Sunday, November 12, 2006

Main Street Ale House (Gresham, OR) aka 4th Street Brewing Co

10/13/06.  Presently known as the 4th Street Brewing Co.

Main Street Ale House is not a bad place if you're invited to hang out, but I think they are suffering from a lack of focus. Twelve beers on tap, all mainline macro with a couple exceptions. The Eager Beaver IPA was pretty good and the Black Roots Blonde was pretty good for being the number two light offering. Nothing was really spectacular of the group.

Waitress kept trying to explain the various styles to me, not getting from the notes in front of me that I was a geek. Unfortunately, she didn't understand the styles. They were serving a saison and a berliner weisse as well, nice styles, but the berliner wasn't served with syrup (menu even said it was) because the waitress couldn't find it so the beer was crazy sour. Waitress said it was going off tap because it wasn't selling and that she didn't like it.

The decor was similarly off with the nice shiny brewery behind the bar, a very open cement floor, fireplace, oddly placed tables and booths, a cabinet of German beer steins, and odd colors. Just felt put together but not with a consistent purpose, just like the beer line up. Just seemed like they were worried about appearances rather than quality, and not doing a good job. Completely dead at lunch on a week day, so the downtown crowd isn't coming in either.

So, good selection, service was nice, but the beer and the place just couldn't pull it all together. We stopped because we ate dinner down the street, so came in for a rack of samples. Glad I didn't go any further out of the way than I did.

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