Waltham Beer Works?

We may well live close - I'm up by the Sudbury / Wayland lines.
I guess BW and JH are equal distance, and JA is that much further - down 126 (or in my case, cross rt 9 and up Union Ave)
It may be the brewers at each one, but I was kinda disappointed the one time I was at JH in Harvard Square - though that was probably 15 years ago now.
I've never had a bad beer at Framingham.

 

The longer I live here the more I dislike the Boston bar scene. It's like hipster pretense at one end of the spectrum and high end "do you know who I am" at the other, with Irish pubs and local chains as the middle ground. I live in Oak Sq and prefer to drink at the Last Drop or Buff's (RIP Castlebar) over the highly regarded beer bars in Boston at this point. It's expensive to geek out at beer bars here and most of the time I'm just looking to grab a few beers and watch a game or chat with friends. Hell TITS in Allston is more enjoyable to me than Sunset since I'm an old man and usually home before the kids start lining up. Like @Jason , give me a comfortable bar with fresh pils or IPAs at a good price and I'm happy.

 

With you on the Castlebar sentiment. RIP O'Malleys as well. Sniff....Sniff...

 

So nice to see this attitude, @Jason you truly are a beer advocate a) for taking one for the team to check BW out again and b) for being open enough to honestly evaluate them and then report back.
I also hit like but it seemed inadequate.

 

This is how it's been there, well since always.

 

I don't get out to Waltham much anymore BUT I remember The Gaff as being a really excellent - if not slightly cramped - spot.

 

The Gaff is a great spot!

 

Central Mass is where it's at.

 

I agree with the parts you dislike, but I think that's just the nature of the beast. Go to Brooklyn or San Francisco and you'll find a similar scenario, with similar pricing. They're expensive hipster areas.

More importantly, part of this post is hypocritical, in that you CAN find spots for every type of person. In your case Last Drop or Buff's. I live around Davis, and I go to Redbones more often than not, or even Olde Magoun's. It's not just the beer, EVERYTHING'S expensive in this area. It's the cost of living in an area where the variety, the quality, and proximity to public transportation (which is a HUGE benefit over other areas of Mass, I'm a five minute walk from everything) are simply in a greater abundance/density than the suburbs.

I also hate Tavern on the Square.

 

I'm on team "I don't care about beerworks" but I am hopeful they get the space up and running soon. Too prominent a spot to leave vacant and my thinking is they will soak up some customers to make my preferred spots less packed. Watch City, as people mentioned, had terrible beer that tasted like mediocre home brew and awful food. I always wanted to love the place, but could never get into it. Similarly, I was prepared to hate Stadium/Playmakers and it's actually not bad when they don't have a "DJ" on.

Not sure about the whole Waltham/Moody St. is going down hill thing. I've owned a house a block off of Moody for six years now (and have regularly been through Waltham for about 15 or so). Moody St. has never in my experience been as great as it is right now. I also share frustration with how slow things go with this city, but I reallllly don't miss a single place that's closed down, and literally dozens of great places have opened (bars and otherwise). Would love to see more dollar stores go away but I don't know if we need more bars anyway.

Anyhow, update on what I've see with the Beerworks spot: It really seems like they are not actively working on it on the regular. Things will open up for a week and there will be a flurry of activity, then everything is boarded up again. Summer is actually the slow season for Waltham bars so I don't know if they will even be done by Spring 2016, but hopefully.

 

For a big city, the Boston area has long had a strange shortage of good brewpubs even while waving a somewhat inflated flag of itself as a great American beer city. One visit to the PNW hubs (Portland, Seattle, etc) will illustrate what an excellent beer city looks like, plus that whole $3-4 pints at happy hour thing that big brother Commonwealth keeps illegal because it hates the idea of affordability. Boston mostly quietly maintained its old guard of JH, SA, Harpoon, BW, Cambridge for many years which pioneered and set a great groundwork but perhaps stopped being entirely groundbreaking after a while. Seems to me it's only in the last five years the new crop of nanos (Trillium, Night Shift, Mystic, etc) have finally arrived and upped the metro area's overall beer game. As for brewpubs, Slumbrew's American Fresh taprooms are an awesome recent addition to the urban zone. Not knocking Boston, just sayin the urban core of Mass could absolutely use more original non-chainish brewpubs. And add to omobono's point - Western Mass, also where it's been at for beer lately.

 

Knock Boston. The only reason for it is regulatory BS and ingrained bureaucratic conservatism.

There is a reason the best breweries/brewpubs/taprooms are (Trillium excepted) NOT in Boston.

And you can look up stories about JC talking about how Trillium was damned close to going bankrupt while they waited 14 months for Boston to approve their location. And then having a city employee tell him how lucky he was that he got it in 14 months and not 2 years.

 

Right as to today but history shows Boston area had a number of non chain brewpubs in the 90s (ex. Northeast, Commonwealth, Back Bay, CBC). Not everyone wants to get in the restaurant business and the concept doesn't work everywhere IMO.

I like brewpubs and their prevalence in the PNW

 

Disagree. Check out the Framingham location and try a Contender IPA. Generally good service, which unfortunately is the best we can hope for in the Boston area.

 

Watch City was really a crapshoot. Usually you could find something good on tap, and I admired their experimentation, but ultimately you gots to serve some regular beer, something the regular folk will drink. Sounds like it was more business incompetence that brought them down. I'm hopin' for Beer Works or even better, a new brewpub to take up the task.

 

FYI ... http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/waltham-beer-works.296117/page-2#post-4165893

 

Cool. Nothing personal of course. I respect your opinions and usually agree!

 

and when Trillium wanted to expand in Boston .. well they're in Canton, and when Castle Island wanted to open in Boston ... well they're in Norwood


Once a city starts acting like they're doing you a favor, get out, there are plenty of places that will appreciate someone opening a small business

 

I was recently told the Waltham outpost will ultimately not be called "Beer Works" at all (something like "Brewers Tavern").

In fact, they will not have any Beer Works beers on tap and will instead offer a 30+ taplist of "better beer" (FWIW) and a full liquor bar. Also was told the menu will be more upscale and the motif will not be the typical BW industrial, perhaps to include a marble bar (how fancy).

So, sounds like a Copper House Tavern clone (located on 128/Winter St) to be located on Moody St. Not sure that's what most beer folks wanted, but perhaps will be more of a viable business overall.