Small City Taphouse, Sandusky OH

This is a puzzling place, to me, at least. There are no photos of the place itself because frankly it wasn’t anything to write home about. It seems to take up a number of old storefronts on downtown Sandusky, but also seems to be in perennial construction mode.

I walked in and, after waiting several minutes, finally had someone ask if I wanted a table. I said yes, and was told there would be at least a 20 minute wait, even though I could see empty table from where I was standing. But whatever. I said I’d sit at the bar instead, and I actually got great service there, so kudos to the bartender who was dealing with a lot of customers!

The Taphouse advertises 60 taps, but the entire bank in front of my section of the bar had no handles, and the draft list only had 20 entries on it. Hmm … 

I started with a Weihenstephaner Original, a Helles Lager. I’m pretty much guaranteed to love anything from Weihenstephaner, the world’s oldest continually-operating brewery, and this helles was certainly no exception. I also ordered the Spicy Crispy Chicken – the Taphouse is also a Vietnamese restaurant (”Pho King Good”) – with veggies and jasmine rice. The food was as good as the first beer, and I was very happy that the serving size was just perfect for my Second Meal™️ today! (That’s the Weihenstephaner in the glass.)

Out of the 20 drafts, there weren’t very many at all that drew my eye, but for #2 I chose the Storm Mountain Porter from CLAG Brewing, the brewery connected to the Taphouse. This was a decent coffee porter, but didn’t really hit the spot – I found it a bit too heavy on the coffee flavor but that might have been a reaction to what I was eating at the time. It just didn’t pair well with the spice. I couldn’t fault the look of it at all, though, and I did enjoy the glass it came in.

I’d planned to end there, but I decided to see if I could end on a better note, so I ordered a small pour of the Take 10 pastry stout from Perennial Artisan Ales in St Louis. Oh my!!!

The head alone was truly a mouthful of pleasure! This was something like 11%, and the description I found online included this: “It is brewed with pretzels, and a touch of sea salt added on the tail end. Perennial added caramel and chocolate during fermentation, then steeped it on a fairly reasonable amount of whole roasted Virginia peanuts. Reasted peanuts give a lush aroma, with a balance of peanut, caramel, and salt on the palate.” This is truly one I would have again, but only in the small serving size because of the strength of both the flavor and the alcohol. 🙂