Think I’ll have another beer

“Bart, a woman is like beer. They look good, they smell good, and you'd step over your own mother just to get one!”
--Homer Simpson

Hoppy Brewpub was the place to be early on election night. It should be easy to get a table for seven on a Tuesday night at 6 pm. Little did we know the world would show up at Hoppy.

Sacramento is a beer and a burger kind of town, but there aren’t as many microbreweries as other cities of its size. Perhaps the town is more of a Bud and a Big Mac than a dark porter with a Kobe burger town.

While Hoppy beer started brewing over 15 years ago, the brewpub in Sacramento opened at its present location on Folsom near 65th Street in the summer of 1999.

Tuesday night was a rough night for Hoppy Brewpub. Service was a step under mediocre, while the food would have to be greatly improved to get the badge of mediocrity. The good news is the beer. Between the Burnt Sienna Ale and the Total Eclipse Black Ale, one was just okay, but the other was excellent.

The joint was crowded, and our group waited about 20 minutes for a table, a rarity early on a Tuesday night. When we sat down we found out why from our server, with anyone saying they had voted that date getting a free pint. The brewpub should have been ready for the onslaught, having promoted the offer.

Eventually we got our first pints, but that was all we got. No rolls, sourdough or even crackers set on the table. This became especially uncomfortable, as some of our dinners came with soup or salads, some didn’t. It’s never comfortable to be the one or two eating prior to everyone else in the group.

The Burnt Sienna Ale was picked as the free pint. It was a good, but not nearly a great brown ale. Delivered slightly colder than recommended, but that is typical of American brewpubs were Americans expect their beers colder than they should be.

The brown ale (free on the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November) was less hoppy than expected, more of an English brown ale than the preferred Scottish browns. It had none of the distinctive freshness expected of a microbrew.

The second brewsky was the highlight of the evening. The Total Eclipse Black Ale ($5.00 pints, $18.00 pitcher) is the type of stuff you would step over your own mother just to get one. Hoppy Black Ale is a stout brew, delivered slightly warm, with the perfect color and head. The slight coffee flavor was perfect with such a robust beer.

Since Hoppy is a brewpub we had to order some food to go with our beer, especially due to a complete lack of any sort of munchies on the table.

Three Brothers is a trio of sausages with sauerkraut and roasted red potatoes ($11.85).

The sauerkraut tasted like dried out Del Monte. It had no flavor, more similar to overcooked angel hair pasta than true sauerkraut. The red potatoes were just a couple boiled potatoes, quartered, with no seasoning.

It’s tough to turn down anything with andoulee sausage. When andoulee is good it is the sausage from heaven. When it is bad, it is Oscar Meyer.

Hoppy was Oscar Meyer.

And the bratwurst and chicken apple sausages weren’t much better. These three brothers had too similar of DNA to show off much difference. Even the brat and the andoulee were not that easy to tell apart, a cardinal sin of specialty sausages. The chicken apple was distinct, but hardly memorable.

And what is the point of sausages without specialized mustard? A really good sausage doesn’t need great mustards, but mediocre sausage does. Hoppy sausages needed great mustards.

Three Brothers came with soup or salad. The cæsar salad wasn’t anything Caesar Cardini would recognize, but it’s tough to find a cæsar salad he would approve of anywhere.

The rest of the table seemed happy with their selections. A couple of the salads looked very good, and the sandwiches and burgers looked like reasonable choices.

The desert menu might have been tempting had the second pint not gone down so easily. The Chocolate Wall ($5.25) and the Carmel Apple Granny ($3.95) might be worth a spin on the next visit.

The atmosphere was typical brewpub. High ceilings and bunched tables made the room much noisier, making it difficult to hear conversation for a table of seven. They had a single large screen television with a local station giving election returns. Had it been a slower evening we might have asked the server to turn to CNN to watch their new holographic interviews.

Hoppy deserves another chance. They were busier than usual because of the free pint promotion, and it looked like on a nice quite evening service would be much more helpful with beer and menu selection.

If for no other reason than the Total Eclipse Black Ale, this reporter will be giving Hoppy at least one more chance.

Hoppy is at 6300 Folsom Blvd, Sacramento 95819. (916) 451-HOPPY. Map