Waltham Beer Works?

A ton of their stuff is out of code / nearly out of code though, so make sure you look at dates.

 

OK, have to chime in here... this is Matt, and yes, Nance and I are out of there for a variety of reasons, but just to clarify... we NEVER had a single item on the menu that cost more than $22, and that was a very generous flat iron steak that would have cost you $30 anywhere else. From there every other dish was down around the $15-$17 range on the top end, and many a lot less.

Regarding tap selection... with the beers and breweries we represented we never went for the "2nd or 3rd choice". We got the best we could get that was available at the time from our distributors. With the kind of beer we were selling the selections changed every week. We had top selections from Singlecut, Finback, Aeronaut (always), Maine Beer (very often), Night Shift (always), and on and on, including Sip of Sunshine care of my good bud, Sean Lawson.

We never aimed for "higH class" or "fancy dining" we aimed for very cool beer and food that was very appealing, just a little different than the usual pub fare. Go to the website and check the menu and pricing... it has morphed only slightly, and the pricing has always been right where it is.

 

FWIW, and if anyone cares, this is what we're up to now... along with both getting sane day jobs that pay about 50% more than the food industry... https://www.facebook.com/GuerrillaDiningMA/?fref=nf
We're setting up a bunch of collaborative dinners at various breweries around the area (Night Shift, I hope, Idle Hands, Springdale, Mystic, maybe, etc...)

BTT was a monster we tried hard to tame, but the ownership had its own ideas about how things should go... we were just not entirely in synch. I think likely it will become more what a bunch of you seem to be saying you'd prefer... lots of beer and a food scene that is much more simple/"approachable" (though I still say our food was pretty damn approachable.)

So there you go...

 

The guy who owns beer works is kind of a douche. This is not a big surprise.

 

I'm sorry if I was mistaken for price. I must have misremembered. I thought I saw the original menu when you had just opened and it was a lot more expensive.

Can I just say though, when I went in, my buddy and I got the house made pickles, and goddamn if those weren't delicious. You made me like celery.

 

True - but a successful money- making restaurateur douche. The guy knows his biz, not surprised he pulled the plug on this effort quickly when it was obviously not making money. Still surprised he went this route instead of the standard BeerWorks formula - even without the brewery on site.

 

I think I have to take a bit of issue with that statement. The Beer Works served, at a minimum, perfectly good beer in a wide variety of styles for quite a while at a time when the brewpub options in Boston (and elsewhere) were fairly limited. I had my first Kolsch, Barley Wine and Eisbock there, and I'm sure I'm not the only beer drinker of a certain age who can credit them with expanding my horizons.

It's true that they rested on their laurels, catered more and more to the sports crowd, and fell far behind the curve as time went on and competition grew, but even then their beer was simply unremarkable rather than dog shit. They didn't have anything to offer a beer geek but if Joe Shmo ordered a Back Bay IPA after a Red Sox game he was getting a perfectly reasonable beer.

Note that what put them back on the map at least a little was brewing some trendy styled IPAs, not reworking recipes or quality control on their existing stuff (to my knowledge anyway).

I'm dissapointed to hear the owner is a douche though since, as is probably clear, I have a soft spot for the Beer Works.

 

The beer has generally been 'whatever' to me. I'm fine drinking there with friends/family. I know not to go nuts ordering different things because at least one thing on tap always ends up being pretty bad. It's a decent option at the airport too. But the food is painfully average. Wtf is it with the steak tips? Bostonians have some strange enthusiasm for them.

 

Definitely agreed about the food - that went downhill faster and farther than the beer ever did in my opinion. Maybe that was part of the friction in Waltham since they seemed intent on offering decent/upscale food.

And I agree with your description of a half decent "friends and family/airport" place regarding the beer. I'd add "pre-gaming a concert/sporting event" too.

 

You need to know the facts before you start making broad statements based on conjecture... HE did not pull the plug... we removed ourselves from the equation. Also, we were making money just fine... in a mere 4.5 months we had the place in the black (barely in the black, but in that short of a time it is rare to be even breaking even, let alone making a little profit.)

As of this writing all the concepts we put into place are still there with no changes whatsoever. I'm sure they will start tweaking things shortly... a new chef will likely want to cook his own food, not mine, but they have not turned it into a Beer Works.

"The guy knows his biz", yes, but he also has some things to learn about how to treat those that make him his money. I will not go so far as to call him a douche, but he definitely needs to learn to value the people that work for him a lot more than he does. I'll stop there.

 

One of the problems with the beer consistency... and with it not keeping up with the current trend of fantastic craft beers available on the market... is that their brewery team is so inconsistent. They can't entice, and hold, a good head brewer. They do not have the "romance" of a Night Shift, Singlecut, or (hardly) Trillium name to bring in someone to run their brewing program and recipes in a contemporary way. The owner is not a brewer... he knows his beers, but does not take control of producing them. So, yeah, they have a fairly decent showing of "not bad" beer, but very few selections of excellent ones. I'm not sure how they are going to change that... The owner is in the process of "re-branding" Beer Works (into BWX) to give it hipper vibe and more interesting food. Brewer's Tap & Table was actually inspiration for that route. To the vast majority of folks that came through our doors the food selection was highly desirable (and NOT over prices, I assure you.) Check out the Facebook page or the Yelp page for the business... you'll see what I am talking about. There is no way they should revert to a Beer works formula, they should definitely keep charging forward with food that is fresher and a bit more creative than Beer Works has proven to be.

They should also try to figure out a way to entice in a truly gifted head brewer to revamp a lot of their current recipes.

 

I think you missed the point... We never had Half Stack (for example)... we had Softly Spoken, and Is This the Real Life, and Does anybody Remember the Sound of Laughter from Singlecut. We had Mean Old Tom and Lunch from MBC. We had Hobbit Juice, Dogs and Boats, and tons more from Beer'd. We had lots of selections from Grimm (who really doesn't have a "flagship" beer.) We had Sip of Sunshine by Lawson's... we, in fact, really didn't have any "second rate" selections from any of the brewers we dealt with... so I'm not sure what you would be looking for beyond that.

If I sound testy it's because I ran the beer program, and know for sure I put heart and soul into finding the coolest, most desirable selections I could manage. I have drank my way around most every craft beer bar in the area, and I would put our selections up against anyone's in breadth and desirability.

 

Five Horses is one of the better beer bars beer geeks flock to in the area. Their Trillium account alone will trump most lists (not in my opinion, but from a Beer Advocate/rating perspective), they also have beers from Foundation which I don't see often.

Currently they have Nightshift's One Hop This time (they always have that rotating draft along with the current Morph when it changes, and sometimes Santilli), Fiddlehead, Lamplighter, Idle Hands, Medusa, Mystic, Singlecut, and Deciduous.

Along with some interesting imports I don't normally see, recently Gaffel Koelsch for example.

I never went to Brewer's, so I can't speak to that list, but if you can match the Five Horses tap lists, you're probably doing just as good, if not better than every beer bar in the area.

 

We could not match the Trillium and Fiddlehead (though that one is on its way soon...), but we had every other beer you listed and then some. Foundation on a regular basis... Wicked Weed, Gigantic, Dark Horse, Base Camp, Avery, and a few others from out of town... we didn't do imports.

 

Thanks for the info and perspective. Given the locations of their flagships across from Fenway and TD Garden it's perhaps not surprising that "decent enough" became the goal.

Good luck with whatever you do next.

 

Trillium is cool but what is the $/oz at five horses and does it rotate pretty quickly?

I go to their other bar, Worden Hall. Trillium is usually out of the realm of what I want to spend. And it seems to stay on tap forever - must be why they eventually collect multiple beers from them when other places have nothing. Trillbomb has been on tap for close to 2 months now.

Kind of sucks when bars probably want to serve Trillium and it's piling up at WH.

 

I honestly don't really pay attention to price, it's Davis Square, so I just know when I go out, it's not going to be cheap.

That being said, I've ordered it enough that if I recall correctly, it's ~$8 - 10 per 10 - 12 oz. Seeing as Trillium four packs cost ~$18 - 22, that's not too bad. I also don't want more than that anyways because most of their stuff is not sessionable.

As far as turn around, they currently don't have any on tap, and haven't for a week or two (maybe more), and Trill Bomb was one of their last beers from them they had on tap. So that kicked in Davis Square at least. I would say their hoppy stuff turns around in about a week.

I was talking with an employee at Trillium, and he said they have kegs of their stuff just waiting to be tapped, So he'll often swing by himself for a draft because they have stuff even Trillium doesn't have (at that time). One might ask if the beer is fresh...it's always tasted fine to me. Take that for what it's worth.

 

Maybe doesn't sound quite as bad as WH. The trillbomb is $14/10oz. I think P&K is $9/12oz, plus head, where you are literally paying for an inch of air. P&K is also in one of the lower pricing tiers at the brewery.

 

Brutal