This past Friday, Pangaea in Sacramento opened a Lambic and "funky" beer tap list to the bottle shop. We had lunch on Saturday and tried pretty much everything, ordering a flight and then a couple tasters. Line up was : Petrus Aged Pale, Karl Strauss 24th Ann Flemish Red, Oude Beersel Framboise, Mort Subite Kriek, Timmermans Blanche Lambicus Wheat Lambic, Loverbeer Madamin, Evil Twin Femme Fatale 100% Brett IPA, Russian River Supplication, Lost Abbey Cuvvee de Tomme. Prices were $7.50-10 for a 8-10 oz pour. Our favs: Timmermans, Mort Subite, Oude Beersel and Evil Twin. cheers,
Fuck it, I still won't go, and I will tell all my friends to tell all their friends to not go either.
Last year Pangea tried to sell Pliny the Younger for some obscene amount of money by "pairing" it with some stupid burger and, if I remember correctly, was blacklisted by Russian River. And then there's stuff like this: http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/i-shouldnt-even-be-suprised-a-pangaea-story.51877/ The owner seems like a big bag of dicks.
That was Kupros Bistro, not Pangea. Pangea sold concert tickets to an indie guy nobody knew for $70 last year, and with that ticket, came a glass of younger, or a chance to buy one. Since people hated (rightfully so), they lowered the tickets to $40. This year, Pangea sold $70 rare beer flight tickets or some bull to their Younger Keg event. Again, another BS move. Screw them.
They charge almost double the price per most bottles they offer. Pliny at like $9 for example. They have pricey tap prices, they have had issues with customers like the link posted above. They pair "rare" beers with stupid expensive events. Overall, the hate comes from the fact that they over charge for every beer both in bottle and on tap. They are no longer the only bottle shop we Sac guys can go to. We have the Davis Beer Shoppe or Final Gravity in Roseville if we wanted to buy buy are half the price of Pangea. Both those places get the same if not better beer than pangea, and don't make you feel ***** about it. Pangea is a place that out of towners or craft beer newbies go too. Once they have ventured out to the other places, they don't go back.
Yup. They're gougers, plain and simple. I remember when they got in some 22's of Alpine beers... and sold them for $22! Hey, nothing says "I value you as a customer" like a 300% mark-up, right? I try to avoid the place, but I wound up going there with my wife about six months ago. I got a pint of a Bear Republic pale ale, and she had a sour that came in a dinky 6 oz pour... and it was $18! Sorry, but that's double what it would have been at Davis Beer Shoppe. That's gouging, and it's part of the way they do business.
Last time I went was about 2 years ago. Ordered a glass of Allagash Black, thinking for $8, it better be a big glass. Got it served in an 8 ounce tulip, with an inch or two of head... Seriously, 6 ounces of Allagash Black for $8.
Well, this sure brought out more comments than I was expecting. Fwiw, here's how it went for us: Lambic bar has 9 taps, my wife and I had 3 of the beers previously. So, we wanted to taste 6. We ordered a taster flight of 5 (3-4 oz pours) and mistakenly got served Supplication which we'd had before. No big. Got free tasters of the other 2 (not 3-4 ozs, but small tastes). Ordered one glass of Evil Twin Femme Fatale. Had pastrami Sandwich and hummus plate for lunch. Bill was $41. Cheap, no. Not sure if any of the other beers are on anywhere else in Sac, certainly not the whole set. As I said, I've had The Petrus and it's been in Davis at 2 spots (DBS&UoB). I had the Karl Strauss at the Davis Beer Shop. I'll also add that we rode to Sac for lunch at Pangaea on Super Bowl Sunday only to find the shop closed. No sign, no Facebook post, just closed. My wife sent a FB message, Rob got back to her and the next time we came in, he made it up to us. We rarely buy bottles form the bottle shop. Between the Davis Beer Shoppe, and the Davis Food Coop and Nugget, there's far too much good beer to buy and try. There's a back story to some bottle shop beers and I'm not going to get into rumor spreading. We usually follow up a trip to Pangaea with a trip to Track 7 to fill growlers: we really like Alkali Wit, Panic IPA, Left Eye Right Eye DIPA, Big 4 strong Ale (damn, I just got what that means: CA history, Big 4, railroad). cheers to all,
