Lake Placid Pub & Brewery

This weekend L Bird, Dinker, Cheesepaws Mom, and I went to Lake Placid for Oktoberfest, you can see the whole deal here. But one of the awesome things we got to do was have dinner at the Lake Placid Pub & Brewery.

We got there just in time for the dinner rush, so we had a fifteen minute wait for a table. Perfect, we had time to go to the bar and order a drink. The bar was packed, but lucky for us LPP&B has two bars, one upstairs and one downstairs. LPP&B is built in an old church so we walk out the entryway past some beautiful stained glass and downstairs to the second bar. Unfortunately for us, this bar was packed as well. We eventually made our way to the bar and got our beers.

I forgot what everyone else had, but I started with the Moose Island Ale. This is definitely a session beer. It was only 4.4% alc/vol and it was very light. It was crisp and clean, it didn’t have much aroma, but the taste was very refreshing. I could easily have drank a lot of this beer.

They called us to our table pretty quickly which was cool. We finished our beers and ordered another round while we waited for our food. This time I got the Barkeater Amber. This beer was fantastic, it was nicely balanced with good malty flavors and a slight amount of hops.

Our dinners came and they were also very delicious. I had “Josh’s Fire Fish”, which was basically a fish fry that was dipped in hot wing sauce. It was very good, I would highly recommend it.

Overall, it was a very good dinner and some very good beers with good friends. If you are ever in the Lake Placid area, The Lake Placid Pub & Brewery should definitely be on itinerary. So stop by, have a few cold ones, enjoy and as always keep ‘em tippin’!!

Middle Ages Brewing Co.

So I have had this post in my back pocket for a couple of weeks, but things didn’t work out the way I planned. Big surprise, right? But anyway, two weekends ago we went up to Syracuse to visit L Bird’s sister and her family. It’s always a good time to catch up and hang out while the kids play, plus I get to hang out with my brother in-law Chuck. So there is always a lot of good conversation about beer and plenty of good beer being drank as well. The past few times we have been up to visit, Chuck and I have talked about going to Middle Ages Brewing Co., but it has never worked out, normally because we go up to visit on Sundays and Middle Ages is closed on Sunday. But I got lucky this past visit, we ended up going on a Saturday. Awesome!

After some lunch and hanging out, Chuck and I ditched the wives and kids for an hour to head over to the brewery. I’ve had Middle Ages beer before, but any chance I can get to go to the tasting room, I am jumping on. Chuck winds his way through the city and we pull up in front of this old brick, industrial looking building with a small sign on the garage doors that said Middle Ages Brewing Co. Now I have been to plenty of breweries where the initial looks of the building were completely different from the quality of the beer. I have been to places where I drove by them a hundred times saying “There is no way that is a brewery it’s too small and looks like an old garage!” (Ithaca Beer) and had fantastic beer. Then I have been to places where the tasting room is as swanky as could be and the beer was definitely subpar (I’ll leave them nameless, as no one should drink “their” beer). So walking up to Middle Ages I was still completely unbiased.

We walked in and the tasting room was packed. I had a camera in my pocket to take a few pictures, but I completely forgot about it once the beer started pouring. Sorry! We made our way to the bar and found that they had 7 beers on tap for tasting and 3 other beers in the back that were for growler pours only. So 10 beers is a pretty healthy stable of beers, and Chuck and I made our way through 9 out of 10. We tasted the 7 they were pouring and a couple of them twice, then we each got a growler from out back. I liked one of their beers. They were all superb, but I especially liked the Old Marcus, it was slightly sweet with maybe some honey notes but it still had a nice maltiness to carry it through and make it a well rounded very easy drinking beer.

Middle Ages bar staff is also very good. They were very knowledgeable of the beers and very helpful, but also laid back. They were friendly and not pretentious beer snobs. They had a good time mixing with the crowd and still talking up good beer. I was very impressed with them to say the least.

I ended up getting a growler of the Black Heart Stout from their back room. I was going to do a beer review on it, but once I poured a pint I lost track of everything else and just enjoyed the simple pleasure of drinking and really enjoying a beer. I wasn’t worried about tasting notes or pictures; I just let myself be wrapped in the sensations of drinking it just for that enjoyment. I will say that it is an excellent stout and you should buy it if you ever happen upon it.

All in all it was a great trip to a great brewery and the beers are all fantastic. If you are in Syracuse, please find time to stop into Middle Ages and try their selections. You will not be disappointed. Until then, keep em’ tippin’!

Rheinblick German Restaurant

Now I know that this is not strictly beer related, but there have been many a beer drank in this establishment and this restaurant deserves to have many a post about it. This has been long overdue but I wanted to sing the praises of mine and L Bird’s favorite restaurant, Rheinblick German Restaurant in Canandaigua, NY. We try to eat there a lot, but with our busy schedules it normally ends up just being on special occasions which is not as much as we would like. So we end up hitting it up for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions.


Rheinblick German Restaurant sits right on Main St. in Canandaigua and is owned by Gudrun and Gary Klemens who are both originally from Germany. The restaurant is smaller and holds roughly 20 – 25 tables, but it gives it both a “homey” and exclusive feel to the restaurant because it books fast with reservations. In the summer, the enclosed alleyway where the main entrance is doubles as a biergarten (outdoor tables for food and beer, mostly beer though lol). The food is traditional German and Austrian dishes. The food is simply fantastic, plus they have an entire section of the menu dedicated to schnitzel. I am slowly making my way through the schnitzel menu. You can find the menu, here.

In addition to the gloriously wonderful food they have a fantastic beer & wine selection. You can view the beer selection here. Also, as you can see below I am really partial to the Sprecher draft.

All in all this is one of the best restaurants I’ve been to and my favorite. So if you find yourself in Canandaigua, NY please take time to find Rheinblick German Restaurant . It will be well worth it. For more information , other than my small review you can find a link to their page here.

Keep ‘em tippin’!

Naked Dove Brewing Company

A new microbrewery opened up near me in Canandaigua, its actually funny because the building its in was vacant for a few years and every time I drove by I would say to L Bird “You know that would be a perfect place for a brewery.” Well it appears that I was not alone in that thought. So last  Saturday, L Bird, Dinker and his Old Lady went to the Naked Dove to check it out.
We went in and did a tasting and took the tour. I had the camera with me but I was too wrapped up in the beer and the tour that I forgot to take any pictures. I know I’m a dork, right? But anyway, I just hit some of the highlights of the tour. There are 3 guys who own it, Dave, Don, and Ken and the name Naked Dove is an anagram of their three names. They currently have a 15 barrel brewhouse and a mixture of 15 and 30 barrel fermenters. They are putting their beers into half kegs with plans to sell to the bars. They have big plans to expand up to 60 barrel fermenters and had a 16 stem filler sitting in the back waiting to be put together so they can start to bottle their beer. The tour is definitely worth taking, there was much much more, but I didn’t want to bother you with all of the details that I find absolutely intriguing but you might not find them so interesting.
So back to the tasting, it was $3 for a flight of 3 beers but you got a souvenir glass and a $2 discount on any merchandise. I knew I was going to get a pint glass and a growler so it really was $1 for the flight. I was very impressed with their tasting glasses, they were huge.
 
I know it looks tiny in my giant hand (inside joke), but it really is a big tasting glass. The flight was an Amber Ale, an IPA, and a Porter. All three beers were good beers. The Amber Ale was sweet at the first sip, Dinker noted the honey flavor first and as soon as he said  it, it was all I could taste. It was a all around good beer, the honey/sweetness was a nice compliment to the malt. The IPA was not a traditional IPA that I’m used to. It was packed with hop aroma, but the normal hop bitterness doesn’t smack you in the face like most IPAs I have had. The bitterness was there and got stronger the more you tasted it, but it wasn’t right up front. I thought this was a different but a good take on an IPA. Then the Porter was last, and Porter is my favorite style so I was very pleasantly surprised by theirs. It was very good, full of malty notes and coffee flavors.
Overall the beers are very good, they are nothing that is big, bold and new, but they are definitely high quality samples that will do well in the market. The experience was great, getting to do the tasting with the brewmaster and getting a tour made Naked Dove Brewing Company an instant favorite of mine. I’m sure I’ll be stopping by many, many more times.
Here’s another picture to show how big the tasting glasses are and some of my new swag.

So if you are in the Canandaigua area, you should definitely stop by and check them out. If you not going to stop by, you should at least check out their facebook page here. But until then support your local brewers and drink local! Enjoy!!!

A beer trip for 3 …. Hoppy Beerthday to us!!

So my best friend’s birthday is two days before mine and we both share a love of beer, so this year we decided that we would check out a newer nano/microbrewery Keuka Brewing Co. So Jeremy, my wife Lauren and I loaded up in the car and headed towards Hammondsport, NY.

We finally found our way out into the sticks and the first sight we see when we pull in the parking lot is:

OK, what the hell is going on, there is a port-a-potty in the middle of the parking lot. Not a good sign, I realize that they are a small place but seriously a port-a-potty. So now we had no idea of what to expect walking into this place, but things started to look up.

 

Then we walked into the tasting room and things really started to look better. The tasting room was really nice and was decorated interestingly.

After taking a quick look around the tasting room, I amazed at how busy the place was. It was really packed, a steady line of people were at the bar, so things looked really promising. Then we noticed the board of beer:

Let the tasting begin:

1. White Cap Wheat: It was very light, slightly watery and very typical of a wheat beer.

2. KBC Pale Ale: A very good pale ale with a slight hoppy kick, one of my favorites of the day.

3. Briglin Road Red: Will review this beer later, I bought a 1 liter of this beer alone.

4. Full Sail Stout: A good stout, but very light in mouthfeel. A lot of coffee notes, and some very slight chocolate notes.

5. Hoppy Laker IPA: This is a very hoppy IPA, you get hit with a lot of hops as soon as you taste it, but then they dissipate quickly and it leaves none of the bitterness. So it wasn’t a real good representation of an IPA.

So of the five beers I tried, I really liked 2 of them. I liked the KBC Pale Ale and the Briglin Road Red. I ended up buying a a 1 liter bottle of the Red which I will review at a later date.

Overall, it was a nice little spot to taste some beer and hell any day tasting beer is a good day. So if you ever find yourself down near Hammondsport, NY stop in and have a pint or growler.

A trip to "Beers of the World"

Yesterday, Lauren and I took a trip up to Beers of the World in Rochester with the goal of finding some great beers for our friend Dinker. I really wished I had been thinking when we went up there, but I forgot my camera, so you will only see our selections not the actual store, Bummer I know. But anyway, a little background, Dinker is one of my best friends and has done a lot for me in the past, but most recently he fixed our computer. It took numerous phone calls, then two trips of him coming over, working on it, taking it back to his house, me picking it up and bringng it back to him for the same problem. But finally after all of the running around, we basically got a whole new tower and the relevant components inside. Now Dinker, being the good guy that he is has refused any sort of payment for all of the service he has provided, so we decided to pay him in the only form of payment he will accept, BEER.

So we strolled through the aisles looking for different beers that I am pretty sure he has never tried. I was in my glory looking at an entire store of nothing but beer and brewing accesories, and to my surprise Lauren was very interested in the whole experience as well. She really enjoyed looking at the different labels and the various bottles, it really appealed to her artistic nature. But anyway after perusing the aisle for about a half an hour we decided on four selections.

An English hard cider made from pears, a German Alt beer, a German Swarzbier, and a French Blonde Ale

The first selection is hard cider, I know, I know not beer, but what can I say Dinker loves hard cider and makes a pretty decent one himself, so I couldn't pass up an opportunity to give him a cider made from something other than apples. The second is the Alt from our Motherland of Germany, we basically picked it because of the cool bottle and I think that he would enjoy an Alt. The third is a Swarzbier from Germany, I mean come on who doesn't love a good black beer, then finally the French Blonde Ale is just for Dinker, he has a penchant for blondes, both women and beer. So a beautiful French Blonde is right up his alley and plus it also comes in a cool swing top bottle.

So he might be coming over for dinner this week, but if not he will definitely be here for New Year's Eve, so I will give him his gift and post his tasting notes if he has any. But until then, enjoy whatever you are drinking and take a chance on something new. Prost!