Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Drink First Draft: Josh Gilbert
Posted by CL staff @cl_atlanta on Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 8:00 AM
Josh Gilbert fell in love with the bar business by accident. While studying at the University of Georgia, with aspirations of walking on as a UGA golfer, he began bartending at Uptown Lounge in downtown Athens and was smitten. "I decided I needed to own a bar," Gilbert says. "This was my calling - to make money helping people have fun."
In the subsequent years he'd sling beers and cocktails in countless establishments, learning the details of the business while chatting up many an inebriated patron. Fast-forward to the summer of 2010, when he moved to Atlanta to focus on golf again. As luck would have it, he ended up living in the same neighborhood as his old friend Alan Sher, who was about to become co-owner of a new music venue on the Westside, Terminal West. "I told him I had to help," Gilbert says.
And help he did, serving as TW's director of bar operations. While he doesn't run his own place just yet, he has curated the best beer list of any music venue in Atlanta. In addition to a few usual-suspect macros, the King Plow-affiliated spot sports a handful of cocktails and 34 canned microbrews, including offerings from notable craft breweries such as 21st Amendment, Oskar Blues, Avery, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada, and many more. CL recently talked to Gilbert about what got him here and why he decided to make Terminal West an Atlanta beer destination.
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