Aan de bar valt op dat de tapkraan verschilt. Soms is het een kort tapje, maar anderen hebben er een lange steel aan met eventueel een tapetiket. Die hendel kan er heel divers uitzien. En de café's hebben steeds vaker speciaalbier!
Why I love this scene: the bartender assumed “beer for the dude, mimosa for the girl” but he was dead wrong. The deconstruction of stereotypes is beautiful.
Craft beer bars make darling first date spots, wonderful happy-hour locales, and all around awesome places to contemplate the last twenty-four hours over a cold one. Choosing the right craft beer bar will not only impress your Tinder date and coworkers, but will provide you with a watering hole staple for years. But there’s a problem. With great trends come deceitful imposters, and as is the case with phony craft cocktail and wine bars, there are a lot of beer joints that really fall flat. Don’t reinforce your boss’s suspicion that you don’t do your research and end up in a so-called craft beer bar that’s really just a limp keg party in disguise. Here’s how to sift the genuine from the meh.
- The Only Beers Available Are Blue Moon, Shocktop, and Red Hook
Hey, guess what? None of those beers are craft brands, despite what they might have you believe. In fact, all of those beers are carefully marketed projects from beer giants like Anheuser-Busch. If you want to see a full list of fake-o “craft beers,” ...Now, here’s the thing. There’s nothing wrong with these beers, but a real craft beer bar should have a fairly large selection of craft beer. That means beer made by independently owned breweries. Is it too much to ask a self-proclaimed craft beer bar to stock actual craft beer? We don’t think so (http://vinepair.com/wine-blog/how-to-tell-the-craft-beer-bar-youre-in-isnt-really-a-craft-beer-bar/).
- The Tap List Never Changes
Some of the craft beer bars we enjoy visiting change their tap list every week. While that’s a lot to ask for, a real craft beer bar will have a frequently rotating selection of draught beers. That’s because craft beer bars are constantly bringing in new, exciting brews for you to try. Good craft breweries introduce new flavors and styles that vary with the times or seasonally, and craft beer bars are there to vend them to you. Just ask a bartender at a craft beer bar how many craft beer sales reps (s)he sees a week to give you an idea of how much of a (constantly shifting) selection is out there.
- The Foam To Beer Ratio Is Frighteningly Low/High
The right amount of foam is a good thing. However, typically if your beer is overly foamy or has no foam at all, something is wrong. It’s either being poured incorrectly, the draught system sucks, or both. Pouring a beer properly is, believe it or not, pretty hard to master. However, if an establishment calls itself a craft beer bar, they should have that mastery down pat.
- The Bartenders Don’t Know Jack About The Beer
While we wouldn’t recommend interrogating the bartenders about the intricate yeast behavior of your favorite saison, whoever is behind the bar at a craft beer joint should have a good handle on the beer list. They should be able to guide you in the right direction when it comes to selecting a beer, and probably give you a small sample upon request to confirm that you will, in fact, enjoy their suggestion. If you don’t like the sample, you can opt for a different beer. However, if you went straight to ordering a beer without requesting a sample and didn’t enjoy your beer, you should be able to send it back. Which leads us to our next red flag…
- You Can’t Send Back A Beer
If you’re polite, and clearly express your order was a mea culpa, you should be able to send your beer back and order something else, as is the case with wine and cocktails. Hey, beers in general – and especially craft beers – range in taste. If you like everything on the beer list, you’re either a brew god or have no tastebuds. If you send back your beer courteously and your bartender looks at you like you’re the kid who killed Jon Snow, get out of there. This shows that besides lacking manners, the bar doesn’t understand that different beers taste, well, different – which is kind of a craft beer tenet. However, there is an exception to this test. If the bar is jammed, don’t send your beer back. The ensuing answer might not be a good indicator of how authentic the place is because of the extreme surrounding chaos. And honestly, it’ll be less work for both you and your bartender to just drink the six dollars. [Tja, wat je bestelt dat drink je op, althans dat vind ik. Ik weet nog goed mijn eerste rookbier (een echte Bamberg) in een biercafé. dat was hard werken om te drinken en de mensen om me heen zeiden al 'geef het maar op' en 'geef maar terug', maar ik hield vol...]
- Everyone Who Works There Is A Cute Girl In Short Shorts
Ain’t nothing wrong with a cute girl in short shorts, but if the entire staff is comprised of women who make you feel like you should really get back into doing squats, you may be at a sports bar.
= When your bartender or server doesn't looks down on you when you want a beer which is refreshing, sessionable with great balanced flavors, which don't blow your head off or leaving you wandering what actually is in the beer, instead of an IPA.or a fake Belgian-style Saison or Sour all served incorrectly because that's how they do it, with no regard that they are actually in the service industry and that you are the customer who used to be always right ??? Oh and apparently also when you don't think in stereotypes like the author of this article ...
= What an utterly shite article. No you cannot take your beer back if you simply don't like it. If there is something wrong with the beer, of course it can come back. But I offer free tasters and if you choose not to take advantage of them, and then decide that you want to waste a pint of beer, that's your choice. Don't try to push the prices up for everybody else by not knowing bar etiquette.
= Just imagine doing that in a restuarant. Calling the staff over, 'I don't like this meal, bring me another', Waiter; 'Is there anything wrong with it ?''No, I just don't like it that much. Please bring me something else for free.'
= Red Hook may or may not be a "Craft Beer," depending on how you define it. But Red Hook is much more like Sam Adams than Blue Moon or ShockTop. It was a pioneering craft brewery that grew and grew. It is now publicly traded and InBev is a minority shareholder (~30%). Whether or not they still make good beer is another matter, but lumping them in with ShockTop and Blue Moon is clueless (http://vinepair.com/wine-blog/how-to-tell-the-craft-beer-bar-youre-in-isnt-really-a-craft-beer-bar/).
