Dock Street Tuesday

Before driving to Troegs on Wednesday, Jo and I went to Dock Street Brewpub Tuesday night.  Dock Street is located at 50th and Baltimore (basically) and serves pizza and some other food.  It's an interesting neighborhood place and their pizza is quite good.  We went (well, I went) because they were doing a release of their Russian Imperial Stout, Prince Myshkin, and also had a few bottles (40) of their 2009 Barleywine for sale with it.  The barleywine had been aged in Pinot Noir wine barrels for 10 months and then set down in their cellar for a year.  The Prince Myshkin was aged for 11 months in the same barrels which means it pulled flavors from the oak, some wine flavors and whatever the barleywine imparted.  It sounded too interesting not to take a short trip on the green line to head up there.

With only 40 bottles of the 2009 Barleywine available, I expected a decent amount of people to show up before the official 6:30pm release time.  When I arrived, though, there were only about 10 people in the bar.  Well then.  I quickly realized that this wasn't going to be the same type of release as the one at Troegs but at least I was sitting in a bar this time.  While waiting for Jo to show up, I got a glass of their Prisoner of Hell.

I'm not sure what the specific style of this beer is but it smelled sweet and malty with another aroma that I couldn't quite put my finger on.  It's probably close to a saison as it had some floral, citrus and light hop notes.  The most interesting part is that it is dosed with black, white and green pepper at some point to create a spicy finish (I mostly copied that line from their website.)  Each sip ends slightly peppery which slowly builds up throughout the glass.  At first, I thought the flavors were kind of disjointed, but as I drank more and it warmed up a bit, everything blended nicely.  Odd beer, but refreshing in a way.

Soon after, Jo showed up, we got some pizza, and I ordered a Man Full of Trouble Porter.

Roasty aroma but pretty minimal.  Toasty, nutty flavor.  Initially it had a slightly odd aftertaste which could be a result of the type of hops they used.  However, the flavor disappeared as I drank more of it and it became a decent enough porter.  Tasty enough to go with the pizza at least.

Dock Street isn't a bad place, but their beer just hasn't been that impressive to me.  It's not bad, just not great.  Their pizza is quite good and if I lived near there I'd probably still go a lot, but it's not a destination for me.  Still, I got to taste a little of the Prince Myshkin and I'm pretty excited about drinking my bottle.  Hopefully it will give me a reason to go back for other releases.