My good friend Julie was in town a few weeks back, and one afternoon we decided to do some window shopping in downtown McMinnville. If you haven’t been, it’s a must see! Seriously, McMinnville has one of the cutest main streets in America!

Julie is a huge fan of beer! She’s well on her way to getting a plaque on the wall at T.Mac in Atlanta. For those of you who don’t know, T.Mac has a loyalty program called Brewniversity dedicated to the exploration and enjoyment of delicious, unique and rare craft beers. Once you try 125 of their beers you get a plaque on the wall, and Julie is about 15 beers away from becoming LEGENDARY!

So when we happened upon the The Bitter Monk Bottle Shop & Tap Room in downtown McMinnville our only choice was to try it out!

What a cool place! The Bitter Monk has sixteen kegs on tap with mostly local northwest beers and even a few ciders. The Renaissance Man and I split a tasting and Julie got one of her own.

The taps are always rotating and what’s neat is that they have this screen with all of the beers listed. As a transportation engineer, I loved the little kegs icons that show up as green, yellow, or red depending on how much beer is left in the keg. I’m guessing you won’t ever see a traffic signal head with kegs…

Some of my favorites from the tasting were the #12 Long Sour Porter and #14 Atlas Cider Co. Apricot. Personally I like things on the sweeter side of life, so I’ve always been a big fan of ciders. However the Long Sour Porter was really unique, it’s a porter aged in Pinot Noir Barrels! How about that for wine country?

In addition to the tap room they also have a bottle shop. Before we left we picked up a few items to take home and try over the weekend.

If you happen to be in McMinnville and love beer, you need to put this place on your list! I know we’ll be back to visit sometime soon. Cheers!