First Firkin Friday at the Tied House!

I was given the very cool honor of getting to tap the firkin (a small barrel of Real Ale) this past Friday at the Tied House, for being such an avid Tied House fan on Twitter, Facebook and my blog. I was very nervous when I discovered this was a good ol' fashioned type of tapping - with a pointy tap and a mallet! I'd heard the last person to do this got sprayed in beer - and I did *not* want to waste fine beer!

Carolyn and the gang walked me through it, and with one (okay... two) swift swings, the firkin was tapped!



This month's beer was a fine Mai Bock from Peter Licht and Ron Manabe. While I've complained in the past that the firkins can suffer from too much yeast (most likely from not sitting long enough before being tapped), this Mai Bock had no issues there. The *imperial* sized pints were filled nearly to the brim by the happy bartenders, and the beer went down smooth. At one point I heard the ABV was 7%, so we all tried to be careful with the quantities, but the beer was so yummy that I think there were a lot of hang overs on Saturday (don't worry, most of us walked there!)

I don't have much experience with Mai Bocks, but this one reminded me of all the things I love about a hefeweisen, and none of the things I don't. It was light and crisp, with a slight citrus flavor. It was a bit cloudy, but like I noted before, was not yeasty.

I think our group made a pretty good dent on the firkin :-)

I don't know what the special beer for next Month will be, but I can tell you this: if you go to the Tied House in Mountain View on the first Friday of every month about 5PM, you won't be disappointed.


(in interest of full disclosure, I did get a free pint for my tapping efforts, but if this wasn't a good beer, I wouldn't have bothered discussing the taste :-)