Firehouse Brewery & Restaurant

This place is the nearest brew-pub to my parent's home in rural Iowa, so I thought I would check it out. It's a pretty neat looking old brick firehouse building. Looks like it would be much nicer from the outside, but the inside is a bit of a dive. Nonetheless, there is some interesting antique stuff adorning the walls, ceilings, and even encased under the glass tables. Red Oak is one of the most crappy little podunk towns I've been to in Iowa, so expect to get a funny slack-jawed yokel look from all the tooth-lacking meth-head regulars, but the wait staff seems friendly enough, though not particularly beer saavy. The place looks a bit ill-kept, but still has a rustic beauty to it in some way. Another interesting tidbit of information is that all the old bay doors for the firetrucks serve as active entrances, so there are at least 10 different places to enter/exit from this place. If I was still 13, this place would be prime for skipping the ticket.

As far as selection goes, their house beers consisted of a wheat, a stout, and a bock. The only other types of beer available were macro. Not surprising. Evidently they never experiment with new styles or recipes. Also not surprising. Hell, they didn't even have their own pils on tap when I was in, though I see one listed in the database.

The food wasn't bad. There were a lot of things on the menu that I would have eaten, but the food wasn't good enough to warrant another trip, and surely I won't be back for the beer.

I first found out about Firehouse in the spring (’03) and they opened in the same summer. I called them to find out when their beer would start flowing. The responses were always concerning. Some people, who worked there, did not know they were a brewpub! But the common response was “in a week,” then it became “tomorrow.” I don’t remember when they started serving their beer but it seemed like a long time. It wasn't their fault; Iowa was dragging their feet on issuing a liquor license. I lost interest in going; time got tight… fast-forward to Christmas break. I finally headed to the small town of Red Oak, Iowa. It is roughly 50 miles southeast of Omaha. It is rather easy to get to. But is it worth going?

The building is an old firehouse; the doors for the trucks still stand. It is an old brick and wood with a handful of parking spots around it. I had a little trouble finding it, there was no lit sign and it was dark out.

The atmosphere in this little brewpub was great. The three-roomed building is brick inside as well; there is a distressed paint job on top of it. The cellings are high and much of the decorations are “antique-y.” The bar area is smallish, a dozen stools or so and a few tables. One TV. It is rather quaint. When I visited they only had 4 beers functioning on-tap but there were another four taps or so not working. They have a small cooler filled with macro lagers (they had Miller Lite on-tap too). This parallels all the macro beer signs in the bar was well. Non-lagers in the cooler consisted of Boulevard’s Wheat and Guinness. But I was here for their beer (see my reviews).

The non-smoking section is in the far back of the building. The smoking adjoins the bar, here you will find a couple of pool tables.

The menu is typical of a small town steakhouse. Which is fine by me. I had the 12-ounce ribeye, $13. Plus mashed potatoes (fake) and a cup of potato cheese soup (good). The cut of meat was cooked to perfection. It was tasty but thinner and tougher than a typical ribeye. My girlfriend got a 10-ounce strip and she liked it very well. The food was very inexpensive, so was the beer, $1.50 a pint!

The service was top-notch and very friendly. We felt very welcomed. Oh, our waitress poured a great pint.

I will probably visit here again. The food was solid. The beer was weak but I’ll try again.