Drinkus Pinkus in the Cellar

I think it’s safe to say, I need to get out more.

With good beer bars popping up like Starbucks, though with significantly less evil and corporate motivations, it’s a terrible shame I only get to visit these great places once in a great while. But every so often, usually when a check comes in thereby making it worth my while to sift through the 15 credit card offers, 10 supermarket circulars, and 15,000 copies of The Reminder, I take that meager amount of money and go have a night on the town.

My most recent outing brought me up toProvidence, where the streets all go in one direction, invariably in the opposite direction you want to go, and parking is like trying to stake a claim on another prospector’s land, but with less gunfire.

Here, I discovered the English Cellar Ale House, a happy little dimly lit hideaway in the basement of another restaurant, but with just the kind of pub environment and dizzying beer selection that made me feel at home.

The beer menu is separated into styles, something that more beer bars should do, ranging from light lagers to hefty stouts and hitting almost everything in the middle.

Walking in, you’ll find a great big red phone booth to greet you, somewhat limited seating, but a nice red pool table in the back and a great big college crowd, what withBrownUniversitybeing a stones-throw away.

Not that it’s a college bar… OK, maybe it is a college bar, but it’s also a craft beer bar, and they have beers on their list that I’d never even heard of, for instance, the Pinkus Jubilate.

Yes, I know, I’d never heard of it either. Naturally I had to order it and find out what it’s like. Turns out, the Pinkus Jubilate is a palate-pleasing, light, German amber lager that’s so smooth and crisp it literally stunned me to silence on my first sip. It’s a rare, and expensive gem, but hey, they don’t pay me the big bucks to cheap out. Actually, they don’t pay me the big bucks at all, so believe me when I say it’s worth the price. This isn’t the brew to knock down to get on the krunk-town expressway. This is the slow-sipping delight that makes you glad you’ve got taste buds. It’s hard to say what exactly it is about the beer that enamored me so. It had so many good elements working for it. I guess when you get right down to it, my advice is to try it for yourself.

The food is a cross between typical pub fare and upscale dining, like their bruschetta flatbread pizza-like appetizer, which, by the way, went very well with my choice of brew. It’s probably for the best, because if they went for an English theme for their food selection, it’d be blood sausage and boiled everything. Sometimes you’ve got to dump your theme where appropriate and branch out a little.

Had I had more time, I might have indulged in more of their impressive selection. It’s rare to find a beer I haven’t heard of, but even more rare to find a brewery I’ve never heard of before. I see it almost as a personal challenge, and I never run away from a challenge… unless that challenge has something to do with math, then I’m a bloody athlete.