By Greg B. So on a random Tuesday afternoon, Jer and I accompanied my sister on a shopping trip.  Not so much for the shopping as the promised 2 hours at Red Brick Station.  This is a local brewpub up in Whitemarsh, and I previously reviewed one of their porters, the Murf’s Porter.  Man that was a great beer!  And since I met Ashley, a woman who works there and was getting married around this time (congrats and goodluck!), I decided to stop in and pay this brewpub a short visit.

We came in just on the verge of the evening dinner rush, and were seated in a random room in the back, the first people.  The restaurant soon began to fill up, so we weren’t alone for too long.  Our waitress was a shorter woman who was pretty quick to fill up empty glasses and remove empties (important during the sampler times).  Jer had some (faulty) information that the Something Red was their best beer, so he ordered a pint of it right off the bat.  I decided to try the sampler: 5 of their standard beers plus 2 of their specialty seasonal brews.  This gave me access to their 5 standard brews, the Honeygo Lite, Avenue Ale, Daily Crisis IPA, Something Red and Spooner’s Stout, with two of the seasonal beers being the Highlander Heavy and the DPM lager.  So, I’m also going to try to start rating beers in my posts, scale of 0-5, with the 2-3 range being average beer, 5 being the best beer imaginable, and 1 being a beer I don’t want to try again and wouldn’t want you to try.

Honeygo Lite: Not really much to say about this beer, it has no head, it’s light, and it’s kinda gross.  It is so mild it has almost no flavor, no real nose to speak of and maybe it is slightly bitter as a finish.  Not a beer I’d want to drink again. 3.6% abv, score of 1

Avenue Ale: No to low amounts of head.   I didn’t get any real nose to speak of (I did still have a head cold at the time, mind you, but still nothing came through on the nose).  It was definitely a malty brew, not quite chewy but you could feel the thickness of the beer.  Has a slightly bitter finish.  4.1% abv, score of 1.7

Something Red: Low amounts of head, nice amber color.  The nose is alright, get some malts in there but nothing really stood out.  On the palate I wish there were some more bitters, but you can get a barley flavor from the malts.  Tasted a little skunky or oxidized or something, Jer ordered a full pint of this on recommendation from a friend and did not enjoy it, and I didn’t enjoy the sample.  abv 5%, score of 1.5

Daily Crisis IPA: What this beer lacked in head it made up for in a nice nose.  A darker colored IPA with a nice crisp hop nose, perhaps cascade or northern brewer hops?  The flavor of the beer was of a mild bitter, for a 55IBU beverage, but I think they had a nice balance of the malt and hop profiles here.  Leaves a taste of piney forests on your tongue after drinking, a nice refreshing IPA and it actually went very well with the spicy nachos we ordered later.  abv 6.1%, score of 2.8

Spooner’s Stout: A good hearty stout.  Had a creamy head that persisted for a long time.  The beer had a sweet/sour smell and taste to it, with the dark malts coming through on the finish.  A nice beer if you want to sit and drink a pint amount friends.  abv 4.5%, score of 3.

Highlander Heavy: I didn’t know what to expect from this beer when it was served to me, as I didn’t know it was a scotch ale.  No head to speak of, but a beautiful nose, herbal, wheat and perhaps vanilla.  Very pleasant to smell.  There’s a smokey herbal flavor with caramel notes to taste, very malty and chewy and thick.  Definitely the best beer of the bunch and a great and interesting beer to drink.  I came up here for the Murf’s porter, which is now out of season, but I found this great beer.  The web page doesn’t list the abv, but it has to be in the 10-12% range.  score of a 3.7

DPM lager: Based on a schwartzbier, I was excited to try this beer.  It smelled like a scwartzbier, but it was a bit watery for my taste.  You could get the black roasted malt content, but it was only in flavor and not mouthfeel.  If they bumped up their malt content, not necessarily the dark malts but whatever they used as their base malts, I think they could make a real nice bier out of this recipe.  score of 2.5

Monstrous plate of nachos!

All beer aside, Jer and I ordered a plate of nachos, despite not really being hungry.  The nachos came on a giant plate and were well worth the money for them in size and flavor (the jalapenos were actually spicy!  It was great!).  It was only after our samplers ran out that we learned on Tuesday there is $1 beer pints all day, so while we lamented the fact that we could have sampled all the beers for cheap in full pint quantity, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to drink the honeygo lite in anything more than a 3oz taste.  One other nice thing about this restaurant is that they give you a proper pint glass, so expect to drink a few ounces more than the usual American bar ‘pint’ per drink.

So, in retrospect this is kind of a strange brewpub.  It definitely has a big family atmosphere, which makes sense given it is located in a giant shopping area of Baltimore, up in Whitemarsh.  The service was alright, the beers were either very delicious or not great and the food, as far as I saw and tasted, was great.  So if you can come here and get a seat at the bar on a not-so-crowded evening, I’d say go for it and give their beers a shot.  I get the feeling that their seasonal brews are their better beers, given how great their murf’s porter was and how this highlander heavy is, but I look forward to seeing what the next set of seasonal beers are!