Brewery Visit: Monday Night Brewing (Atlanta, GA)

Last week it was time to visit our favorite mid-sized Atlanta brewery: Monday Night Brewing.

Monday Night Brewing opened its doors in 2011.  It all started when a member of a bible study group got a homebrew kit, and they decided to make beer as part of their next Monday night gathering.  As those brewing nights kept having more and more people show up, the group decided to try going "professional".  After five years of working on recipes, they were ready to open the brewery.

As is common with Atlanta breweries, Monday Night is at the end of a street of industrial buildings; it's on Lambert Street, just off Howell Mill.  There is plenty of parking in two free lots, and along the street.  (Someday, maybe Georgia will have tasting rooms in more attractive locations, but that won't happen until the laws change to allow them to be open to the public for more than a couple of hours a day)

Play some shuffleboard while trying some great beers.

Monday Night has a nice setup for a tasting room.  There is a large indoor room with plenty of seats and tables.  It's almost like being in a friend's big basement man-room.  They have a shuffleboard table, and are always projecting a movie on the wall.

Outdoors, there's a large outdoor porch, with lots of seating. There are a couple of cornhole games so that you'll have something to do other than just sit around and drink your beer (not that there is anything wrong with that).  Even though the brewery is in an industrial area, the porch overlooks a wooded area, so you can almost forget you're in the middle of a city.

They probably have the best "bar" setup that I've seen in an Atlanta tasting room.  Situated on the patio wall, on nice days they can raise two garage doors to allow them to serve both inside and outside. (Too often at breweries we want to sit outside, but then have to trek inside to get the next beer.  Who wants to have to do that?)

The patio area, and beanbag games.

The tasting is pretty standard for Atlanta.  For $10 you buy a glass, and get 6 tickets for beer tastes.  Each ticket will give you about a half of a beer, or you can use 3 tickets for a full pour.  When we were there, they had 10 beers on tap, including a nitrogenated version of the favorite Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale and the TMac Porter (which you can only get at the Taco Mac restaurants and at the tasting room).  The entire beer list from our visit is below.

Year-Round Beers

• Nerd Alert Pseudo Pilsner
• Eye Patch Ale IPA
• Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale
• Fu Manbrew Belgian Style Wit
• Blind Pirate Double IPA

 Seasonal/Special Beers

• Nitro Drafty Kilt
• TMac Porter
• Gun Show Belgian Style Golden Ale
• Tie Three On - Their 3rd Anniversary beer, a 3-malt, 3-hop, Rye Saison
• Bed Head Imperial Coffee IPA

The bar opens to both the tasting room and the outdoor patio.

  I pretty much stayed with my favorites: the "normal" Drafty Kilt and the Porter.  In the Drafty Kilt, they have somehow managed to make a scotch ale that has the flavor that you want, but is still something you can have a couple of glasses of, instead of having a really heavy alcohol flavor.  On the other hand, I thought that the Nitrogenated Drafty Kilt lacked flavor; this seems pretty common when a brewery tries to nitrogenate a "normal" beer...it adds creaminess, but kills some of the flavor.   I'm really not a fan of the Bed Head; the coffee just doesn't seem to work well in an IPA, and adds significant bitterness.  The Tie Three On was okay, but nothing remarkable; maybe someone who is a bigger fan of Belgian beers would like it better.  Meanwhile, our friends pretty much concentrated on the Eye Patch Ale and the Blind Pirate; they like IPAs a lot more than I do, and these are a couple of their favorites.

  The tasting room staff are great.  They are friendly, and really seem to enjoy being there.  Perhaps more importantly, they actually care about the beer.

  MNB's tasting room is open on Monday and Thursday evenings, as well as Saturday afternoon.  If you're in Atlanta, go check them out.

The Wall of Ties.  Bring a tie for $1 off your entry.