In the northwest corner of downtown, and fittingly occupying a portion of the old Magnolia Brewery building, The Brewery Tap serves up what are the best deals in town for quality beer. If you like beer, what the kids call craft beer, you need to check it out. Though it won’t have the range of extreme beers and hop-bombs that the Flying Saucer and Petrol Station carries, it has a nice selection that is much cheaper than elsewhere.
And, it is certainly a dive: the exterior when viewed up close, the interior, some of the bartenders, the shuffling of the homeless outside its windows, the appearance of the regulars, the smell, etc. Well, actually, it is the bar that might be funkily odiferous, not the regulars, who are also a surprisingly well-educated, if thirsty lot. The bar is a scruffy, generally comfortable place featuring plenty of old wood, dart boards, and lots of soccer paraphernalia, belying the English owner’s sporting passion (which is directed mostly towards Chelsea).
One of the quickly evident charms of The Tap is that it is one of the few of bars in which the beers are poured into 20-ounce British Imperial pint glasses. With only a bartender on duty, beers are solely pushed across the bar, and can be filled pretty much to the brim. This latter fact cannot really be accomplished with a harried wait staff ferrying beers on trays to customers, as a good amount of spillage would occur. Their 20-ounce glass results in at least 25% more beer, actually, typically a good 40% more beer than what is served in nearly all other local bars. In addition to the shorter pour, this is also because most other bars use the American, 16-ounce pint glasses.
At the Tap most draft foreign and domestic beers are $5.00 for the hefty pour. The deals at the Tap are even better for the heavily advertised domestic, industrial stuff, which is always $3.50, and, especially priced for college students and bottom-feeders, Lone Star, Rolling Rock and Zeigen Bock are just $2.50.
There are currently 35 beers on tap or so, and the bar generally does a good job in keeping beers quite fresh. The biggest seller is the Spaten Lager, the slightly malty and clean-tasting golden lager that is that brewery’s version of the everyday beer of the Munich area. In true German efficiency, not just here but nearly everywhere, this beer along with their Oktoberfest (or Märzen), which is brewed year round, and the Optimator Dopplebock, tastes nearly as good as it does in that part of the Fatherland. There is a smattering of other lagers, ales, a Belgian specialty, a couple London lovelies, and several hometown Saint Arnold products on tap plus a couple from the newly minted Karbach. And, of course, the Guinness is always poured properly here.
The bar is open from 4:00 to 10:00 PM from Monday through Thursdays, 4:00 PM to 1:00 AM on Friday and Saturday, and 4:00 to 10:00 PM or so on Sundays. The bar sometime opens early for big English soccer matches.
The Brewery Tap
717 Franklin (at Milam), 77002
(713) 237-1537
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