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Prairie Brewpub – Tulsa Oklahoma

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Prairie opened their brewpub in Tulsa fairly recently. Currently it is the only place in Oklahoma that has regular hours where you can get all the Prairie beers. They are working on a taproom soon in Oklahoma city as well. Due to regulations that require them to buy beers through a distributor the on-tap prices are high here as well. You will pay $17 for a flight of five tasters. Beers to go are more reasonably priced and they have crowlers of their lower alcohol pub beers available as well. Beers brewed in house are limited to 4% but they serve other prairie beers brewed elsewhere. I visited at 3PM because I heard the place gets crazy crowded at dinner time. I was out before it got too busy.

Because I make a note to indicate independent breweries, it is important to point out that Prairie was sold to Krebs Brewing in the middle of 2016, which funded the opening of the brewpub and allowed the head brewer to go off and start American Solera. This is not in the same league as a sale to larger breweries like Heineken or ABInBev but worth pointing out. I’m not familiar enough with Krebs to say but it sounds similar to Alpine Brewery’s sale to Green Flash out in San Diego.

I started my flight with their house pilsner, a flavorful bready pilsner and very easy drinking with a mild hop bite. The saison on tap was light and effervescent with notes of lemon and white wine. Their 4th anniversary sour was well-made but I didn’t realize it was made with lemongrass and ginger until I ordered it. I probably would have gotten something else since I don’t care for ginger in my beer. Still, it was a balanced beer that blended the two flavors well. The Phantasmagoria juicy double IPA started off with tons of mango and melon but I got a salty caramel finish that I didn’t care for so much. It has great reviews from friends so it may have been an older keg or the end of a keg.

The Pekan stout was thick and delicious with tons of caramel and maple notes though not too sweet. Paradise was delicious with notes of vanilla and coconut and a chocolate finish. Both of these had little detectable alcohol taste. If you are going to visit Prairie for beer don’t go during the dinner rush as they tend to get very crowded. It was a nice chill quiet visit at 3PM though even on a Friday. Depending on when you visit they sometimes have barrel aged variants of the stouts as well. For locals the brewpub is also a great way to try other interesting beers because they had a solid guest tap list as well.

Top 2:
Pekan Stout
Paradise

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Half Door Brewing Downtown San Diego

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I had been to Half Door brewing a few times but never got around to writing a full post about them. Recently they expanded into brewing hazy IPAs and I featured them in my list of San Diego breweries making hazy IPAs. Half Door serves beer in a restaurant in Downtown San Diego where they also offer a modern take on pub grub. I visited them recently on a Sunday morning and tried a flight of tasters.

All of the IPAs I tried were of the hazy style known to some as the North East style of IPA. I started with the Hoban House. It was fruity and soft with a light acidity and low bitterness, exhibiting notes of pineapple. The Hype Machine single-hop Nelson IPA was soft with subtle grapefruit and a mild bitterness that lingers on teh back of the tongue. It is a great example of what a Nelson IPA should taste like. The Buzzwords double IPA is an intensely fruity double IPA, soft and hazy with very mild hop acidity. This stood out from the rest on the list as the best of the IPAs for the day.

I tried the IIIPA, which was an insane hop bomb with little alcohol flavor or sweetness, and mild bitterness. The only reason I didn’t like it as much as the Buzzwords IIPA is that I got some herbal notes in the IIIPA that I didn’t care for. Otherwise, it is an exceptional example of what a IIIPA should taste like. I also tried two stouts. The Coleman’s Stout is their dry Irish stout on nitro. It is dry and roasty with a smooth body and a mild floral hop kick. This is one of the beers I tried the first time I visited and it is still just as good as it was then.

The Coleman’s on Craic imperial stout with coffee was smooth and roasty with notes of chocolate and coffee excellently balanced. I slightly preferred the dry version though they are both delicious. Before leaving I got a taster of the tripel just to see how well they handle Belgian styles. It was one of the more impressive San Diego tripels, lacking in the ester notes that tend to overpower American-brewed Belgian-style beers. It had a bready malt character with some earthy malt notes and a well-attenuated finish (not too sweet). If the hazy IPAs weren’t so good I might go back for this one.

Half Door brewing is one of the few San Diego breweries, maybe the only one, that doesn’t sell bottles or growlers to go. This is due to their license and hopefully will change soon. Though I didn’t eat anything when we visited, my friends who joined me were very impressed by the food they had. Parking can be crazy around Half Door during the weekdays but it is worth visiting if you are already downtown or can park nearby and Uber in.

Top 3:
Buzzwords IIPA
IIIPA
Coleman’s Dry Irish Stout

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Breakside Brewing Portland Oregon

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Breakside also came highly recommended for my latest Portland trip. Most of the beers I had when I visited were solid but it is hard to follow something like Great Notion. They didn’t have any of their sours on tap, though I did bring a few home with me so I finish with some information about those sours. I had six tasters, mostly a mix of hoppy beers and stouts.
Breakside 01
The pilsner was quite good with a good mix of spice and fruit and a mild bitterness at the finish. The Breakside IPA was a good balance of pine and fruity notes, a nice modern take on the Pacific Northwest style of IPA. I preferred this over the Wanderlust IPA, which was more dry and had strong notes of citrus with a mild bitter finish. Though part of that might be that they call Wanderlust “West Coast style” and I think they slightly missed the mark here.
Breakside 03
I was very excited to try their salted caramel stout but I found it to be smoky and quite mildly sweet with minimal caramel. The bourbon barrel aged salted caramel had a thicker body and a solid bourbon finish with a good amount of sweetness and some mild salt. This was the highlight of the stouts for sure. The Breakside Stout had some notes of caramel and roast but it was overpowered by a strong bitter finish that I didn’t care for.
Breakside 02
From what I had on tap I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to visit Breakside for stouts, though they are doing a good job with the modern hoppy beer styles. They also have a restaurant so the place was full of brunch crowds as well when we visited on an early Sunday afternoon.
I came home with a brett pale ale and dark sour. Both were quite good for the style and I’m glad I picked them up. The dark sour was especially nice and smooth without being overly tart.
Top 2:
Breakside IPA
Bourbon Barrel Aged Salted Caramel Stout.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Great Notion Brewing – Portland Oregon

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Great Notion is a young Portland Brewery that has gained a huge following thanks to their embrace of quite a few beer trends including juicy IPAs and big adjunct stouts. When I visited on a Sunday they had a decent crowd upon opening because they also serve food and many people were there for brunch. They offer a few of their beers on any given day in crowlers that you can bring home with you. I had a flight of the seven beers they had on tap and was overall quite impressed.

Great Notion 02

The Old Barn tart saison was a light amber color with an excellent balance of citrus notes and a mild tart finish. It was an excellent beer for the style. The Blueberry Muffin takes a style of saison that tends to taste like white cake and adds blueberries. The flavors blend together wonderfully so that it really tastes like you are drinking a blueberry muffin. If you are in the mood for something sweeter, but not overly sweet, this one is for you.

Great Notion 04

On the IPA side, I had the Grass Roots, a dank IPA with mild herbal finish and notes of grass. Though ordinarily I wouldn’t be the biggest fan of the hop profile the flavors were balanced and it worked quite well. The Juice Junior was the hazy IPA of the day and it had a super soft body and tons of melon and sweet tropical fruits without much bitterness. After these, the Black Math, black IPA didn’t stand a chance, despite being well done. It had notes of smoke, toasted marshmallow, and bitter chocolate with a light bitter finish. This was a well done black IPA but I much preferred to drink the others on my flight.

Great Notion 01

The double stack imperial stout with maple and coffee came on strong with tons of coffee and maple with a smooth lactose sweetness that didn’t overpower the rest of it. I can see why this one is so popular. I finished with Stacks of Coconut, their imperial stout with coconut. It was pure liquid coconut, a total coconut bomb with hints of vanilla on the finish. Like double stack, it was just the right amount of lactose to support the beer.

Great Notion 03

For IPAs and Imperial Stouts in Portland, Great Notion rocketed to the top of my list in this short visit. I hope to return soon. Keep in mind that since it is a restaurant it has a fairly high amount of ambient noise and the seating at the bar is fairly limited.

Top 3:
Old Barn Tart Saison
Juice Junior
Double Stack

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Portland Beer Adventures Part 1 Raven and Rose

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I started my Portland beer adventures at a little restaurant called Raven & Rose. I hadn’t planned to stop there and we only arrived there because my husband was getting tired of my inability to find a place to eat and decided to park and make us get out of the car so we could walk rather than drive while searching for a place to eat. Right across the street from where we parked I saw this quaint little building that called out to me. As soon as we walked in, my husband Rommel took one look at the menu and declared “I’ll be having the Shepard’s Pie” before we could get a seat. Thankfully, they had a decent tap list as well and I was able to taste my first Oregon beer.
My husband tasting my beer.
My husband tasting my beer.
While waiting for our food to come, I ordered an India Red Ale from Double Mountain Brewery in Hood River Oregon on cask. The beer was very mellow with a strong focus on the malts and a slight tart flavor to it. Somewhere hiding behind all that was a hint of citrus hops. It was the perfect beer to start off the day so that I could enjoy a pint without getting bogged down too much.
Portland Beer 02
While eating at Raven and Rose, I ordered the Bangers and Mash, a simple dish yet one of the best sausages I have ever eaten. The sausages were juicy and bursting with flavor and had some delicious mustard sauce to go with them. They went perfectly with the mashed potatoes and the red cabbage. And yes my husband was very satisfied by the shepherd’s pie. Beer and food in hand, we went off to our first hike of the weekend before returning later to visit Deschutes.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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