Review of The Shop Beer Co

I like to try breweries, but I don't like spending a ton of money if the beer sucks. So, we look for good deals on Groupon, which is a great way to try new places. For Christmas, I got a Groupon for The Shop Beer Co. Not the best name I've ever heard, but the deal was really good. So, we held onto it along with another Christmas gift (a Fox Concepts gift card) and celebrated our 8 year anniversery with amazing food and a brewery sampling.



My first impression of this place is that it was in the shadows of Mill (the college main strip). I mean it was litteraly in the shadows, it was dark and kind of shadey looking (pun intended). A lot of these cool places find random little buildings or houses that they convert, which makes for a really eclectice vibe, but aren't always in the best parts of town. This area wasn't really THAT bad, or at least I couldn't tell because it was dark.

We walked into the little house and found a neat, warm wood interior. The bar was clean, tables were mostly empty as people either preferred the bar or the patio. I'm not real familiar with the bar scene, so I always look a little lost when enter a place. Luckily the ladies were super nice and very familiar with the Groupon.

We grabbed a spot outside becasue the weather was perfect. The patio was excelent. It was a pavered area with good seating, some trees and a wall mural. They were pumping 2000's pop music, so my wife was really enjoying it. For food, they have a permenant food truck. Seems like an oxymoron, but it keeps the kitchen seperate from the brewery, I'm sure that helps with licenscing and other stuff that our state is so fond of using to make new business impossible to start. We didn't get any food, but it looked and smelled good.

I was also super impressed with how serious they took their coffee (just gauging by the equipment they had).

Ok, for the bear, we each got a flight of 4. I got 2 dark beers, an amber, and an ale. The Coffee Brown Nitro was good. It was dark but not super heavy. The other dark (Dark Adrenaline) was an odd bear. It was very dark, but I felt like I could drink it in the summer. The red (The Nines) was excelent. We got a crowler of that and the coffee brown. The last Desert Pale was brewed with agave, so I wanted to give that a try. I wasn't a big fan because I wanted a tequila flavor (wrongly) and the hops were a bit too strong for me (I don't like hops).

Overall, I strongly check this place out. The beer was pretty good and the scene was really cool. We are probably going to try and hit the groupon a second time before they get rid of it.