Twisted Spoke

Something odd happened to beermenus about a month or two ago. All of a sudden, a few places (Hopleaf and Twisted Spoke notably) suddenly popped up when searching for Bourbon County. Before that day neither beermenus page had been updated since like 2010, but they all suddenly said it was updated this month. So excited there was Rare, several vintages of BCBS, all the variants at different places. Turns out all those pages were seriously outdated and no clue why beermenus said it was recently updated.

That being said, I loathe establishments that do not update their online menus. It would be very nice to keep their Beermenus page updated but there is no good excuse to have seriously outdated menus on their own website. Hopleaf is notoriously bad at updating their online menu. It shows they currently have Bourbon County Stout and Cantillon Kriek on tap. Nope, all very old stuff. Twisted just links to their beermenus page, which hasn't been updated in years regardless of what it says. If you are not going to update your damn beer menu at least weekly, you really should keep it the fuck off your website. It is very annoying to drive who knows how far based on a bar's web page information and find out its completely wrong.

I am not sure what Twisted's reserve beer list is (a menu they have in store??) but if they cant even keep that updated for their customers, they just don't care much about their customers in my opinion. I would rather a bar have no menu than have wrong, outdated menus, online or in store. Under the beer menu just have a little blerb about how you are too busy or just don't care enough to keep that information up to date for your customers so just order what you can see.


**Edit

After double checking Hopleaf's website, their draft list does appear up to date now. Somehow after Googling Hopleaf draft list on my phone, it brought me to this very outdated pdf. However, clicking Menus > Draft Beers from their website, the information is correct. Not sure whats up with that pdf. I swear I have come across that pdf countless times when searching for their menu on my phone and I am just realizing the mistake. Sorry about my slanderous comments towards Hopleaf.

 

Yes they do update their tap list occasionally on beermenus but clearly they have never deleted any from the bottle list. Most of whats on it hasnt been there for years. For this information to still be given to customers in store is pretty ridiculous. We will see how long it lists BCBS on tap though its now been gone a couple of days I believe.

 

The bottle menu (especially the Reserves List) is notoriously out-of-date at TS, whether on Beermenus or at the bar itself. When I've been there they've only had a few bottles off the list. This DOES NOT mean, however, that they have no Reserve beers in the cooler (just that the list doesn't correspond exactly to what they have). Just ask them to let you take a peek into the cooler.

EDIT: Either way, it's a cool place and you shouldn't just go there to tick .rar walez.

 

Since literally 100% of threads you create are based on info gained from beermenus, I am shocked by this statement.

 

I really liked this place when I first went there. It was when they released the NB Twisted Spoke for their 15th anniversary. I was floored with how cool the place was and how awesome their beer lists were, and I promoted the place to a lot of friends. But now, the place is not cool. If you can't update your menus for over two years when they're regular paper pages attached to a clipboard, you lose the right to be called cool.

Fwiw, here's my opinion of what happened:

"Hey, our 15th anniversary is coming up. We're going to have an awesome beer made for us, and it's going to be released here at our bar. Let's get this place in shape, go through the cellar, make an awesome menu of reserve beers, get a bunch of special beers on tap, and really make something of this place!"

It was great for almost a year (I went there often), then apathy started setting in. There were fewer and fewer awesome beers on draft, and I started to be more and more disappointed by the beers I couldn't order from the reserve menu. All that enthusiasm and momentum from their 15th anniversary just faded away. Now they don't give a fuck.

 

I mean, I agree that there's some major laziness going on with their menus, and that they deserve to be criticized for it. But I think people don't realize that they do keep the Reserve cooler stocked, just not with beers that are on that old menu they lazily won't change. On the other hand, the bar is still a cool place, the service good (minus the menu updates), and the tap and bottle list really nice.

 

Why should we as customers assume that the laziness stops there? If they can't routinely update their menus, should I believe they clean their tap lines regularly? Should I believe they clean out the oil in the fryer when they're supposed to? Should I believe I'm not eating mayonnaise that should have been thrown out last week?

I'll still go to the place every now and then, but they're not doing themselves any favors, and I've definitely stopped telling all my friends about how cool the place is.

Edit: I'm mostly just disappointed with what it turned into when it was so cool a couple years ago.

 

Fair enough.

 

A friend of mine works for the company that cleans Twisted Spoke's taps. They do clean them. Apparently they are a tangled, unintelligible mass of draught lines, but they're getting serviced. I like the place. Good bar food and always something good on tap. I don't go that often, though, and can't say how it's changed in the past couple years necessarily.

 

Agreed that the list is a POS, but when I asked about the cooler when I went in a month ago, the guy did empty the damn thing out and show me every beer in there at fit the bill of at I was looking for... BA RIS at the time. Plus they tap good stuff quite a bit. Parabola was on tap Friday...

But don't disagree with dvelcich

 

Before someone comes on and defends the mayonnaise, those were just examples of other areas where laziness could affect a customer's experience, and the point was that a customer doesn't know that that laziness stops at the beer menu.

 

I'll respectfully disagree. Yes, I frequent the place less these days due to location, but they have had and still do have some great aged beer. The bottle release of 15 was really not all that long ago, which shows you're not really familiar with the place. The bar isn't terribly exciting, but it's real and without pretension. I've had the pleasure of drinking many great vintage beers there long after they've been gone from other places in the city, so if the new class of beeradvocates wants to take a pass, I suppose I this means I'll have more easy access to great stuff.

That being said, I'm a fan of tasty, local, fresh beer and they don't disappoint there. I'd say this place is like the less metal, less awful Local Option. They have the tough vibe without being a-holes.

 

The bottle release was over two years ago, so which one of us is talking out their ass? And I've been on BA about four years longer than you, son. You are the new class of BAs.

I like Twisted Spoke, but I want them to get their heads out of their asses and do what their supposed to do for their customers' sake, and defending them ain't gonna get that done.

 

Ok, son you're the one saying that two years is a long time, so we'll leave it at that. A username on this site says very little. I will agree that Twisted Spoke and that arguing with someone online won't really fix this place. It's established and offers more than many of the newer spots was my point. Next time either of us are in there perhaps we can have a word with Cliff or Mitch.

 

Two years is a lifetime in the restaurant/bar world (average lifetime of a restaurant being 2.5 years), and I've talked to Mitch, but he doesn't care. He says he has all the beers on the reserve list, just not in house, so keep coming back and maybe they'll be in next time (bait and switch).

 

Isnt beermenus open sourced/crowdsourced?

 

I think it used to be, but I've never been able to figure out how to edit pages or get update alerts like I've been told is supposedly possible.

Edit
wow I certainly know how to overlook things. Very bottom of the page for every venue has a link to edit. Clearly few people do this. I will be doing some editing when I get home