Pour Taproom: Tap Your Wristband, Pour, Repeat
Pour Taproom makes serving your own beer a social experience. Offering scores of beers, ciders, and wines you can taste and appreciate, an ounce at a time, is fun. You could spend hours here.
Pour Taproom renovated the cavernous Murchison bank building into a cavernous, two-story taproom. One would think it would be impossible to fill the space, but when you’re offering a year-round beer festival, it happens. Big round wooden tables and stools downstairs, and conversation areas with sofas upstairs, make this a great place to gather with friends. Lots of friends. And if you don’t have lots of friends, don’t worry, you will make some. This is the kind of place that gets you mixing and mingling. And pouring, pouring, pouring.
Here’s what you do: check in at the front bar, show your ID, and receive an orange wristband with a chip that is connected to your payment method. A super friendly, beer-enthusiast, tour guide-type taproom employee will usher you over to the wall of taps.
Pick your adjective, here: inviting, breathtaking, intimidating, down right frightening?
Experienced beer drinkers will rave over the selection. Beer novices will like the low-key vibe and adventure of it all.
If you’re not all about beer, and don’t even know how to operate a tap, take heart. The whole concept at Pour Taproom is to have fun. Your taproom tour guide will give you the low down on the shape of glass to grab, and show you how to hold it under the tap for the right amount of head. Beers are organized by type – IPAs, Belgians, Sours, Lagers – and the wines are in the old bank vault. Tap the screen for an interesting description of the beer or wine, with notes about the class, the undertones, and the origin. Confidently touch the chip on your wristband to the receiver on the tap, and you’re in business.
The alcohol content of the beer you are pouring is displayed, along with your “account” information. You know how much you have just poured, the current total of your tab, and how much you have consumed so far. Techies will appreciate all this data. It certainly makes for a different kind of drinking experience. You can pour yourself one or two ounces at a time, sampling beers that you aren’t familiar with, or you can just find your favorite and pour yourself a substantial glassful.
Leave your empties on the table, and go get a clean glass for each new adventure at the taps.
The mechanics of it all? The taps calculate your pour to the tenth of an ounce. There is an algorithm that calculates the quantity of beer (faster for wine with its higher alcohol content) that you’ve consumed, over how much time, and cuts you off if you’re being too enthusiastic. A message on the tap screen instructs you to check with a staffer to restore your pouring privileges. On the way out the door, turn in your wristband and sign your tab.
Pour Taproom’s beer selection is super interesting, with plenty of options on the first floor, and some tasty local brews on the second floor. The wine selection – seven reds and a white – was not so inspired, but serviceable for any wine drinkers who wander into a “taproom” looking for a beverage. Ciders on tap inspire a buzz of appreciation.
Pour Taproom offers a snack menu, but remember you’re not here for the food. The food is for that moment you sit back and say, “I really need a bite to eat if I’m going to drink anything else.”
The cheese platter is the most creative, and appealing option, the flatbread is passable, the pretzels with mustard dip adequately absorbent, and it all serves to make the drinking a better experience.
But hey, I found the prosecco tap. That, my Port City foodies, was a really big win.
Visit Pour Taproom online. Gather up a bunch of friends and go have some fun.