Back in January a cousin of mine and his wife moved from Boston to Tacoma for all the obvious reasons, and I’d been meaning to meet up with them. Then one of his brothers came up to the Puget Sound area for a few weeks, and that seemed to be the tipping point for taking the long trek to T-Town. The initial plan was to hit the Harmon brewpub, but soon after we arrived, the evening’s entertainment, a fairly standard bar band, cranked up their amps and started playing, making conversation basically impossible. Kids these days, with their loud rock music! No wonder they’re all deaf! Anyway, the staff directed us to the Tap Room, another location in Harmon Brewing Company‘s burgeoning south sound beer empire, and away we went. Turned out to be a smaller place, but they didn’t do sampler trays, and as soon as we sat down, they cranked up the stereo. Those meddling kids! I shook my cane at the waitstaff, and they thankfully turned down the volume from 11 to something that allowed us to talk to each other. These kids, with their “smarty-phones,” they don’t talk to each other anymore, they just beep-beep-boop-boop on their sexting and the Twitters. I don’t understand it. At least they’re still drinking. So where was I? Oh yeah, the Tap Room didn’t do sampler trays, nor sell logo pint glasses. Crazy! Between the three of us who were drinking that evening, we were able to sample all ten of the beers they had on tap, mostly through periodic requests for tastes but also occasional pints. And then we found out Sundays at the Tap Room are half-off everything. Combined with two free pizzas because they managed to mess up the first order, and it was a very inexpensive night, indeed. Good times.

Not even Photoshop can save this awful picture — Tacoma, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Point Defiance IPA – 5.8% – Kind of mellow for an IPA but tasty and very drinkable. Not particularly crisp, but it’s smooth.
• Mt. Takhoma Blonde – 3.8% – Lemony aroma, and slight lemon taste. Very light and drinkable, not too fizzy, not too bready. All around, pretty good.
• Puget Sound Porter – 5.4% – Good solid porter. Slight chocolate flavor. No fancy vanilla stuff (see below). Pretty crisp, too.
• Vanilla Porter – seasonal – Awesome aroma: chocolate/coffee/alcohol — very Kahlua-ish. Tastes pretty good, too. Has a lot going on — chocolate with a bitter edge. Noticed the vanilla more in the aroma than in the taste, actually. It’s a porter that makes you think, but not in a bad way.
• Bourbon Oak Winter Warmer – seasonal – Really nice. Smooth, dark, not very heavy, doesn’t taste strong. Yum!

The Rest
• Pinnacle Peak Pale Ale – 4.2% – Strong floral hoppy bite at first, then mellows to nice breadiness. Pretty decent.
• Brown’s Point ESB – 5.6% – Very smooth, not very hoppy, bit of breadiness. Their description says, “full-bodied amber.” I agree.
• Banana Hammock Blonde – seasonal – Another f’n banana beer. Strong banana aroma, but banana flavor is not as strong as El Jefe, thankfully. Can actually get a light fizzy beer taste at the end. Still not my thing.
• Cream Cicle Pale Ale – seasonal – Cream soda aroma. Orange taste comes through. Kind of odd. Not my thing, again.
• T-Town Brown – seasonal – No Tacoma aroma, thank goodness. Basically smells and tastes like an alcoholic root beer. Another odd experiment.

I have no excuse for the terrible picture I ended up taking. It’s like I wasn’t even trying. Managed to tart it up a bit in Photoshop, but still, it’d probably be better to leave this post picture-less. Oh well.