Dinner at Resurrection Ale House

Jo and I went to Resurrection Ale House last night with some of our friends.  It was my first time there so I was excited to check it out.  It's a pretty small place, but it has a really nice wooden bar and it's very roomy.  Their beer list was pretty good, all decent craft offerings.  It wasn't quite as exotic as you'd get at Varga or Devil's Den, but that may just be a matter of timing since they change their drafts often.  Their food was pretty good and reasonably priced.  All in all, not a bad place, but if I'm going to head to South Philly I'd probably just go to Devil's Den or Hawthornes.

The first beer I had was Russian River's Damnation.  (Note: all the pictures are going to kind of suck since it was too dark for decent pictures.  Oh well.)

Damnation is a Belgian Strong Pale Ale.  It was a really cool golden color which doesn't come through real well in the picture but believe me it was cool looking.  It had about 2cm of bubbly, frothy head on it and smelled mildly of oranges and honey.  The first taste of it had similar feelings to the smell.  Hints of orange, honey, and other sweet flavors.  All of that melds together as you drink it and it's pretty satisfying.  Really good beer.

The second beer I had was Bell's Kalamazoo Stout.

The beer was a black color with a nice dark, brown head.  It smelled of roasted malts, coffee notes, and mild chocolate, exactly what you'd expect from a decent stout.  Initially, the roasted flavor jumps out at you and overpowers everything.  A couple sips in though and that mellows out as you get used to it and the coffee and chocolate flavors appear.  Note, that I don't think there's actually any chocolate or coffee used to make this stout, it's just that the roasted malts used in brewing the beer give off those flavors.  It's a cool effect in my opinion.

Finally I finished off the night with Dogfish Head's Punkin.

It was a nice, dark orange color (some would say brown but whatever) with minimal head.  I'm not sure why some beers have a lot or a little head, but it probably has something to do with the extra stuff used in brewing the beer.  Pumpkin beers generally have a ton of spices, like cinnamon, coriander, cloves, etc, and almost never have a lot of head on them so that's what I'm basing this on.  I could be full of crap but this is my blog so I can say what I want.  This pumpkin is no different than others as far as the smell goes.  Lots of spices although not overpowering at all.  It tastes similar to what you'd expect a pumpkin pie to taste like if the pumpkin taste took a huge backseat to the spices.  It was really drinkable since while the spices were there, they were not the only thing going on in the flavor.  Some pumpkins are just all spice and it gets old when trying to drink the whole beer.

Not a bad night at Resurrection and I'd be happy to go back again if a group of people were going, but I wouldn't suggest it as a place to meet up.  I will say there was a lot of room in the place considering its size which is a plus in its favor when comparing it to some other bars in Philadelphia.