Past due #3: Rockbottom Brewery (Dec 22, 2009)

Sampled a few beers and some food at the Rockbottom Brewery with the ultimate folks.

Tonight (note date in title) we headed over to the Rockbottom Brewery for some pre-holiday-break food and drinks with a few players from my fall ultimate league team. The pub is down in the basement beneath the bar/hangout named Your Father's Moustache in Halifax. It looks pretty new and has a cozy atmosphere, a bit like an upscale pub. Not a bad place for drinking some beer.

When we arrived, a few pitchers were already gracing the table and I didn't hesitate to jump on that. After a glass of the nut brown ale, we ordered up some food. I opted for a salsa panini with chicken, salsa and some veggies. Not bad. Came with sweet potato fries that weren't super crisp, but tasted pretty good to me. Pretty sure the sauce they served things with was mostly Open Pit BBQ sauce...yum (sarcasm). Alyce had a turkey burger and fries that she thought was just OK. With the food, a pitcher of the stout arrived, which was followed shortly thereafter by another of their IPA.

Overall, the beers were decent, but nothing special. A quality I found in all of them was drinkability. It isn't necessarily a good quality, but for me, it means the beer is easy to drink without overwhelming my tastebuds. I had 3 glasses without thinking about it, which would be unusual for the stronger beers I normally prefer. Here are my thoughts with links to ratebeer reviews.

• Nutbrown Ale - Fairly sweet, but not too much. Drinkable, in part because the flavors were pretty weak. In fact, quite a mild brown. (6/10)
• Stout - Not really a stout, but more of a strong brown ale. Pretty meh. Again, muted flavors. If they called this their Nutbrown, I'd probably give it +2 in my ratings. As a stout... (6/10)
• IPA - The waitress claimed this was very hoppy, and that got me excited. In reality, I'd call this more of a pale ale. Too weak. (6/10)

Past due #2: Clancy's Amber Ale (Dec 19, 2009)

Had a 12 ounce mug of Clancy's Amber Ale at The Maxwell's Plum in Halifax, NS.

Ugh, this wasn't pretty from the start. Attracted by the advertised 60 beers on tap, Alyce and I stumbled into The Maxwell's Plum to escape the cold and wind after checking out the Christmas tree in the Grand Parade downtown. Immediately after opening the door, my visions of an authentic English pub were shattered. It appears that although this place would like to call itself an authentic pub, it is more accurately described as a dimly lit, poorly decorated sports bar. The carpets reeked of stale beer, TVs adorned many of the walls and a brewtender sat upon nearly every table. Throw in a bunch of middle-aged men yelling across the tables at each other and you've basically got the scene.

Alright, now back to those brewtenders for a second (I'm only linking to that stupid site once). I'm willing to believe that serving beer in different types of glasses can affect the experience, and am confident that temperature is important for properly serving beer, but brewtenders are stupid. A tube full of ice with a tap on the bottom offers nothing. Does your pitcher of beer really get that warm sitting there? Do you feel like pouring your lager out of a pitcher just doesn't give you the same taste that the brewtender can impart? Is the pitcher too heavy? Are Canadians lazier than Americans? If you want draft beer, just get a pint from the bar and skip the $80 ice tube.

OK, now on to the beer (it doesn't get better, sorry), again with a link to the ratebeer review.

• Clancy's Amber Ale - Struck me as a typical Canadian beer, and that's not good. Very smooth, but bland. Basically it tasted like a watered down amber. Come to find out, Clancy's is the Moosehead "craft beer" line. Nice try, jerks. (3/10)

Past due #1: Sea Level Brewing (Dec 13, 2009)

NOTE: These past due posts are from before the blog's existence. They're recent, but a bit hazy in memory and thus will lack a bit of detail included in future posts.

Tried a sampler of some Sea Level Brewing beers at The Port Pub in Port Williams, NS.

The group consisted of four of their standard brews, a specialty beer and a seasonal. Overall, I wasn't terribly impressed. I wanted to be, as the location (riverside) and feel of the pub were great, but the beer was pretty mediocre. I suppose I should have known better when their guest book consistently mentioned great food, but had almost nothing about their beer. Some thoughts below (with links to the ratebeer reviews).

• Planters Pale Ale - Bit malty for my taste, lacking a nice hoppy finish that I've come to expect from American pale ales. (5/10)
  
  
• Blue Heron ESB - Best of the bunch. Nice balance with a clean finish. I'd drink this again if I found it. (8/10)
  
  
• Rojo Mojo Red Ale - Nothing memorable (literally, can't remember this one...). Not bad, but not good. (5/10)
  
  
• Port in the Storm Porter - Drinkable, but I prefer a finish with a bit more chocolate. Better than the bottle of it that I tried a few months back that had a foul sour milk aftertaste. (7/10)
  
  
• Crossing Muddy Waters Brown Ale - Nicely balanced and quite drinkable, but I felt the flavors were a bit muted. (6/10)
  
  
• Hoppy Holidaze Winter Ale - Seriously? This fruity, confused ale was barely drinkable. Yes, that's right. It was hard to finish a 4 ounce glass of it. Also, I don't enjoy names that are misleading...there was nothing 'hoppy' about this. (2/10)

Sadly this sampler wasn't nearly as good as it looked... At least the price was decent (less than $5).