An Ames Brewery Worth the Trip

Even though it’s a short drive away from Des Moines I don’t know Ames that well.  As a Hawkeye I don’t have too many reasons to venture into Cyclone Country.  In college I would make an occasional trip to the city for a concert or to meet up with friends and leave quickly and groggily the next morning.  To be honest there are really only two landmarks I can easily point out, Jack Trice Stadium and Olde Main Brewing Company.

Olde Main opened in 2004 but it feels like it’s been around forever.  I had two close friends work there in college so it was on my radar even before my beer palette matured enough to appreciate it.  Plus, it’s the beer served every year at 80-35 so it is a brewery well known to most Central Iowans, Cyclones or otherwise.  It’s this familiarity that never made me really appreciate Olde Main, until I grabbed a burger and a few beers there before the recent Nick Offerman (aka Ron Swanson) show at Stephen’s Auditorium.

The design of the restaurant is open and spacious but it’s easy to settle into a booth and have a good conversation.  The food consists of pub staples like wings, nachos and burgers but the menu is also spiced up with hearty Iowa Chops and Angus Ribeye.  I was tempted to go big on food but I had a more pressing focus, the beer of course.

I started with the aptly named Clone Pale Ale.  I have mixed feelings about this beer.  I go back and forth between thinking it’s a solid beer and being disappointed at what I’m missing.  When I’ve had it out of the bottle or at 80-35 it has been incredibly light for an ale and I barely taste any hops, a cardinal sin.  However drinking it in the pub, fresh out of the keg and mixed with my bacon cheeseburger it tasted much better.  Maybe that’s what the Clone Pale Ale is: a great beer to compliment but not overpower any food.

My next choice was the Sodbuster Stout which was an absolute treat.  The beer hints at chocolate and coffee- always a great combo- and was the perfect beer to end a meal on.  I’m inching my way into being a stout drinker and this gave me a big push in that direction.  I wouldn’t recommend this to start the night but it made for a great second beer and I’ll be on the lookout for this one at my local watering hole.

After dinner I moved to the pub area, grabbed a seat on the comfy couches upstairs and sipped on an Elkman Milk Stout, their current seasonal offering.  This was similar to the Sodbuster, but differentiated by the subtle sweetness.  The sultry smoothness of this beer was a perfect fit for relaxing on the couches, observing the scene below.

My trip and shall we say “research” into Olde Main has left me intrigued about what I once thought was a staid brewery.  Olde Main eschews the traditional four seasonal beer offering approach and even one ups Cedar Rapids by offering six seasonal beers, including the soon to debut Lucky Shillelagh Irish Red, an Oktoberfest named Der Festen and Reindeer Fuel Chocolate Porter.  I’m disappointed I missed the Reindeer Fuel but I will find an excuse to get up to Ames for the Irish Red.  And to be honest, isn’t having a Hawkeye excited about going to an Ames brewery a pretty high compliment?