Haha. I know – not a fan of the original, but the newer version I find a little bit better (though Newcastle fans hate it–this would have been the original version back then at the bar). I’m just not a brown ale guy. I went for it out of morbid curiosity more than anything else.
I’m a regular at the Flying Saucer in my area. People commonly report 200 beers on tap (https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g30141-d493443-r84437529-The_Flying_Saucer_Draught_Emporium-Addison_Texas.html). I don’t think that is right, though. I’d grant 200 to choose from, but *only *about 70 on tap.
Even BW3’s should have a lot more than that. Check photo 3/12, there are 24 or 25 in that row:
https://rehobothfoodie.com/reviews/buffalo-wild-wings/
I thought Meddlesome Moth and the Old Monk were both worth my time when I visited Dallas. Good beer, very good food at the Moth. Wide selection and the beers we had were clean. My favorite Guinness place, The Tipperary, closed a few years ago.
Always liked the Ginger Man, and their dog friendliness, and I’ve a saucer on the wall of the Houston branch.
Speaking of bars…how do you explain this?
(I was in a dirty little dive bar on thanksgiving eve. Never been there before. The door had a large “NO DOGS ALLOWED” sign. They served food, duh. Inside the bar three patrons had dogs. It was Twilight Zoney.)
Regulatory requirement that neither the owners, nor the patrons, give a shit about. But they have to have the sign, so up it goes.
That and the large sense of entitlement some dog people have, that they can bring Rover absolutely everywhere with them these days.
That sounds about right; I never counted the taps in the Addison one, but it has to be upwards of 50, probably closer to 80. I used to spend a lot of time there back about 10 years ago and before.
IPA’s are not for me.
If you took all the IPA’s out of the microbrew/craft section of local supermarkets, the beer aisle would have about 10 choices plus the macros.
Sam Adams includes a White Water IPA in their Spring variety pack.
It’s a struggle for me to get it down. Nasty. I only drink it out of stubbornness. Sam apparently thinks it’s good. I’m not pouring it down the drain.
I do refuse to drink more than two sips of the Maple Pecan Porter. It tastes like pancake syrup.
The other beers in the Spring variety pack are pretty good.
All you IPA haters, I’m over at the opposite extreme. I’d estimate 90% of the beers I consume are IPAs, often at the far reaches IBU-wise. I also like sours that test the limits. For me to have a lager/Pilsner/porter/stout/etc it has to be a very good beer.
I like my APAs/IPAs well enough (it’s the style that got me into craft brews and craft brewing), but I also like variety, and I’m honestly kind of burnt out on APAs/IPAs. There are already more than there need to be on the market. Things are getting somewhat better (at my local beer store, while the majority are APAs/IPAs, there are plenty of other styles available), but I would have thought the market would have been even more varied by now.It still seems like every time a new brewery pops up, its flagship is yet another hoppy beer. Carve out your own section of the market, for Chrissake! Why make another hoppy beer when everyone else is making hoppy beers (or sours, now).
My favorite place has a dozen at any one time. They monitor sales and will drop off the least popular and replace them with different beers. 
Finally, someone with refined tastes!
Don’t get too down on the IPA haters. There are interventions available for them and IPA taste training exercises. 
There was a good 10 year stretch when IPAs dominated tap space and they just tried to one up each other with more hops. I think during that period the hate was pretty justified, but that’s probably 5 years out of date by now. At my regular trivia bar there are probably 25 beers on tap and I think only 2 IPAs. That’s more in line with what I see ratiowise.
Because it’s easier to hide poor process control under a layer of bitter hop flavors, than it is to make a rich, refreshing, tasty beer. There are a lot of new breweries. Everywhere. There aren’t a lot of new, good breweries.
I’ll take all of the IPAs, if you people take all of the shitty (literally, judging by the smell) sours and wild ales, all made by people who think they’re the new American Cantillon.
I have yet to have an American sour that was the equal of Rodenbach. There are some nice sour wheats being made, and I like the odd experiment from, e.g., Allagash now and then. But most of these sours/wilds/Brett-infected beers are just bad beer.
IMHO, of course. More for you if you like them.
OK, I love Rodenbach, so I can see where you’re coming from. If you ever find yourself near Pittsburgh message me and I’ll take you to Strange Roots (formerly Draii Laag). Amazing brewers, they’ll talk your ear off about the science behind their sours and farmhouse ales.
Will do. I doubt they distribute outside PA, but I’ll look for them all the same. Thanks for the tip.
It’s not that the new breweries around here aren’t enthusiastic—you don’t go into that line of work without a passion for the beverage; it’s that they aren’t skilled. Or even competent, judging by some of the things they let the public try. Practice hopefully makes perfect.
I’m wondering when market saturation for micros and nanobreweries is going to happen.
Yeah, back when they were calling themselves Draai Laag, their beers would show up in odd places; I saw New York, Vegas, Sacramento. For a while it was a thing in the Pittsburgh Beer Facebook Group to post Draai Laag bottles found in odd places.
They changed their name as a rebranding, because Draai Laag became known as a sours-only brewery.
Like I said, it’s definitely gotten better, but my usual beer bars are still tilted strongly towards IPAs and APAs. I thought the trend would have died 5-10 years ago (and it seems to have where you’re at), but it’s still nowhere near where I expected it to be now. You can probably find posts form me from 10 years ago predicting the move away from these hoppy styles, but I was expecting more. At least we had a bit of a sour renaissance in the meantime–that I would never have expected. I liked sours back then, but there were only a handful of choices, and nobody understood why in the fuck I liked them. Now, it’s nuts and they are everywhere.
Huh, actually, I take that back. Looking at my usual beer bar, there’s 16 drafts, and only 4 are APAs or IPAs. Guess I haven’t been there in awhile. Not a bad mix: there’s a a sweet stout, a cider, a pilsner, a wheat wine, a sour, a braggot, a dunkelweizen, a regular stout, an imperial stout, and oatmeal stout, a quad, etc. to fill out the other taps. I need to get back there soon! (I don’t get out as often as I used to, it seems.)