A PREGAME VISIT TO THE TIED HOUSE

I’ve written before about my yearly sojourns to San Jose, CA’s TIED HOUSE before San Jose Sharks hockey games – it’s pretty much the designated pre-game gathering place for every Sharks dork who needs to get his or her game face on with a pint or two, what with a free parking garage located just across the street. I think their beer is perfectly passable, and sometimes it even rises to pretty above-average. Wednesday night, as I prepared for an eventual Sharks loss at the hand of the hated Dallas Stars (too many of those this year already), I tried a couple of TIED HOUSE standbys, and figured you’d want to hear about it. By the way, their brewery name is REDWOOD COAST BREWING; the restaurant in which they’re served is called THE TIED HOUSE. Hope that clears things up.

One of their perennials is the OATMEAL STOUT that we wrote about once before. I truly enjoy this beer, despite it being a lighter, low-carbonated stout that perhaps goes down a little too easy. “Refreshing”, you might say. It has a true oat flavor that comes through with every smooth gulp, and not that Malt-O-Meal stuff, I’m talking Quaker 100% Natural here. Very good – I’ll change my score from a 7.5/10 to a 7/10 this time around – just because. My other tap-pull this evening, since they hadn’t started serving their winter beer yet, was the HEFEWEIZEN, which they have as a seasonal, believe it or not (most places, especially restaurants, tend to make that a “main pull”). This was exceptionally unexceptional. In all the conversation and pregame planning, I noticed that I hadn’t actually noticed anything about the beer. I might as well have been drinking water. 5.5/10. San Jose, a city of 1 million people, only has this place and the Gordon Biersch chain for brewpubs, and to the best of my knowledge does not sport a single decent beer bar to speak of. If anyone knows otherwise, please raise your voice!