Last weekend my wife and I were blessed with a kid free Friday night. These are few and far between for us so we did our best to make the most of it.
We started off the night with a couple of beers at the Walkerville Brewery where I tried their new Amber beer (rather good, I used to love Ambers and this is a good example of the style). From there we walked over to The Twisted Apron for an amazing dinner.
After our dinner, the waitress (going above and beyond) asked what our evening plans were and after we answered non-committally suggested we check out Brew, a new(ish) brew pub that opened up just east of downtown. I had heard about Brew before and had been meaning to check the place out for some time, so that became the plan.
Brew was pretty easy to find. It's a big grey building with the letters B R E W in the windows, just east of the Casino at 635 University East. There was parking at the church next door and across the street in an empty lot. While it's not in the best part of town I don't think it's anything anyone would need to worry about.
The actual tap room wasn't very big at all. I would estimate maybe 12 seats at the bar, four or so tall tables spread around the room, and four round tables, one in front of each window. The place can probably only really fit about eight 4-5 person parties, more if people are willing to stand.
We were lucky in the fact that, just as we were coming in a group was leaving so we were able to get one of the tables. We were handed an appetizing menu that was mostly gourmet style flat bread pizzas and pretzels. As we were coming form The Twisted Apron we weren't looking for food. I will say that seeing what other people were eating, the food looked and smelled great. Putting the menu aside we got to what we came for: The Beer!
At the time we were there Brew only had three taps. This looks like it's the standard as you could clearly see the three brewing vats from the tap room. I have to assume that they always have three taps. Based on their facebook page it looks like Brew rotates these taps constantly.
While there my wife and I tried two beers.
The first was their Chocolate Stout. As I'm sure you can guess, that's the darker beer pictured above.
It was okay. Not great but in no way bad. I think as far as Chocolate Stouts go I'm a bit spoiled by amazing brews like Flying Monkey's BNL.
The second beer left a much better impression on me and is the reason I will be going back to Brew again. It was their Sour Wheat.
My wife loves sour beers, especially Lambics. The problem with sours is that they are very hard to find. I don't think they are very popular. So just finding one is an achievement in itself. I think it's awesome that there's a sour brewed right here in Windsor. It also helps that it was a really good, very easy to drink sour. It wasn't overpowering at all and was pleasant enough that I had to order a 2nd one before we moved on to enjoy the rest of our night.
So overall I do recommend you check out Brew. It's a great addition to the local Windsor beer scene. I think it's amazing to see how much the Windsor craft beer scene has grown. I'm loving it. My only caveat is that you may want to call ahead or be prepared to wait for a table as there isn't a lot of room in their tap room.
