Mikro Beer Bar in Hamden

Mikro Beer Bar is a newer beer bar in the New Haven area. It's been open a little while so I thought it would be a good time to make the short trip from New Haven to Hamden last night. They are located at 3000 Whitney Ave. in Hamden in the middle of small shopping plaza.

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The first thing I notice when I walked in was the size. Mikro is a pretty small place, but a nice feature of the space is that the ceiling is really high. I think this helped cut down on the noise in the room and made it feel a lot more spacious. There is a large chalk board on the far wall that has a list of the 18 beers on tap along with their ABV and price. The beers seemed a little pricy, but I'm kind of spoiled by the Prime 16 happy hour prices I guess. There is a smaller bar with another quasi-bar with stools right behind it towards the middle of the room. The tables are arranged around the outside of the room. The seating is fairly limited. The atmosphere seems like a typical pub. Lots of darker wood and random beer paraphernalia. Nothing was overdone which kept it looking pretty respectable. There is one TV up in the corner of the bar, which due to the size of the room can seen about everywhere in the place.

When we walked in we ended up standing by the entrance for awhile. Is it wait to be seated or seat yourself? After waiting a few minutes without any staff even looking our way we decided it was seat yourself. After another 5 minutes or so the waiter finally noticed us. I found this rather annoying. Once he got to us he was pretty nice and seemed knowledgeable about the beers. I am not a fan of the way they seat here. There is limited seating to begin and no one seats you. As Mikro got more crowded later in the evening I saw people watching like hawks for a table to open, sitting down at table that weren't cleaned off yet and people were coming up to take chairs from other table. This is just really unorganized.

Their tap choices were on par with Prime 16 and Cask Republic. The only real stand out that was up tap when we were there was Cisco Winter Woods. I ended my night with this beer. It was fairly interesting beer with a plenty of winter spice and wood flavor. It was served ice cold, which totally incorrect for this style of beer. This is really a growing pet-peeve of mine. If you are going to specialize in craft beer serve them at the right temperatures! Mikro is definitely not they only place guilty of this sin, but it always annoys me.  I also tried their "East Coast IPA". When I asked the server who made it, I was told he wasn't allowed to say and they were thinking about making it a house beer. It's a pretty hefty IPA at 8% ABV. I was able to get him to tell me the brewery is out of state. This is pretty lame if you are going to have a house beer. It should be made locally. That said it was a pretty solid IPA, better than average in my opinion. Heavier of the bitterness than hop flavor. We were never given a bottle list so I don't have anything to say about what they have in that department. There were 4 drafts missing from the board the entire time we were there. Would have been nice if they were filled in or our server could have let us know what else was on tap.

The food menu is rather short, but covers a decent amount of ground. It was cool to see poutine on the menu. I opted for the pulled chicken flat bread. At the $13 price tag I was expecting more. The flat bread came off as a recipe from a "how to cook in your dorm room" book. Crunching down on a few pieces of bone they missed pulling out was not pleasant either. The side of fries we ordered for the table were the highlight sadly. Perhaps they are going for more of a simple pub focusing on the beer, but when you have a menu, especially at the prices they were asking, things should be much better.

Overall Mikro ranks dead last in terms of the beer bars in the New Haven area. Prime 16 and Delaney's have much more reasonable prices and better selections of higher quality food. I think out of the two newer beer bars I've visited lately Cask Republic has a much brighter future. I don't see myself driving out of to Hamden to visit Mikro since there are better options in New Haven with more space, lower craft beer prices, and better food.

Cask Republic in New Haven

Last night I took a walk down to a new beer bar/restaurant in New Haven, Cask Republic. Cask Republic resides on 179 Crown Street. Some of the online info says 181 Crown Street, but that is the Wine Thief's address. This location is right next to a parking garage, the previously mentioned Wine Thief, and right around the corner from Prime 16. I was surprised to hear about another quality beer establishment opening up in New Haven, but incredibly happy about this. We now have Cask Republic, Delaney's, Mikro, and Prime 16 in a few mile radius. Plenty of options to go get a quality draft beer. Now the only things I have left to complain about are the lack of a quality brewpub and a package store with a large craft beer selection within walking distance!

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I didn't hear anything about this place opening until last week. They currently do not have a full food menu available, but all their beer lines are up (in the mid 50 range + plenty of bottles). Cask Republic is supposedly a sister restaurant to the two Ginger Man restaurants in Greenwich and Norwalk. I have not been to either of these places, but they have a good reputation.

On walking in I was surprised about the size. It's not a huge, place but is pretty big and feels spacious. We we're greeted at the door by a friendly, but clearly green employee who took awhile where to seat us in an empty restaurant. The seating seems geared more towards groups of 4 or larger as there were only a few 2 person tables throughout the room. We sat in the down stairs section that is right by their walk in fridge. The walk in fridge is a fairly interesting feature. You can see all the kegs they have hooked up through the windows as well as the well organized bottles that are available. The decor is mainly dark wood with sparse beer paraphernalia on the wall. The place is kept a little too dark for my taste and we had some issue with flickering overhead lights. Overall it is pretty nice place inside, nicer than Prime 16 or Delaney's in my opinion.

The full food menu wasn't available, but I was aware of that going in, so it wasn't a surprise. I ended up going with their pretzel roll sandwich which had pork and sauerkraut with a dipping sauce and freshly cut french fries. I was impressed, very nice pub food. The sandwich prices look like they'll be in the $10-15 range with entrees being slightly more expensive.

The beer menu was the most impressive part to me. All quality beers on tap. Quite a few Captain Lawrence, NEB, and other new england breweries on draft. I ended up geting a citra dry-hopped New England Brewing Co. Sea Hag on cask, Captain Lawrence Espresso Stout on nitro, and a New England Brewing Co. Imperial Stout Trooper. All were very good and I can only hope that they develop a larger cask selection over time the cask Sea Hag was a great start! The prices for most of the american craft beer seem reasonable $5-8 for a 16 ounce pour or 12 ounces in some cases for the bigger beers. I was pretty shocked at the price of the Belgian offerings, lots hovering around the $12 range. The bottle prices were sky high as well. The biggest example I could pick out was the $29 bottle of Imperial Stout Trooper, which cost $12 from the brewery and they were selling a 12 ounce pour for $6! One nice thing they were doing was serving small portions of Brewdog's distilled spirits Sink the Bismark and Tactical Nuclear Penguin for only an arm and not the arm and a leg buy the full bottle would cost you. One other quibble was the serving temperature of their beer. It seems that since all the kegs are in the walking in fridge they are all kept at the same temperature. This resulted in the Stout Trooper we ordered being ice cold. This took quite awhile to heat up and this brew is much better at warmer temperatures and I feel bad for people who get this served so cold and gulp it down before it has a chance to reach it's maximum taste.

Overall I will be visiting Cask Republic in the future and I look forward to their expanded menu and great beer selection.