White Dog Brewing

Yeaaaaaaaaah, Boooooois. Day 5 on the ‘malt assault & 5 state hop’ loop now working our way back west to Portland. A mere 6-hour ride in from Jackson, give or take. Hotel parked & dropped and now looking for lunch in all the wrong places. Walked a whole half block to get here. I think Googlemaps said it was like 479 steps or something. It seemed like much more…

In and through to the bar at the rear; black/white marble topped with a snow strip to keep your beer ice cold making me immediately wonder what I am doing here. Yes, there are toy cars, dinosaurs, & soldiers in the snow. Horizontal wood plank base. Seating for a dozen on leather back steel framed swivel chairs. The barback counter holds a pair of 10 logo handles stainless barbell towers, 1 to each side of a center can crimper with glassware stacked to both sides + a pair of cylinder duos countered alongside the tower on our end. Cupboard/cooler space below. Burgundy barback wall holds a center tap board (beer, ABV), framed Idaho prints to each side and flats on the ends. A barrel band shelving piece above the countered crowler crimper displays cans, and shelving to both sides with trophies, a framed pic, growlers, and a basketball. Small signage alongside listing wine, cider seltzer, & kombuchaings.

It’s a large open space with 2 dozen tables & booths about the room; hightop low, long, round, stooled, & chaired. The room could easily hold a dozen more. Concrete floors, Black drop ceiling with sunken spots, and walls in burgundy, cream, & beige, with large dog prints & house logo pieces. A pair of large concrete pillars winging outward (for lack of a better description), below an odd piece of the ceiling vaulted in the center of the room that rises on an angle to some windows way up there (me, pointing). Slight wood overhang above the bar with sunken spots and drop filament bulb cylinder glass lamps tracing the bar. Drop cheese wheel lamps & chandeliers forward, and yep, there’s a canoe suspended from the ceiling. Rear corner bar counter marble ledge with stooling for 6 looking in on the brewroom & canning line on one side, and a merch zone on the other side. Flats on opposite walls, a Cornhole set up on the far side, a few barrels riddled about the room, and a roll up door to the out front seating pen (8 shorty round tables there).

16 beers, a mix of styles Lager & Ale, Malt & Hop (River Beer, American Lager, 4.8%; Blond Ale, 5.2%; Kellerbier, 5.3%; Vanilla Cream Ale, 6%; Blood Orange Hefeweizen, 5%; Amber Ale, 5.8%; Scotch Ale, 5%; Irish Red Ale, 5.4%; Irish Stout, 6.8%; American Porter, 7.6%; Citraic IPA, 6.2%; Pineapple IPA, 6.3%; West Coast IPA, 7.4%; NE Hazy IPA, 6.8%; Hazy Pale Ale, 5.5%; Blackberry Sour, 4.2%), + a nitro Shandy of the day which is Vanilla Cream Ale with cider and seltzer, too.

Kellerbier is Diacetyl, not a good way to start this show; Irish Stout is dark chocolate & roast, tasty, but a bit big at 6.8% for an Irish Stout, me thinks; West Coast IPA is citrus & nicely bitter; Irish Red Ale is also Diacetyl; American Porter is chocolate & rich, WIN.

And yes, there was fewd. Jon did the fish & chips, said it was good, and I had the smoked chicken wings done dry rub, which were yum factor 4. Hannahtending today, pleasant & attentive. she poured me a shorty black & tan with the Dry Irish Stout & Vanilla Cream Ale. Didn’t get terribly far into the list as we have much to take in on walkabout today, but a few of those beers were good, a few of them were not.

Another downtown taproom, filing the old Table Rock / Post Modern space. No kitchen, but dedicated food truck available. 6 taps to start, room for growth, plus a throwback to the old Table Rock, using one of their IPA recipes. Nothing too impressive, but let's see how they grow.

this is a second location for white dog out of bozeman, same company, many of the same beers, part of a big conglomerate of drinking establishments in downtown, where there is also a cidery, a cocktail bar, and a connected food truck in the same little block as the brewery. its a great space, way bigger than it looks from the outside, a nicely repurposed older building with a lot of natural light, high ceilings, and plenty of seating. decor is simple, the scene was busy on a weekend evening, and everyone was nice. we posted up at the bar and had about ten beers to chose from, some hazy ipa types on the list along with their more familiar fare, we liked a couple of them pretty well, and a few were a little more amateur, which was about how we felt about the beers made at the bozeman location. they have some hits and some misses. the bar is cool though, they have one of those ice bars to set your pint on and keep it chilled, always entertaining to me for some reason. the folks were nice enough in here, didnt seem super clued in on the beers, but our service was fine. reasonable prices, solid grub from the food truck, and a decent selection made our experience here a good one, but overall the beer didnt set them apart from anyone else around boise...