guests — and a short food menu that doesn’t overpromise. Order the pretzels with beer cheese if they’re on. They’re not complicated, just right for the setting.
The beer leans toward approachable without being boring. Their Hoots Lager is the one to start with if you’re undecided — clean, slightly grainy, the kind of thing that makes sense at two in the afternoon on a warm day. The rotating IPAs tend to be citrus-forward without veering into the aggressively bitter territory that can make a flight feel like work. If you’re there in fall, look for whatever seasonal they’re pouring; they do a decent job with darker styles when the weather cooperates.
The crowd is mixed in a way that feels organic rather than curated. You’ll see people who walked over from the West End neighborhoods, folks who drove across town specifically, and the occasional table of people who stumbled in while exploring Trade Street. Nobody’s putting on a performance. That’s not nothing.
West End as a neighborhood is worth knowing if you don’t already. Trade Street has been quietly accumulating good things — studios, a gallery or two, a handful of small businesses — without tipping into the kind of self-conscious coolness that makes a neighborhood start to feel like a brand. Hoots fits there. It doesn’t shout.
Practically speaking: parking is easy, which Winston-Salem generally does well. The taproom is dog-friendly on the patio. Flights run around $10-12 for four pours, pints are in the $6-8 range. They’re open most afternoons and evenings, closed Mondays. It’s worth checking their Instagram before you go if you want to know what’s fresh on draft, since the tap list turns over and they’re reasonably good about posting updates.
If you show up on a Thursday or Friday evening, the room fills up enough to feel alive without becoming difficult to navigate. Weekends bring a slightly younger crowd and occasionally live music, though Hoots isn’t primarily a music venue — it’s primarily a place to drink beer that someone thought carefully about, in a room that hasn’t been over-designed into submission.
What makes it worth going out of your way for isn’t any single thing. It’s the accumulation: the building, the scale, the beer quality, the neighborhood, the fact that it feels like a place people actually use rather than a concept waiting to be photographed. Winston-Salem has enough of the latter. Hoots is the former.
