A Day Of Dark Beers

Yesterday we rode in to the big city and spent the day riding around, eating and hitting up a few breweries inbetween.  It was a warm day while the sun was out but pretty chilly on the evening ride home. This post is just about the beer.

First for what it’s worth, I feel I need to point out that these beers were consumed over an 8 hour period along with a couple of meals and approximately 25-30 miles of riding.

It had been a little while since we’d been to any of our local breweries. Craft beers and their breweries seem to be the trendy thing and have gotten really busy and because of this, we’d been avoiding them as of late. Also I’m just not a big fan of the atmosphere most breweries have. I’d much rather enjoy a beer in a bar setting which I find a little more lively plus there are no kids, dogs or board games. To our surprise though none were all that busy despite it being such a nice day.

Our first stop was Third Place Brewing which is a small “hobby” brewery located downtown in a narrow old building on the city’s main East/West street. We had the vanilla porter which was really good. Just a hint of vanilla and sweetness and a low abv which I really like.

Moving East to the Design District we made a stop at the Hopping Gnome brewery which is in another old narrow building similar in size to Third Place. Here we had something new to us and probably our favorite beer of the day. It was a winter wheat. Never knew there were dark wheat beers.

Next up was Central Standard Brewing which is in a big metal building in what I believe is also considered the Design District.  We had their coconut porter which is one of our favorite beers. This beer has a prominent coconut flavor without being over the top.

Our last stop before grabbing a bite to eat and heading home was in the historic Delano District and Aero Plains Brewing where we had their oatmeal stout. A good no frills stout. This brewery like Central Standard is in a newer big metal building.