I had a long layover in Salt Lake City and no expectations whatsoever. Utah has a reputation among travelling beer people, and none of it involves the phrase worth stopping for.

So I wandered into the Squatters brewpub on the Delta concourse mostly to kill time. Airport brewpubs are usually a brand licensed to a caterer, which is a polite way of saying the beer arrives from somewhere else and nobody in the building can tell you anything about it.

This one was not that. The beers were genuinely good. The pale ale was clean and did exactly what it should. The Bohemian pils was excellent, which is a harder thing to pull off than a hoppy beer because there is nothing to hide behind. The Ava Lee tripel was the surprise of the three, and not what I expected to be drinking between flights in Utah.

The better part was Casey behind the bar. Once the ice was broken he told me to get out of the airport and into the city and go and see what was actually happening there. That is the mark of a good barman anywhere in the world. He was not trying to keep me on his stool for another two hours. He was telling a stranger where the good stuff was, which is the same instinct that runs every decent beer scene I have ever found.

The lesson I keep relearning on trips like this is that reputations lag reality by years. Somewhere gets a name for being a beer desert, everybody repeats it, and meanwhile people on the ground quietly get on with brewing well. The only way to find out is to stop and ask somebody.

So if you are routing through on your way to the west coast, and you have the time, Utah is worth a proper look rather than a sneer. Start at the bar and ask the person pouring.