But the beer list isn't as good as it used to be. They serve a new and relatively lame Bittersweet Motel, Cyprus Brown, and the tepid but true to style Ruby Mild. The wheat's only on cask and four of the beers are guest beers. One or two is fine, but four means the brewmaster's distracted.
On the other hand, the fried chicken sandwich was excellent (though the avocados were a little much) and my Reuben was very tasty. We used to come here for both the food and the beer, especially brunch, because they were both so very good. Magnolia was the exception that proved the rule.
The better the food at a brewpub, the worse the beer.
-- Posted from the Black iPhone
Hey, just thought I'd chime in here for a moment. I'm all for a multitude of opinions about beer, including mine, and would never suggest that anyone should refrain from criticizing beers they don't like. That kind of difference of opinion is what makes the world go round.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I did want to set the record straight that there is no rule that the better the food, the worse the beer. As someone who has dedicated my life to both, it drives me crazy when I can't have both in one place. Whether or not we've always succeeded, Magnolia from Day One, has tried to treat both as equals. The Magnolia remodel has no impact on our beer program. Nor does any menu change.
The beer program is at least as strong as ever or better, in my opinion, since we keep on tinkering and refining and finding better sources for ingredients. As always, our goal is to offer 10-12 house-brewed beer on CO2 dispense and 5 more on cask. And, as has been the case for the past three years, we are brewing at capacity and in the summer have trouble keeping up with demand. So, the list drops to 5-7 and we augment with guest beers.
Kolsch, Alt and Spud are always in the rotation, Big Cypress Brown has been a staple since 2000, and Bittersweet Motel is one of the 4-5 bitters other than Blue Bell that we play around with every year since the English brewing aesthetic is one of my favorite influences.
This year, we took our love for British beers and brewing to a new level by bringing over a pallet of single-field, single-harvest Maris Otter malt and brewing a new beer with it every two weeks (through last month). It was a fun and fascinating project and, I think, demonstrates that we continually strive to take the beer program here to new heights. Definitely not distracted. Running out of beer when at capacity is a nice problem to have but it is indeed still a problem. I apologize for our inability to keep the number of choices up during times of peak demand.
Glad you liked the food, though, and thanks for writing about us.
Cheers,
Dave McLean
Brewmaster/Owner
Magnolia