My long-time and best friend, Craig, and his co-worker and friend (and mine too now), Barry, decided to take a road trip recently way out to Tulsa, Oklahoma, over a 3-day weekend to catch one of the few Saturday-night shows on the current Roger Waters "The Wall" Live tour. Along the way and in Tulsa we were able to find a decent amount of good beer as well.
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| Six or so hours out of Paris, TN, where Craig lives, we stopped for lunch (and a few beers, of course) at Springfield (Missouri) Brewing Company. The beer was solid and the food was good. Their brewpub was a beauty and made for a perfect stopping point to stretch our legs and our livers a bit. I opted for their Pale Ale which was decent. Craig and Barry (both fans of darker beers) tried their rotating "Dark Horse" tap which currently was pouring the Del Fuego, a roasted German-style stout with chili pepper infusion. I got a sip of Craig's and thought it was OK, although it didn't pack the punch of the pepper-infused Special Speedway Stout I had out in California over the new year at AleSmith Brewing (see earlier blog). |
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| Tulsa itself has no craft brewpubs to visit within its city limits that I could find mention of during an extensive Internet search. This is surprising since I read recently that over 900 new brewpubs opened across the U.S. last year??? Holy crap, that's a lot beer! Tulsa overall looks to a be fairly quiet and buttoned-up kind of town (well, what did you expect, it is the home of Oral Roberts U). The one redeeming small district that seems to wear a party hat most of the time is their Blue Dome District, a little section of streets with numerous bars, hip eateries and urban shopping. We found two great beer bars there with more than enough craft beer on tap to suit us quite nicely. The now famous "blue dome" building pictured above was a 1920's-built gas station along famous Route 66. |
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| The first establishment we found was Fassler Hall, a perfect replica of a German beer hall, with lots of the Motherland beers on tap and even one of my favorite American IPAs, Single Wide, from Boulevard Brewing over in Kansas City. This was the first time I had been able to try it on draught and it was tremendous. Their food menu was an interesting selection of house-made sausages and just speaking for myself, the Habanero Chicken Sausage was out of this world good. Now THAT is how you infuse peppers into something! Whoooo! Are ya hearing me, Springfield??? |
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| Before the concert on Saturday, we ambled back over to the Blue Dome District for a late breakfast at the funky Blue Dome Diner. It was a bit of a walk from our hotel, a nice little Double Tree that we got a great rate on, but the weather was great and the downtown streets were quiet and safe. After brunch, we were able to get in our second good beer bar, McNellie's Irish Pub (actually it's the James E. McNellie's Public House if you are not into the whole brevity-thing). This had been our first destination of choice the night before except that it was very, very crowded. Now I know why. The beer selection here was amazing! Try over 350 different ones with well over 50 on draught. There were so many beers that I had never heard of that I didn't know where to start. I opted for the "Double Dragon" flight (photo above) which had four of five beers with double the main ingredients that I had not had before. From L to R there was the Tallgrass Oasis Double ESB (Manhattan, KS), the Great Divide Double IPA (Denver), the Ommegang Abbey Ale (Cooperstown, NY), the Ayinger Celebrator Dopplebock (Bavaria region of Germany) and good old Young's Double Chocolate Stout (England). Loved them all except the Ommegang, but as I have stated many times on here, I just don't dig on the Belgian style of brewing. I moved on from there to a full draught glass of the (cask-conditioned) Marshall Atlas IPA from...drumroll, please....Tulsa!! Yep, they've got a craft brewery here, but it's just not open to the public for tours, nor does it have a brewpub attached to it. No matter...their beer is outstanding...at least this IPA is, and anyone that can do cask beer this good is OK (get it) in my book. So I could actually walk out of there and back to the hotel and to the concert later that evening, I hand to end with a draught pint of COOP Ale Work's F5 IPA out of Oklahoma City. Another great hoppy and delicious IPA and a good regional beer to end our wonderful visit to McNelllie's on. |
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| The concert was held in the futuristic-looking BOK Center just around the corner from our hotel. It's actually a bit smaller inside than it looks from the outside. The show was tremendous. A visual and musical feast from start to finish of one of the greatest albums (and concepts) of all time. You are a legend, Mr. Waters. Thank you so much for your vision and your enthusiasm after all these years. We all felt privileged and grateful to have seen this amazing show in this lovely city on the plains. Below is a quick glimpse of just some of the amazing start of the close-to-3-hour show. "Daddy what'd ya leave behind for me!!" |
