Reviews on PubCrawler from craig stichtenoth PubCrawler.com - International Travel Search Engine Find Bars, Brewpubs and Microbreweries, Restaurants, Hotels, Bed and Breakfasts and Historic Landmarks
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Reviews on PubCrawler from craig stichtenoth
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My wife and I joined some friends for a visit to the Saturday afternoon tour at Southern Star on September 5. A small crowd began gathering just before 1:00 PM, with beer available from the taps at that time. The brief tour began about 1:45 and included a discussion of the malt used in the brewing, a look at the brewing and fermenting equipment and processes in place at Southern Star, and a visit with their canning equipment. Beers available on Labor Day Weekend included Pine Belt Pale Ale, Bombshell Blonde Ale (their two canned beers at this time), the very potent Buried Hatchet Stout, and a saison. Southern Star is selling all the beer they can make, and they have more fermentation capacity coming soon.
I was part of a small group that visited this Karl Strauss location on a Sunday evening in early August. The place was busy but we soon we soon had a table on the covered patio. Several of us really enjoyed the Black's Beach Extra Dark, a superb schwarzbier. For dinner I opted for the brewer’s special, a rye IPA … a perfect match for my fish tacos. Everyone in our group enjoyed their meals, which ranged from shrimp to pork chops to pasta. All of the brews were well received also. When we ordered the Ceviche Tres Mares appetizer to start off with, our server brought us each a small sample of the Windansea Wheat beer, which was the featured monthly beer and food paring.
The venerable Copper Creek Brewing Company has been offering a special cask-conditioned house beer on the first Wednesday of each month. I was lucky enough to be able to catch the cask tapping on the first of July this year. The featured cask, presented by brewer Matt Buley and Georgia beer ambassador Owen Ogletree, was an English-style dark mild. We quaffed not only a pint of the special cask-conditioned mild, but also a pint of the mild that was being dispensed through the regular tap system. The cask version was lighter in mouthfeel with little carbonation and a nice clean finish. We actually enjoyed the tap version better, which featured a creamier, somewhat fuller mouthfeel with a toasty caramel sweetness. It was a treat to taste this rarely seen English-style ale, quite enjoyable in either version.
I have had the good fortune to visit this superb beer destination a number of times over three different visits to Athens within the past year. The draught list offers nearly 40 choices, ever changing, featuring everything from rare American craft to distinguished foreign brewers. Trappeze offers special glass promotions and beer dinners, and often has one-of-a-kind barrel-aged and cask-conditioned ales, along with ciders and meads. Some of the rarer draught beers I have enjoyed at Trappeze include Uerige Doppelsticke Alt, Left Hand/Terrapin Terra-Rye'zd Black Rye Lager, Holy Mackerel Mack in Black, and Sinebrychoff Porter. This is clearly one of the premier beer destinations in the southeastern US.
A couple of weeks ago I finally made it to the tasting room and tour (Friday afternoons only) at Real Ale. Our tour was lead by Eric, one of the brewers, and it was very informative, with thorough discussions of the various steps of the brewing and packaging processes. The tap room is open before the tour, so visitors can sample the beers both before and after the trek through the brewery. You can even carry a beer with you on the tour (as did our guide). Five Real Ale beers were available for tasting during our mid-May visit: Firemans #4 Blonde Ale, Rio Blanco Pale Ale, Full Moon Pale Rye Ale, Devil’s Backbone Belgian-style tripel, and their new ESB. If you find yourself in this part of the Texas Hill Country on a Friday afternoon, be sure to check this place out.
At Caruso's we found a modest selection of draft beers plus one available house-brewed beer. During our visit in November, the house beer was a high-gravity golden lager, served in a 10 oz glass due to its higher alcohol content. It was a decent smooth-tasting brew, but I would have preferred a beer with a cleaner, crisper finish to pair with the marinara sauce of our pasta lunch entrée. Other beer choices included a few imports and crafts such as Terrapin.
We had a couple of meals at the Troll Tavern on a recent visit to Helen. My wife thought her Reuben sandwich was one of the best she has ever had… so good she ordered it each visit and rated it highly each time. I had a couple of different bratwurst/knockwurst combinations and I thought they were very good as well. In Helen, a good beer selection generally means that the restaurant has a good variety of German and other European imports. American craft beers appear relatively scarce. The Troll Tavern has a few beers on tap and more choices in the bottle but the overall beer selection was not exceptional. Indeed we saw some more interesting bottle choices at another restaurant in Helen. That being said, the Troll did have an Erdinger Hefe Dunkel promotion that included a nice logo glass that you could take with you. We liked the Troll's location under the bridge along the Chattahoochee River, but the cold weather during our November visit did not encourage use of the outdoor seating.
On a visit to Birmingham I had the opportunity to taste five beers from this relatively new Alabama craft brewery. The actual brewery sits below the Five Points Grill, in a place once occupied by the brewing operation of The Mill Bakery and Brewery that produced beer in Birmingham's Five Points South area in the 1990's. The Good People Brown Ale pours a deep russet brown with a tight tan head that clings to the side of the glass as it is enjoyed. It is rich and malty with a bit of a hop finish. The GP Pale Ale has a copper color and a notable presence of Cascade hops. The IPA has a subtle floral nose and pronounced citrus hop presence. The Good People Oatmeal Coffee Stout pours an opaque black with a dense tan head. The aroma is that of coffee, while the taste is smooth and chocolaty with a lingering mild coffee bitterness at the finish. I also had a small sample of their roggenbier, which had a light amber color and a tart and slightly dry finish fitting for the style. All five Good People offerings were on draught at the Five Points Grill and at the nearby J. Clyde pub. Other pubs and restaurants in the Birmingham area reportedly pour one to several of these very solid and drinkable beers.
I had my first beer from this new Austin brewery, the pale ale, which was a guest beer at Uncle Billy's Brew & Que. This is a solid interpretation of an American pale ale. I expect that other Texas pubcrawlers will soon weigh in on the other beers from (512), which at this time also include an IPA and a wit.
Cafe Studio has a prime location on the square in this historic Dutch city, directly across from St. Bavo Cathedral, a Gothic basilica that dates from the 13th century. This pub has a long bar and two areas of indoor seating, plus a very large outdoor seating area overlooking the square. Among the beer choices are beers of the Jopen brand, which has revived a unique style of beer native to Haarlem.
We stopped here for the 3:00 PM tour on a Tuesday afternoon. We heard the story of the brewery and toured the small brewing facility in the building next to the tasting room. The $5 tour included an opportunity to sample six beers in a logo tasting glass that we got to keep. Our tour group sampled a new seasonal Heather Ale, along with Chesapeake Pale Ale, Drake's Tail IPA, Washington's Porter, Red Marker Ale, and one of their Brewmaster's Reserve series, a strong ale called Wolfe's Trap Ale. I brought home a bomber of the Rapadou Porter, another in the Reserve series, to cellar and later share with friends.
We had lunch at the Green Leafe Café on a Tuesday, which was well-timed because ALL Virginia pints were priced at $1.50 for the entire day. Bypassing the choices from A-B’s Williamsburg brewery, we selected Legend Lager, Dominion Lager, and St. George IPA. Other Virginia options included Legend Brown Ale, Starr Hill Jomo Lager, Dominion Oak Barrel Stout and one or two beers from the local Williamsburg AleWerks. There were also plenty of other draft and bottled choices from around the US and the world. My wife said her reuben was top notch, and I enjoyed a good grilled tuna salad. Green Leafe is a must stop in Williamsburg.
We had dinner in the Taphouse Grill portion of this dual restaurant establishment. There was not a huge beer selection, but there are some solid choices on draft and in the bottle, including a number of Virginia beers. Starr Hill Jomo Lager was specially priced at $2.00 a pint and that worked for me. The other folks in our group of four were generally pleased with their food choices, however I felt my jerk chicken entrée, a special of the day, fell a bit short of the mark. There is plenty of nice outdoor seating, but they had difficulty keeping some of the tables shielded from the late afternoon sun.
Tucked away on a narrow pedestrian-only street in central Amsterdam, this beer connoisseurs’ haven has several different interior spaces to enjoy a brew, plus a few seats outside along the street. The beer selection, on draft and in bottles, is the reason this pub was recently listed as one of "125 places to have a beer before you die" in the May 2008 issue of 'All About Beer' magazine. The bartender recommended that I start with a beer called Johnny, a crisp and cloudy golden ale from a small Amsterdam brewery called Brouwerij de Prael. The bottle choices come from many different countries and even include some well-chosen beers from a few US craft breweries. I opted for one of the featured bottles, a tasty dark alt from Boltens of Germany. In de Wildeman is just a short walk from the Amsterdam Centraal railway station. This one is not to be missed.
The beers at this bar at the Furnace Creek Resort in Death Valley National Park are available either at the bar itself or in either of the two adjoining restaurants. While not an extraordinary selection, it is not bad for being in this somewhat isolated location. Draft beer offerings included Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Newcastle Brown Ale, and Mohave Gold from Indian Wells Brewing Company. Bottle choices included Mohave Red (a malty red lager) and the incredible Lobotomy Bock (a 10% double bock), both also from Indian Wells, along with more commonly found craft beers like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and New Belgium Fat Tire. There is a pool table and a great jukebox.
I made several visits to the Gordon Biersch in Las Vegas while staying at a hotel just down the street. On a Sunday evening, I had a seasonal roggenbier, with a spicy, dry finish that went well with our mixed appetizer plate. Our service in the bar area was attentive. I later returned on a very busy Wednesday night and sat at the bar. Initially, service was indifferent and slow, but once I finally got my schwarzbier and ordered my food it was adequate for the remainder of the visit.
This is a somewhat strange new bar found near the top of the escalator, looking out over the casino floor at New York New York. 24 tap handles offer nothing but US craft beers from breweries like Sierra Nevada, Firestone Walker, Stone, Rogue, Anchor, Alaskan, Breckenridge, New Belgium, Kona, Big Sky, Abita, Sin City, and others. The styles offered were broadly inclusive, ranging from pale ales, IPAs and ESBs, to brown ales, porters, stouts, and seasonals. Many of the patrons were quaffing domestic longnecks and brightly colored icy drinks, so the appreciation of the beer offerings was clearly lost on a large number of the customers. The mall-like location and the look and feel of it (no doubt inherited from what was here before) make this place anything but a typical pubcrawler stop. Still, in what is largely a beer wasteland along the Vegas strip, this is a place to get a very good beer or two.
After reading several negative reviews of the beers, we stopped here with limited expectations. I ordered the beer sampler and tried all six varieties on hand. Yes, as others have noted, and as the brewery itself explains, all the beers are unfiltered and quite cloudy in appearance. This in itself does not bother me. In fact, I found all the beers to be quite drinkable, with the Black Canyon Stout being fairly good and the High Scaler IPA appropriately citrusy and hoppy. Other choices, a hefeweizen, amber ale, and an interesting but thin blueberry bock were decent but unremarkable. My biggest problem was with the Powder Monkey Pilsner. A pilsner should be clear and bright, with a pale gold color and a crisp, clean taste. Boulder Dam's version of a pilsner, while drinkable, seems nothing like a real pilsner. The German's have a name for an unfiltered pale gold lager kellerbier and this is what Boulder Dam's pale lager appears to best resemble. If this brewpub chooses to produce nothing but unfiltered beers, that is fine. However, they should be honest with themselves and their customers and call a beer what it really is. We just had an appetizer so comments on the food would be inappropriate. One plus: they do start you off with a bowl of freshly popped popcorn. The outdoor beer garden would have been nice on a pleasant day, but we were there on a rainy afternoon.
The Alamo Drafthouse almost certainly has the best beer selection in Katy. 30 taps dominated by American craft beers and quality imports, with a number of rotating selections. Other quality beer choices, as well as mass-produced yellow lagers, are available by the bottle. In addition to enjoying a beer with some food in the movie theatres, one can also enjoy a pint in the Alamo Drafthouse beer garden, essentially an outdoor patio area in front of the theatre entrance.
In addition to our visit to the Glacier Brewhouse in Anchorage, we found this brewery’s beers on tap elsewhere in Alaska. Glacier Brewhouse IPA was seen in several places throughout the greater Denali area and they also produce a house beer for the Princess Lodges (we visited the Denali Princess Lodge and the McKinley Princess Lodge) called Denali Red Ale (it may be their normal amber ale).
We had a very enjoyable lunch on the outdoor patio of this pub on a pleasant sunny afternoon in early September. The crowd seemed a mix of locals and tourists. Our server was a bit curt, perhaps fitting for this town in the Alaskan interior, but she was otherwise quite efficient in taking and delivering our beer and food orders. The beer selection is filled with worthy choices, featuring a nice variety of Alaskan and other West Coast craft beers, including their own house beer (a strong golden ale brewed by the Glacier Brewhouse in Anchorage). I opted for the Moose's Tooth Pale Ale. Our burgers and other lunch choices were top notch. We left the McKinley Princess Lodge early to spend some extra time exploring Talkeetna before boarding the train to Anchorage, and we were glad we did.
While in the Denali area I had the chance to try several different beers from Midnight Sun. The Kodiak Brown Ale is dark and malty with a nice hop balance. We found this tap handle at the Lynx Pub and other restaurants at the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. The draft-only Oosik Amber Ale is a tasty German-style altbier, one of several Midnight Sun choices we found at the Salmon Bake Restaurant near the entrance to Denali National Park. We also enjoyed the bottled version of Sockeye Red IPA, one of several Midnight Sun beers available in the Denali area in 22 oz bombers.
We stopped here for lunch and found one empty table. This place was not as bad as many have reported, but I would not call it a great experience either. At least we can say we we’ve been to this seemingly legendary place.
Don't let talk of a high-priced cab ride keep you from visiting this fine brewery. The Juneau public bus system (routes 3 and 4) will take you to within a block or two of the brewery for $1.50 each way. We had a nice little tour (admittedly much of it looking through glass), and we were encouraged to try ALL seven available Alaskan beers on tap in the tasting room. There was not a bad one in the bunch, with the ESB, IPA, Stout and Smoked Porter all standouts in my view. The well known Alaskan Amber Ale and Alaskan Summer Ale were readily available throughout our cruise ship, the Sapphire Princess.
