Sacramento Alehouse (Pyramid Breweries)

I’ve eaten dinner here twice and both times I’ve had a decent experience. The building is modern and attractive and houses a large dining area. There is a small glass walled room in one corner that houses their meager brewing equipment, and they have a bar along one wall.

The menu is pretty expansive and consists of things you would expect to find in an American brewery. They have everything from hamburgers to nachos, pizza to ribs. Overall the food is decent, but not outstanding, and both times I’ve eaten there I’ve been a bit disappointed.

The beer is pretty lousy, but I already knew that from having tried their bottled offerings before. They offer quite a selection of brews, but most of the styles are very similar. For instance the second time I went they had three red/amber ales, two light lagers, two hoppy beers and two wheat beers. They do have rotating taps with seasonals and alehouse exclusives, so some of the beers do change. The problem with their beer, and I’ve tried a good selection of them, is that they are more of a chore to drink they are a pleasure. At most bars or restaurants I have to tell myself to stop drinking after two or three pints. But here, after the first beer you really don’t want to drink anymore, even if you change styles.

The service is standard and professional enough, and I don’t feel strongly about it either way. The brewpub also offers a daily brewery tour, which in this location is highly unnecessary. The brewery that you tour is just that tiny little room with the glass walls next to the dining area. The tour consisted of only me, my BA friend, and our tour guide – who was knowledgeable enough. He basically just talked about the process of beer making in general while referencing the homebrewing equipment housed in the tiny room that they call a brewery. By law, they need produce something out of that equipment once or twice a year to be called a brewpub but it didn’t look like it had been used in a while. Most if not all of the beer the alehouse serves comes from their Berkeley location. He went on to say that Berkeley housed their bottling line as well, and most bottles found on shelves on the West coast came out of there.

Overall, I would have to say pass on the Pyramid alehouse. There are just too many better restaurants in the area that serve not only better food, but better beer. It’s not terrible by any stretch, I just have no desire to ever go back there.

I had never been inside a Pyramid Breweries Alehouse, but that changed just a few hours ago. The interior feel clean but corportate. Pyramid signs all over the place, lots of empty booths and seats around the restuarant even though it was 5:30pm. A large group of business people were drinking ptichers of beer near our seat, and if it weren't for them, it would have felt as sterile as K St. at 6:30pm on a Monday (clue: dead). Still, I had hopes for the beer and food.

9 different beers on-tap, some of them are realtively easy to find anywhere, like the Haywire Hefe. Others were draft only offerings, like the Grifter IPA. A more than fair selection overall, though certainly within style bounderies; nearly all the beers on the menu were some kind of regular IPA, amber ale, or wheat ale. I did see a special Haywire Hefe glass for that, but otherwise it's the same old shaker pint glasses. To add insult to injury, both my pours, while fresh, were short poured and lacked head. I had a kristalweizen and a seasonal IPA, the former being okay and the latter satisfying.

Service was okay. You could tell that there was no shortage of help when a few of the servers are visibly standing around while waiting for food to come out. He did his job, but didn't particularly go out on a limb to help us.

Right where everything else was ordinary, I was hoping that the food would make it a worthwhile trip. It didn't. I ordered a "bratwurst" which was decent, but the pretzel with Haywire cheese sauce was awful; it felt cold, very tough to bite into, and had almost no salt on it. Ouch. Beer and food items are reasonably prices on their own, and with happy hour many appetizers are reduced to $5 and beers respectively reduced to $3.50.

Verdict: dissapointed. In truth, I would give this a pass in the future.

have stopped by this location and the one in Berkely several times in the past, but had been avoiding it lately as it is generally uninspired. had an evening event downtown and 1/2 hour to burn so I popped in on a Tuesday night. What I discovered is that they now have two taps from their "Ignition Series" whch typically have higher-gravity, 'imperial" style ales. the Imperial Heffe was unimpressive, but the Imperial Red was pretty damn good - and at $2.50 a pint (Happy hour) tasted even better!!!

Next time I am in the neighborhood I will be more likely to stop by.

It has been years since I've been here...

Big huge place just a couple of blocks from the Capital. Pretty classy looking, but a bit bare on a Friday night.

Quality is decent. I thought the IPA was average at best, but the Draught Pale Ale was as I good as I remember it. However, I remember the quality being much better, and now it's not nearly as good, I have seen a definite decrease in quality since Pyramid was taken over a few years ago.

Service was good, quick, attentive, and pleasant.

Selection was ok. About 10 taps, but a lot of overlap, come on Pyramid, do you really need 4 Pale Ale style beers? I would have liked to have seen a little more variety, some dark beers would have been nice.

All in all? An ok place, if you are in the area check it out, but don't go out of your way. This is a place for decent beers, in an ok atmosphere.

An immense place with a long window front overlooking "K" Street. The m.d.s. was straight ahead with a cooler of "Pyramid to Go" to the right, along with the Pyramid Store. To the left was the Brewers Room, a private meeting facility. The bar was along the right wall and housed an impressive bank of taps to go along with the copper top. The bar was fronted by a long, copper topped seating area for overflow seating. To the extreme right was the "Hefeweizen Room" and beyond that, an outdoor "Beer Garden". Standard restaurant seating in center with kitchen aft left. The second floor, above the bar, had additional seating, but it was not being used during my visit. I had the Grilled Sausage platter for lunch accompanied by the Thunderhead IPA and a Snowcap Winter Seasonal.

Beers: Apricot Weizen-5.1; Amber Weizen-5.5; OR Honey-4.8; Mactarnahan's-5.3; Blackwatch Cream Porter; HefeWeizen-5.2; Crystal Weizen-5.3; Mac's Amber Ale-5.1; N2 Mac's Amber-5.1; Snow Cap-7.0; and Thunderhead IPA-6.7.

Visited this place a couple of times while attending a conference at the nearby convention centre. It really is more of an eating place than a bar though there is seating at the bar.

Decent selection of their own beers and the Hefe was fairly nice, Thunderhead very hoppy and strong. We ate on both occasions and the food was pretty decent, sample platter for starters is recommended.

Sacramento is a bit spooky after about 7.00pm when all the city workers have gone home. Definitely got an edgy feel to certain parts. Will try and get to Brew It Up if I can persuade my colleagues to head there.

Worth a visit but after being there twice in succession this falls in the seen it done it category. The place is OK without being great.

Visited this Alehouse while up in Sacramento one weekend.

Firstly, the design of this building is amazing. I was totally amazed by this building. The color schemes, layout, everything was great!

I came hoping to take the brewery tour then have a meal plus a pint. Unfortunately, they were not doing tours that weekend since they were putting in new kettles or something or other.

We were seated promptly and the service was rather good. Pyramid have all their brews on tap and ready to serve and they have a sampler of 5 for a reasonable price. Even better, for an extra dollar you can choose which of the brews you want to sample.

The food was great too. I went with the Steak & Mushroom sandwich which came with a side of Au Jus sauce and fries. One of the better sandwiches of this variety I've tasted in sometime.

Overall a great place to check out! Reasonable pricing, great brews, great food, great service, and a great aesthetic!

What appears to be a fairly new estabishment in the very cool walkabout part of downtown Sacramento, just a few blocks from the State Capitol building.

The atmosphere of this place is fine, but very corporate/selling oriented, not a nice casual place to sit and chill and enjoy some beer & food. The servers all have wireless radios for maximum efficiency (I hate that- grates on me when I don't know if they are paying attention to the paying customer or a conversation in their ear). The feel is that they want ot move people in and out as quickly as possible.

Beer selection and quailty was pretty good- I did not know 1) that Pyramid had this many beers, or 2) that Pyramid and Mactarnahans are related.

List of tap beers: Apricot Weizen (5.1%), Hefeweizen (%.2%), Curve Ball Kolsch (Seasonal, 4.8%), Crystal Weizen (4.9%, alehouse exclusive), Thunderhead IPA (6.7%), Amber Weizen (5.5%), Mac's Ale (5.0%), Mac's Blackwatch Cream Porter (5.3%), Draught Pale Ale (a nitro version of Mac's Ale, 5.1%, alehouse exclusive). Not too bad! They use 3 different glass types to server the beer- all served pretty cold.

I tried 3 of the beers in 2 different visits, and they were all tasty, but nothing that made scream out in joy.

Service is good, almost too good, as mentioned above. Overall, this place is decent for a clean, sterile corporate-type brewpub, which if you can't tell, isn't my favorite kind. In short, there are 3 other places within a 10 minute walk that I would rather visit, but this would do in a pinch!

Closes at 10 PM (or so), like most of the city around it, so plan accordingly.

I had some time to kill in the ghetto of Sac, and so I walked from the scary greyhound station, to the less scary old downtown area of Sac and than I saw a big pyramid sign, calling my parched self over. I parked it at the bar, and a really friendly bartender greeted me. I ordered 2 pints of hefe (with lemon) yes, sac-religous I know, but I had a sore throat and I don't care for Pyramids beers too much anyway. Selection was good, about 8 or 9 Pyramid brews on draught, including a pseudo-cider, and some wacky one-off seasonals. Atmosphere was pretty normal. Wood, high celings, general brewpub design....The brews were about $4 each, and even though this place was not the best, the service was great, and the beers really hit the spot. They also let me stay a bit after closing to avoid staying for an hour or two in the super ghetto Sac greyhound station. Overall, i'd recommend this if you are in the area. Yeah, definately.

OK, I'm not really a giant Pyramid fan but I had to check out this place since they built it after I left Sac, and since living in the Sacramento area required lots of beer to keep happy, I figured this was probably a good addition to downtown.

Right down the street from the Crest, it's a very modern 2-story high-budget undertaking, nice and open inside with a cool copper bar. They had 15 taps on, so good form there, lots to choose from. I only had time for one, so of course I went for their Tripel which was, well, it gets its own review...

The bartender was awesome, and the food came out fast. I had the salmon BLT and fries, which were really good though simple.

They had growlers, kegs, bottles to go, and even a chrome keg on a table in the middle of the dining room for no particular reason (was it an idol? Do they gather around it after hours and perform secret rights? Who knows...)

I still haven't found a brew of theirs that has truly impressed me yet, but this was a fun place and I'm sure if I still lived there is would grow on me. Especially since it's within stumbling distance of my old apartment.

The wife and I walked here requested a tour. The tour started at five thirty, i think. It was an alright tour; done by staff and not a brewer, but for a server, she knew quite a bit, whether or not she understood what she said, i couldn't tell, but she was VERY nice and informative. The place was relatively new. She said they couldn't serve any of the beer they had brewed on the premise yet, because of licensing and what-not. she did say they brewed a few test batches, none that were drinkable. She said they were just to season the tanks and after the crew drank a few pints, it went down the drain. Talk about alcohol abuse.

Anyway, by far, the best part of the tour is the FREE BEER. Thats right, you read correctly. After the tour the touree's get a FREE sampler of 5 6oz. glasses of the beers on tap. What a treat. All the beers sampled were solid. After the sampler, our tourer said we could buy a sample glass or two for 2.50 each, for souvenir. the proceeds going to a homeless shelter across the street. very class act. The only complaint is the glass's were not stamped or marked with anything. They were just 6 oz pilsner? glasses. We bought 2 anyway.

After some damn good food and a couple more pints, the wife and i stumbled back to the hotel. What a good time. Definitely one of the best stops on our fermentation tour of the sacramento/san francisco/santa rosa area.

There were also brews, shirts and other beer novelties available at the front of the pub. One of the few complaints i have against this place is that you can tell it's a chain. There is no homey feel here, like in some one-of-a-kind breweries, but overall, i would recommend this place whole heartedly.