The 8 Best Charleston Breweries and Beer Halls in South Carolina

If you’re looking for a local’s guide to the  Charleston breweries, this is the perfect guide for you. Our family has lived in Charleston for over a decade now and they have made sure to take us to all the breweries. 

While there are several breweries in and around Charleston, we chose to focus on the breweries located in or near the downtown area (no crossing the bridges to get to them – aka we aren’t going into the Mount Pleasant area in this article).

We’ve grouped the breweries first, followed by a few favorite beer halls that pour from all over Charleston’s brewery scene.

Most of the breweries on this list are clustered in the Brewery District just north of downtown Charleston, which makes for easy brewery-hopping!

Short on Time? Here are the key takeaways:

• We’ve narrowed this down to 8 must-visit spots – 5 breweries and 3 beer halls – in the downtown Charleston area. We have excluded the surrounding areas (such as Mount Pleasant, North Charleston, etc.)
• Most breweries have a food option or you can BYOF
• In our opinion, don’t miss Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co.

This post was originally published in June 2020, and was updated in September 2026.

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Video of where to eat and drink

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Map of Charleston Breweries

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1. Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co. 

• Hours:
  • Monday – Thursday: 11AM – 9PM
  • Friday & Saturday: 11AM – 10PM
  • Sunday: 11AM – 9PM
  • Happy Hour: Everyday 4PM – 5PM; Half Off Food & Drink
• Food Available: Yes, full kitchen

Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co. offers a wide variety of beers on tap, including many IPA’s and sours, as is the norm these days.  This Charleston brewery has 26 total taps, but they also have cocktails and wine too if you have a friend who doesn’t like beer. (Find a new friend…just kidding). 

It’s also a restaurant with very good food available. They actually have a restaurant-only space less than a mile from the brewery, but you can get food at the brewery as well. Both restaurants come highly recommended from our local family members and we’ve had numerous snacks at the brewery operation as well.  

We absolutely love Edmund’s Oast and typically visit multiple times when we are in Charleston. You can pick a flight of 4 to try multiple styles. Sam loves sours and stouts and theirs do NOT disappoint.

When we visited, Sam tried their Cereal for Dinner and Cereal After Dark in a side-by-side comparison. Cereal for Dinner is a blonde ale that has incredible notes of cinnamon and vanilla that remind us of the milk leftover after a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch (anyone still crave this?). As the name implies, their Cereal After Dark was a stout with notes of toasted coconut, vanilla, cocoa nibs and milk sugar.

Chris loves the hoppier stuff and thoroughly enjoyed Lost in the Forest, an IPA with Spruce Tips; Bound By Darkness, a black IPA; and Arcade, a classic APA with toasty malt notes.

2. Munkle Brewing Co

• Hours:
  • Monday – Thursday: 2PM – 9PM
  • Friday & Saturday: 1PM – 9PM
  • Sunday: 1PM – 8PM
  • Happy Hour: Weekdays from 4PM – 5PM
• Food Available: Yes, via rotating food trucks

Most of the Charleston breweries will have an abundance of IPAs on tap. But Munkle Brewing is not that type of brewery.

Munkle Brewing will make you a believer in Belgian-style beers. Of all the breweries in Charleston, Munkle has the most robust selection of traditional beers to try – like the Brugge City Brune, a brown Belgian ale, and the Gully Washer Wit, a citrusy wheat beer.  They also have different pilsners, lagers, stouts, dark ales, and table beers.

And you’ll get to drink them in what kind of feels like an old-time beer hall with lots of warm colors and textures and big communal tables.

The brewery is named after the founder’s uncle (born only three months apart), who learned the tricks of the trade during his time at a Benedictine monastery – hence, Munkle.  So, this stuff is the real deal!

3. Revelry Brewing Co.

• Hours:
  • Monday – Saturday: 12PM – 10PM
  • Sunday: 12PM – 8PM
• Food Available: Yes, full kitchen

Sought out by locals, Revelry Brewing has a great view of the city with a rooftop patio option, in addition to the original tasting room downstairs (which has more beers available). This is usually the first stop we make when visiting the Charleston breweries. 

Locals hang out here after their kickball games, which take place right across the street. Revelry is revamping their food section and promise elevated food offers expected to relaunch in March 2024. They also just opened a new location down on Folly Beach so you can still get your Charleston breweries beer while hanging at the beach.

They are known for their sours and IPAs and we were shocked to see they didn’t make the top 3 of our rankings.

4. Lo-Fi Brewing 

• Hours:
  • Tuesday & Wednesday: 4PM – 7PM
  • Thursday & Friday: 4PM – 8PM
  • Saturday: 2PM – 8PM
  • Sunday: 1PM – 6PM
  • Monday: Closed
• Food Available: Yes, rotating food trucks on the weekend only

Last, but not least on this list, is Lo-Fi Brewing. While it’s the “farthest” away from downtown Charleston, it’s definitely worth the trip.

A unique and quirky atmosphere in a refurbished warehouse, Lo-Fi Brewing is a chill place to come knock one back with friends.  Think OG breweries in the early 2000s mixed with some heavy musical influence.

We tried their Glitter Pony Triple and Rally Cat IPA which are bomb AF! Their venue is large so they have events often, especially live music or trivia nights.

On a separate, yet equally important note, they have a brewery cat named Kit Kat.

5. Over the Horizon Brewing

• Hours:
  • Monday: Closed
  • Tuesday – Thursday: 4PM – 10PM
  • Friday – Sunday: 11AM – 10PM
• Food Available: Yes, tacos, burritos, and nachos (Gustard’s Custards operates next door for dessert)

Over the Horizon Brewing opened in late August 2024 on Heriot Street, in the space formerly occupied by The BrewLab. It’s veteran-owned, founded by three Citadel graduates, and partners with the Department of Defense SkillBridge program.

The rotating lineup leans into hazy IPAs, lagers, and saisons. The taproom has a game room and a patio with an outdoor stage for live music.

6. Charleston Beer Works

• Hours: Monday – Sunday 11:30AM – 12AM
• Food Available: Yes, made-from-scratch bar food with daily specials
• Happy Hour: Monday – Wednesday

Worth noting up front: Charleston Beer Works isn’t a brewery itself – it’s a craft beer bar on Upper King with 48 rotating taps of local and regional beer, so it’s a solid stop if you want variety rather than a single brewery’s lineup.

Certified Beer Servers are on hand to help narrow down the list, and live music runs Thursday through Saturday.

7. Pour Taproom Charleston

• Hours:
  • Sunday – Thursday: 5PM – 10PM
  • Friday & Saturday: 12PM – 12AM
• Food Available: Yes, menu items paired with the rotating tap list
• Reservations: Not required

Also not a brewery, but too fun to leave off the list: Pour Taproom is a self-pour rooftop bar atop the Hyatt House in the Historic District, pouring 40+ local craft beers, wines, and ciders.

Grab a wristband, pour your own, and pay by the ounce – it’s a good way to sample a lot of Charleston breweries in one sitting without committing to a full pint of each.

8. The Whale – A Craft Beer Collective

• Hours:
  • Monday & Tuesday: 4PM – 10PM
  • Wednesday & Thursday: 2PM – 10PM
  • Friday & Saturday: 12PM – 12AM
  • Sunday: 12PM – 10PM
• Food Available: Yes, via a rotating lineup of food trucks and a regular partnership with Lou Lou’s Tavern

Rounding out the list is The Whale, another multi-tap spot rather than a working brewery – this one specializes in rarer pours: beers, wines, ciders, meads, seltzers, and sakes.

The space is an eccentric mashup of art deco and biergarten, with a rooftop patio and a neon whale-tail art installation by local artist Kevin Nonnenmacher.

Boozy Tours in Charleston

If you are looking for a unique way to hop around to the breweries, there are a couple different walking and drinking options via Viator!

• Charleston History and Hops Tour: If you ever thought, I love history and I love booze, this tour is for you. It’s essentially a historical bar crawl in the heart of downtown Charleston. Note: no breweries are visited on this tour.
• Charleston Boo Hag & Brews Walking Ghost and Bar Tour : If ghosts + history and bar crawls are your thing, you’ve got to check this tour out.

Psst: Looking for more Charleston info? We have a few guides! Browse them here:

• What to do for a weekend in downtown Charleston
• A Local’s Guide to the Best Breakfast in Charleston, SC