By Greg B. So one afternoon I was out driving about and wanted to check out a brewery.  But I was too lazy to drive really far to a new brewery, so I decided to check out the Ellicott Mills Brewing Company.  I had heard mixed reviews of this place and decided to check it out myself.  Had I gone to the web page beforehand, I’d have been warned that this place may not have been up to my standards.  But unfortunately, I didn’t know.

Parking is always a problem in Ellicott City, and on a nice weekend this is no exception. However, I got lucky and found a spot right outside the restaurant.  Lucky!  Though my luck was about to run out.  Gabi and I walked inside, got a table and checked out the menu.  There were options for trying the samplers of the beer, which we of course ordered.  Ellicott Mills brewing company tries to go for the traditional German beer styles, and brewing according to the reinheitsgebot, so there are many German influenced beer recipes.

We ordered lunch, I got the Cajun alligator plate and Gabi got the sausage sampler with bockwurst and venison sausage.  My alligator was chewy, cut in thin strips and hidden beneath an overwhelming gray sauce on top of a bed of dry rice.  The flavor was good, but the presentation was not appealing.  However, the lobster and cheese soup was quite nice as an appetizer.

Gabi’s sausage plate came and was more appealing.  The bockwurst was nothing to write home about (though apparently, enough to write to the world about on this website), but the venison sausage was quite nice.  It had a ton of flavor, both in the meat and in the spices used.  The plate came with a serving of red cabbage, which was more sweet than tart, like at Blob’s park, but it was still very good.  I did not try the sausage with the honey mustard sauce, but Gabi said she enjoyed it.

Here is a list of the beers and a review for each, in list form.

• Kolsch – This beer poured a thin white head with a real pale straw color.  Sweet, but lacking in carbonation.  Has a tiny bit of bitters at the back of the throat.  Scores a 2.0/5
• Boomerang - Australian lager style, 4.8% abv.  straw colored beer, no carbonation.  Has almost a crispness to it and a little bitter finish.  Scores a 2.1/5
• Marzen – 5.1% abv.  Dark amber in color with a thin head.  Mild citrus nose, no real carbonation and sweet to taste, almost fruity.  scores a 2.3/5
• Dunkel – Dark amber in color, thin head, no real carbonation (see a trend here?  very disappointing).  Not impressive, flavor was severely lacking.  scores a 1.5/5
• Malt Liquor – 6.1% abv.  light straw color, smells sweet but again, no real carbonation on the palate, but sweet malts come through with almost an herbal note.  scores a 2.5/5
• Illchester ale – Dark color with a cloudy composition.  Head retention is OK, best out of all the beers I saw so far.  Tiny bit of bitters at the finish but no real aroma of hops.  Disappointing, from a hoping-for-hops point of view.  scores a 2.1/5
• Pilsner – 5.4% abv.  No head, no carbonation, pale straw in color.  Most mild pilsner I’ve ever drank, the saaz hops are almost non-existent.  There are some big malts at the finish though, which was interesting, but it lacked the refreshing nature of a real pilsner.  scores a 2.0/5
• Jack Frost - Copper color, no head and a sweet and fruity nose/taste.  I stopped taking real notes at this point, but I’ll rate it anyway.  scores a 2.3/5

Man, that was a disappointing trip to a brewpub.  I had high hopes for a place that was so close, but I really did not enjoy much in this place.  The atmosphere was nice, interesting decorations, nice woodwork around the building.  But the beer was not good, and the food was sub-par as well.  I don’t think I’ll be going back to this brewpub again, unless I hear about some dramatic changes to their beer recipes, or that they had some kind of a problem with their kegging system that day.