Mo’s Place Grill & BrewPub

 

This little place is a hidden gem. The low overhead in the small town (30 folks unincorporated) allows the owners to offer up great comfort food at great prices unseen since the 70's. Add in 2.75 for a pint of very good craft brews and you have brewpub nirvana!

Visted this place after meeting the brewer at Big Sky Brewing in Montana the year before. I told him I had a friend moving back home to Topeka and when in the area I would stop in for a few pints...he was like yea right! But Carolyn and I did....here are our notes from the experience on 7/6/06....For where this place is it cannot be beat....good beers, great "homey" food and 2 of the nicest people you could meet own the place...what more could you ask for?

Shortly after the Salina exit, we headed south on 156 toward Chaflin, which was the Zip code town for Mo’s Place, which is actually located in Beaver, KS. It was another 15 miles to Beaver (turn right off Rt. 4 at the “city” of Redwing – three inhabited homes near train tracks – then go north for 8 miles.)

Beaver is town of less than 100 people, with dirt roads and perhaps no street signs (we didn’t see any); a grain elevator and Mo’s Place are the only operating businesses in town (the bank closed, and the brewery now uses the underground vault – the only underground space in Beaver – to store beer; the gas station owner died and no one took over that business.)

Mo’s Place looked like a smoky dive bar – a long building covered in red and yellow aluminum siding with a soda machine outside and a lighted Coor’s sign in the window. But D had met the brewer on a previous trip to Montana, and he claimed this was the smallest brewpub in America, so we had to go in and check it out. What a gem! First of all, there was NO smoking – it was clearly outlined on the door, and later I read a quote by Len (the brewer) that essentially said “when you sit next to me drinking beer, I have a choice to drink anything I want; when you sit next to me and smoke, I have no choice but to breathe your smoke.” Secondly, while it wasn’t the smallest brewpub I’ve seen in physical space or numbers of brews, it was the smallest I’ve ever seen in terms of brewing capacity. He operated a half-barrel system, which he is able to squeeze approximately 20 gallon batches out of it. It looked like an oversized homebrewing kit with plastic fermenting tanks and brew kettles that looked like something you’d cook with at resident camp.The best thing was seeing the locals and the guys who were out working the oil wells come in. All of them were choosing pints of Mo’s Brews over the commercial products (Bud, Coor’s, Michelob, Miller, etc.) Len told us he keeps his beers unfiltered for better flavor and low in alcohol (everything is under 4% ABV) so that patrons can drink more beer without getting drunk.

Len and Linda Moeder were extremely personable, and shared their story with us. Basically, he is from the area, and she was schooled in Kansas, but they met and married in Orange County, CA, opting to move back to Beaver when things got crazy. They bought the house across the street for $7,000 and fixed it up (at home it would sell for at least $160K), and started the restaurant. They said they never know if they will be serving 10 or 100 people for dinner each day, but they enjoy the variety.

We tried everything they had on tap. Harvest Moon Wheat, Purple Cat Pale Ale, Crazy Hawk Red, Beaver Creek Brown, Elm Street Porter and Lights Out Stout. We also had our lunch there (I was hoping with their California background they would have something really fresh and/or vegetarian, but it was more of a short-order grill…) D had the highly-recommended chopped steak sandwich with grilled onions, and I had a salad with fried okra and fried chicken livers. It was all really tasty!

We took a few photos at Mo’s and of the town, and then headed back toward Redwing and the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area.