Beer Hunter, Nick Hardt
At World of Beer you’ll find a warm inviting Greene Turtle meets Rustico environment with a ton of TVs for the game and an entire wall full of taps and coolers crammed full of brewskies you’ve never heard of or are hard to come by. But what makes the bar unique is the crowd it attracts and the ambiance it has created with its spiffy ladies and university nights, live music, trivia and beer samplings. It doesn’t pretend to be a restaurant and they know you’re here for the beer and the babes. When you walk in there’s a dog friendly patio, a band or acoustic dude in the entrance playing Journey or Fuel, a bunch of cocktail tables great for an intimate date, and more young professional and post-college hotties than you can swing a stick at. Did I mention it also has giant German pretzels, sausages and hot dogs? Yep, that helps too!
After devouring a pretzel and rummaging through the beer list I saw the holy grail of IPAs from my missing years after college. After a year hiatus due to a batch going bad at the brewery, it seems the Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA, 18%, is baaaack—and it’s a bad mother folks! A night ender for any novice beer drinker with the alcohol content of almost four beers, this Imperial Double IPA is a nuclear hop bomb masked in malts and a syrupy sweetness that disguises the overall booziness of the beer for a damn tasty IPA. I decided to pull the pin on this hop grenade for my first beer and upon completion of the bevie (Touchdown, Marcus Allen!) I was totally flushed, feeling it and talking to someone else’s girlfriend sitting next to me. Rating: Doggone Strong—Bark matches its bite! Since it was Sunday Funday we forged on to my next beer (heck, I only had an entire day of work in the morning) the Left Hand Oktoberfest, 6%. A tasty Marzen style Oktoberfest, this beer is similar to a Sam Adams seasonal offering but with a nutty caramel sweetness. What made it really unique was the dark chocolate, sugary aftertaste that just sits on your tongue like a chocolate flavored pixie stick. Rating: Left-me-oktoberfied. Next up was a local offering from Virginia’s own Blue Mountain Brewery called Barrel House Local Species, 6.6%. It had a certain American take on a Belgian pale ale, but was surprisingly light. The bourbon barrel flavor was not over the top and it had a sweetness that was pleasant yet complex. I kept trying to put my finger on what I tasted, but I feel confident it was a mix of vanilla and the barrel it was stored in and it made for a decent beer. Rating: Cool bottle, Cool taste, Cool local beer I’d never heard of. Last up was Tilburg’s Dutch Brown Ale, 5%, on the recommendation of my best bar buddy John “Farmer” Dynan. Leave it to a bartender to pick an awesome hard to find beer because this was probably one of the best brown ales I’ve had since Smuttynose Old Brown Dog ale. Toasted Malts dominate with fruit, dark chocolate, and brown sugar notes for a tasty sweet ale. Rating: Down with Brown! Cheers Big Ears!
Have a beer for the beer hunter to try? Email nick@ontaponline.com.
