Inoculum Ale Works

Midway through ‘escape to Flowida week’, we jetted down to St Pete and got inoculated. It wasn’t our intention to do so, you see, but having hoofed it up to Webb’s City Cellar and finding it closed for a private party until 4pm (fuckers!), we needed to put up somewhere and I had heard some things, some things, you see, some things. After arguing about which side of the street it was on (Dena wasn’t wrong, it was on the right), I spied it easily by the ‘All Sour Beers Here’ sign out front, most promising. Step in and let you mind adjust…

Long narrow place with an unusually high black painted ceiling & wall uppers over gray wall lowers & honeycomb block hexagon floorings. Logo window up front in something of a separated seating area with some cushy chairs and a bookshelf divider holding some bric-a-brac atop (globe, skeleton dog & cat, microscope, beakers, a ‘The Thinker’ bookend).

3 panel pieced straight bar beyond the bookshelf with seating for 10 on wooden chairs. 12 tap barbell tower with non-descript handles on the bar and the tap list projected onto the wall at the end but it’s nearly illegible. Prints over the barback of beer, from here, and the ‘answers to common questions’ sign behind the bar is pretty awesome. Some very cool prints displaying the inventions/patents of the beer keg, faucet, mug, etc. riddled about, a ‘beer flavor map’ print to the rear that brings me pain (because when I read the ‘off flavors’ entries, I can taste them), and light art otherwise. Drop cased filament bulbs over the bar, and drop cluster filaments up front & to the rear. Some 2 siders mounted, a lamp, and others. Table & chair sets, and then mismatched easy chair or couch & table combos. Cooler on the other end with Drex cans in 4 packs.

8 house beers on tap (Eccentric Dane, Sour Pale aged on limes & Apricots, 5.3%; Hologrophy, a sour beer/cider blend, 5.6%; Aether Plus, Strawberry Popsicle Berliner Weisse, 4.9%; Spectrally Macabre, Black Watermelon Gose, 3.1%; Drex the Lactosaurus Rex, American Berliner Weisse, 3.4%; Cladogenesis, American Wild Ale collab with Motor Works, 5.2%; Tangency, sour turbid IPA, 5.3%; Reductive, Sour Blonde, 6%), + 2 guest taps that are not really guest? (Krueger Brewing Finest Golden Lager & IPL). Drex was good, but I’m calling Eccentric Dane & Aether Plus for the wins! Beers are served in 5oz or 12oz servings and only 5 of them crowlered (did I mention the crowler crimper on the end of the bar?)

Quality time with Doug today. He plays some decent tunes; that Doug does. The brewery is not on site, but rather wherever elsewhere is. Sours in Saint Pete, yes, please.