Taft’s Brewpourium, Columbus OH

4 November 2023

As with Schmidt’s two days ago, Taft’s is a place I’ve been to multiple times before so I’m not including photos of the place itself. However, it’s in an interesting little neighborhood in what was probably an older, dying area of Columbus — now, it’s fresh and vibrant with lots of apartments in new buildings and little businesses all around.

On my previous visit to Taft’s, they weren’t very busy (NOT the case this time!!) so I had a chance to talk to the bartender about my cross-country pub crawls. He loved the idea as well as the fact that I visit Taft’s when in Columbus, so he gave me a token for a 2-cent draft beer on my next visit! This is that 2-cent draft:

Unfortunately, I didn’t grab photos of the beer list because they have it all posted online, right? Hmm … that link on their website is broken … so I can’t offer much in the way of descriptions or even names in most cases. This one, though, was their Oktubberfest Festbier, a very nice draft but not quite what my palette was looking for today.

In addition to great beer, Taft’s makes New Haven-style Appizza in a 1000º degree oven. I usually do a “make your own” but this time chose the one called “The Roebling” — sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, mozzarella, garlic parmesan, and ricotta. It was good but a bit on the salty side (“more beer!”) and I could have done without the ricotta. It was also a lot of food in a 10″ size.

I followed up the Festbier with a really fabulous Saison that I feel hits the mark for Saisons in general.

I almost took a crowler of the Saison back to the hotel, but instead chose a Porter and didn’t regret it one little bit. This is the Porter in a mug I picked up at Columbus Brewing Company the day before:

My only complaint about Taft’s in general is that they’re just too popular! I arrived a few minutes after they opened and by the time I left an hour later, the bartender was running around like a crazy man. There’s a lot of space for people but no table service — everything is ordered at the bar and there was only the one bartender on duty. That’s a bit of poor planning in my opinion.