BamaVol

Exactly! But my point was that having Bud Light on tap (as the number one selling beer in the US) should be a foregone conclusion. No one walks into a bar and asks "Do you serve Bud Light?" In part because most people would assume without asking that they did. In addition, most beer drinkers can recognize the tap handle from across a very dark room.

pseudoswede

If you visit the Budweiser Brew House at the new St. Louis Ballpark Village, be sure to ask if they have Coors Light. Our sever was not amused.

chgoeditor

There are some fantastic Belgian-style beers being made in the United States. ShockTop isn't one of them.

kipper

I know a few bars where, if you ask if they serve Bud Light, they're likely to suggest you leave.

BamaVol

All too often, I'm with one of those people. I try to guide them to something with a little more flavor. Sometimes they just can't be helped and they really should be asked to leave.

Mrs BamaVol is a red wine drinker. Occasionally during the summer (half the year here in FL), she will want a beer. I usually order for her. She told me she wanted a beer before we got out of the car and without thinking, I ordered a Bud Light for her. She stopped the server and asked if there was any wheat beer on tap. I credit our daughter-in-law who got her started on wheat beers a couple years ago at a place in Huntsville that doesn't serve anything but beer. Check out this beer menu. I even forgive them for including ciders on the beer menu and the food's pretty good too.

ou81two

Welcome to the big players answer to microbrews. They mass market mass produced beer and put them off as micros and use their financial power to steal shelf space.

kipper

You know I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I rather enjoy bars like that, in part because it's fun to talk to the bartenders afterwards.

LOL, glad she decided she didn't want Bud Light.

dolcevita

It certainly isn't. Allagash has a tripel and a witbier and Live Oak a hefeweizen that are highly regarded on BeerAdvocate, so he's planning to search them out. Hopefully they're more common than their European counterparts but still true to style.

A search of Nashville area brewers isn't turning up anything that really stands out.

drwilliams

Agreed. And as dolcevita mentioned, Allagash has some great products. I think they are the best Belgian-style brewer in the US.

But I am biased, as I have had MANY of them ...

BSBD

I don't know how much you travel outside of the area, but I find that no matter where I go, wide-ranging beer selections are more common in beer-focused establishments, rather than restaurants. There are always exceptions, but they are always few and far between.

Well, I guess I'm forced to agree with a previous poster - if all you can find in Nashville is Shocktop and other big-vat beers, and if your husband's tastes in beer aren't accommodated by the wide availability and variety that can be found in Nashville if one makes the effort to look, you should consider moving to someplace where the selection is more in tune with his tastes. Perhaps an area of the country where there are a lot of descendents of German/Belgian/Dutch immigrants would have more easily-found restaurants with a beer selection catering to his likes. Consider Minneapolis/St. Paul.

dolcevita

No one has disagreed with that, but unless your spouse and friends are also beer connoisseurs AND they find pub grub appealing, you're seldom likely to visit such places for social events. If they prefer wine or food instead of grub, then you may have a problem.

The sensible thing to do is to stock up on your favorites, enjoy them at home, and abstain if you don't like a restaurant's offerings. Some do seem to take offense when you do that however.

As big-vat beers go, Blue Moon isn't half bad, he says, and he's looking forward to sampling Allagash and the others mentioned above.

Incidentally, the post you quoted in this section was referring to Beer Advocate's ratings of Nashville brews, not his personal observation. Nothing really stands out aside from a few with very small sample sizes. Are there any that really stand out for you?

pseudoswede

I'm a fan of Mellow Mushroom. Excellent pizza and a decent beer selection (including Elevation Beer Company's Double Black series).

BamaVol

I agree with your assessment .... up to a point. The 3 or 4 Mellow Mushrooms I have patronized had good pizza (something I no longer indulge in) and a decent beer selection. However, management, especially in the kitchen appears quite weak. I've seen too many mistakes and delays to be impressed. I think most of them are franchises - the local in Oxford, AL was owned by a couple doctors' wives that didn't know the first thing about hiring compentent help or running a restaurant. After a huge opening, they drove off customers one by one and it's hard to find many cars in the lot a few years later. One of these days, I'll try the original, which I think in in Auburn?

BSBD

Sure. Fine dining and fine beer rarely go together, especially since it seems there's more disagreement over what constitutes a "fine beer" than there is over what constitutes a fine wine. Therefore, in most cases, you must decide what is more important - the beer selection, or the food. This is universal, not just a Nashville thing.


I don't find Beer Advocate to be a great arbiter of beer quality. I'm something of a hophead, but not to extremes. On Beer Advocate, only the extremely hoppy beers (Imperial and Double IPAs and the like) get top billing; everything else is at the "doesn't stand out" level. My friends who are into other beer types say the same. Just as an example - Pilsner Urquell is considered by most people who know beer to be the worldwide gold standard for a pilsner. If you were to go by the ratings it gets on Beer Advocate, you'd think it kinda sucks, and should be avoided. But a bitter ale from an obscure brewpub in Pennsylvania that's so hoppy it tastes like bad medicine, and has a name so long it won't fit on a bottle label, is rated a 5 with shooting stars and rainbows

Anyway, my brother likes the wheat beers and the Belgians. He says that a couple of the regular wheat and Belgian-style brews from Black Abbey Brewing in 100 Oaks are very tasty. There aren't even any real reviews of Black Abbey's beers on Beer Advocate, despite Black Abbey having been around for a year or two.

pseudoswede

That is a shame. We patronize the two located in the southern Denver metro area*, and both offer excellent service. Miss Swede has many food allergies, and they are one of the few restaurants that serve vegan cheese. We've never had a mishap with her pizzas, and we truly trust the staff to do it right.

* - there is one about 5 miles from our house that opened last year. However, we tend to patronize the one originally in the area, about 13 miles away. There is a server there that my kids absolutely adore, and she is a wonderful and kind person. Last Fall, she told us that she would be going away for the spring to study abroad in Europe. We gave her a large tip and wrote on a comment card how awesome she was and how we'll miss her. We went back this past weekend, and she was there. It turns out that she kept that comment card and showed it to us.