Breweries Lehigh Valley: The Best Local Taprooms, Ranked
Quick Answer: The best breweries in the Lehigh Valley cluster on Bethlehem's South Side — start with Bonn Place Brewing for the Valley's most beloved taproom and Wishful Thinking Brewing for lagers and Detroit-style pizza. In Allentown, McCall Collective pairs seventeen house drafts with a full kitchen, and in Hellertown, Lost Tavern Brewing anchors Main Street with 16 taps and rotating food trucks.
Key Takeaways:
- Best overall taproom: Bonn Place Brewing on Bethlehem's South Side — a 4.8 rating across 510 reviews and the most personality per square foot in Valley beer.
- Best beer-and-food combo: McCall Collective in Allentown, the city's first fully female-owned brewery, with full table service; Wishful Thinking's lager-and-pizza pairing is the Bethlehem answer.
- Best for big flavors: Weyerbacher's Easton taproom — the 1995-founded original of Valley craft beer, known for bold, high-ABV brews, with 550 reviews at its production home.
- Check hours before you go: Several top taprooms keep limited weeks — Bonn Place pours only Friday and Saturday, and most rooms close Tuesdays or Wednesdays.
- Shortcut: Browse the full Lehigh Valley breweries directory, or compare with our wineries guide if your group is split between beer and wine.
What Are the Best Breweries in the Lehigh Valley?
Breweries Lehigh Valley: A local search for craft breweries, brewpubs, and taprooms across Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and the surrounding boroughs — places that brew their own beer on site, not just bars with good tap lists.
The Valley's beer scene has quietly become one of its best assets, and it splits into useful lanes: destination taprooms worth a drive (Bonn Place, Wishful Thinking), brewpubs where dinner and beer share billing (McCall Collective, Wishful Thinking again), neighborhood rooms with hometown followings (Sherman Street, Yergey, Country Club Brewing), and one genuine piece of Pennsylvania craft-beer history in Weyerbacher. Which one is "best" depends entirely on the night you're planning.
Local rule of thumb: Bethlehem's South Side is the closest thing the Valley has to a brewery district — Bonn Place, Wishful Thinking, and Country Club Brewing sit within a few blocks of each other, which makes it the obvious first crawl. Walk it, don't drive it.
Is Bonn Place the Best Brewery in the Lehigh Valley?
For most beer people, yes. Bonn Place Brewing on Taylor Street near Lehigh's campus holds a 4.8 rating across more than 500 reviews in our directory data, and its motto — nice beers for nice people — is an accurate product description. The room is small, quirky, and genuinely friendly; up to eight house beers rotate through the taps; and the whole place feels like drinking in a well-loved living room where the beer happens to be excellent.
The catch is the calendar: Bonn Place pours Fridays and Saturdays only. That scarcity is part of the charm, but it means Bonn is a planned stop, not a spontaneous one. If you show up midweek, pivot two blocks over.
Where Should You Drink on Bethlehem's South Side?
That two-block pivot lands at Wishful Thinking Brewing on Broadway — the highest-rated brewery in our directory at 4.9. The focus is pale lagers and hoppy ales poured from Czech-style side-pull taps into frosted mugs, alongside Detroit-style pizza. A crisp pilsner and a corner slice is one of the Valley's great cheap dates. Rounding out the neighborhood, Country Club Brewing on Pierce Street — two homebrewing friends gone pro — runs twelve taps of IPAs, lagers, sours, and seltzers, open Thursday through Sunday.
Make a full South Side evening of it: our downtown Bethlehem guide and Bethlehem restaurant rankings cover the before-and-after.
What Are the Best Breweries in Allentown?
McCall Collective Brewing & Restaurant on East Susquehanna Street is Allentown's flagship — the city's first fully female-owned craft brewery, with seventeen drafts brewed on site and a locally sourced pub menu served at your table. A 4.8 rating across 450-plus reviews makes it the rare brewery that works equally well for a family dinner and a pint with friends.
For the neighborhood-taproom experience, Sherman Street Beer Company in Midway Manor pairs a rotating list from veteran Pennsylvania brewmaster Beau Baden with creative hot dogs, picnic tables, and cornhole — dogs welcome. And in downtown Emmaus, Yergey Brewing, a father-and-son operation with twenty taps, pours small-batch beers that rarely leave town, which makes every pint feel like a hometown exclusive.
What About Easton and Hellertown?
Weyerbacher Brewing is the history stop. Founded in Easton in 1995, it is one of Pennsylvania craft beer's originals, famous for big, full-flavored, high-ABV beers no one else in the Valley attempts. The taproom sits at the production facility on Line Street — drinking steps from the tanks never gets old — and its 4.7 rating across 550 reviews is the largest review base of any brewery in our directory. Pair it with dinner from our Easton restaurants guide.
In Hellertown, Lost Tavern Brewing is the borough's anchor hangout: sixteen taps plus cask offerings, the production brewery visible from your seat, rotating food trucks, and live music. Started by childhood friends, it still feels that way — and its Main Street location makes it an easy add to a Saucon Valley afternoon.
How Should You Plan a Lehigh Valley Brewery Crawl?
- The South Side crawl (walkable): Bonn Place → Wishful Thinking → Country Club Brewing. Friday or Saturday only, because of Bonn's hours. Eat pizza at Wishful Thinking or book a South Side dinner.
- The Allentown loop: McCall Collective for dinner and drafts, then Sherman Street for a nightcap dog. Add Yergey if you're starting from Emmaus.
- The history trip: Weyerbacher's taproom in Easton, then downtown for the Centre Square restaurant scene.
- Designate or ride-share: The Valley's breweries are spread across three cities. Pick one cluster per outing — and if half the group prefers grapes, split the difference with a winery stop.
One honest note: taproom hours in this scene change often, and several of our picks close early in the week. Check the brewery's site or social feed the day you go. Directory data is a strong starting point; a Tuesday-night drive to a dark taproom is not.
Bottom Line: Start on the South Side, Then Work Outward
The best breweries in the Lehigh Valley reward a plan. Make Bonn Place the centerpiece of a Friday or Saturday South Side crawl, choose McCall Collective when dinner matters, give Weyerbacher the respect a 30-year original has earned, and keep Lost Tavern in rotation for Hellertown nights. However you route it, you're drinking better than most bigger cities — and supporting the local rooms that made it happen.
Find the best local businesses in Lehigh Valley. Browse our curated directory of Lehigh Valley breweries, compare local wineries, or find a table in our restaurant rankings — real businesses vetted by locals.
