Mary, besides HyVee's, you might also visit World of Spirits on Jersey Ridge Rd.

I thought the whole point was to get buzzed, and the cheapest, quickest way to do that is what matters?

And these guys say that room graphs should be ignored!

Hey, Tom! Maybe I'll go to John's Grocery the next time I'm in Iowa City. I almost forgot about these guys. They've got a huge selection of beers. When you get the chance, maybe you can browse their list and let me know if you've tried any! Am I making too many demands?

I'm happy to help, if I can

That is a spectacular website. I'll bet it's even better in person. Wow!

Perusing their astounding selection did give me a few additional ideas. Again, I urge you to focus on American craft breweries if possible. There are few reasons to NOT "buy American" in this case.

I am not familiar with all of these beers, but I am well acquainted with some of the breweries.

I have always liked beers from Breckenridge, and their "Summer Bright" might suit you. Lakefront Brewery has an excellent reputation, and the Klisch Pilsner and ESB both appear to be nicely balanced, smaller beers. Goose Island Brewery makes some fantastic beer, and their Summertime appears to be pretty approachable. I have had good beer under the Berghoff label, and they have a Pils and a Lager you might enjoy.

I'd again urge you to consider Cream Ales, although the only ones at John's I could vouch for are Boddingtons (in cans with the nitrogen widget) and the previously mentioned Sleeman.

Finally, you might really enjoy Wit beers. The style is light, soft and distinctive, with unmalted wheat, curacao orange peel and coriander. I see that John's has one contract brewed for them (Generations White Ale), and it might be worthwhile if you've not experienced a Hoegaarden.

I might be able to be more helpful if I had more examples of beer that you really liked and why.

Be sure to report back with your observations!

Mary, it's well-known all over town that you shop at Hy-Vees! Besides, whenever I'm in Davenport, I'd certainly shop at Hy-Vees(except I'd go to Fareway for meat, of course)and then head over to World of Spirits....unfortunately I've never been in Davenport and my info results from the fact that Google knows all, together with a guess. The guess was from reports that for a supermarket Hy-Vees had a pretty good separate beer/wine section, which sort of matched your description of where you shopped. There were also comments that World of Spirits had probably the best beer selection in the Quad Cities area.

Hey John, it is Hy-Vee, not Hy-Vees ha ha lol. Maybe someday you can make it to Iowa. A great place to eat in the Davenport area is The Captains Table, right on the river, right Mary?

John, your post freaked me out at first! I thought, "there's NO WAY that John ever comes through Davenport." You were very convincing though!

Randy, yes, the Captain's Table is very good. But to be quite honest, I don't go out to eat that often around here because I normally leave disappointed. I can't stand when I spend a lot of money on mediocre food which seems to happen quite often around here. It could be that I'm just too picky as well!

Ken & Tom, I just checked out reviews of John's Grocery in Iowa City, and I guess they are just loaded with beer...more than what's even listed on their website! The last review was written at the end of May and they mentioned that Unibroue is coming in the near future!

What's funny is that I haven't been to John's since I was in college which was probably just to get a keg of Miller Lite for a party we were having. Everyone got their kegs there! I didn't think of checking out anything else because the place was sort of a dump, but little did I know what we were missing out on! But when you're a young college student, all you want is something cheap to get drunk on. We never thought too much about experiencing different flavors...unless it was schnapps. Ewww...don't care for schnapps too much now.

Ever since I had two doubles of Rumpleminze to close out an evening of wanton drinking one fateful December 23rd... I steer clear of schnapps, too.

You know, it seems a lot of people get turned off of certain types of alcohol after nights like that.