Beer Rush Taproom

Beer Rush Taproom sits in a lane off Da'an Road, in the block between Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Zhongxiao Dunhua. It runs around a dozen taps weighted towards Taiwanese breweries, with imports filling out the board.

Two things make it useful. The first is the opening time — 4:30pm, unusually early for a Taipei beer bar, and paired with a genuine afternoon happy hour that Taiwanese food blogs mention consistently. The second is the food: the kitchen's 炸物, the fried snack menu, is what regulars talk about as much as the beer.

The room is small and easygoing, the kind of neighbourhood taproom that fills with the same faces on a weeknight. It works well as the first stop of an Eastern District crawl, before the later-opening bars get going.