I wouldn't come back here for free beer. The beers themselves span from gross at worst to boring at best, and the service doesn't know enough about beer to fix their errors. In short, we left within 15-20 minutes without finishing either of the sub-par pints that we had ordered.
The rye pale ale I had smelled of vomit. This is neither exaggeration nor simile. If you had blindfolded me, held that pint glass under my nose, and asked me to guess what was in it, I would have said vomit. So I did what pretty much anyone with vomit beer does - I brought it back to the bar.
At the bar, I told the kind young lady that I suspected my beer had a foul odor and I would like her opinion. You can imagine my surprise when she sniffed it and then asked me what the problem was. I mean, are they used to smelling pukey pints at this place? When I told her it smells like puke, she replied, "That's not very nice!" as though I had pulled on my boots that morning with the mission of breaking her 19 year-old heart.
To add insult to my injury, she then said, "That's just the hops you're smelling." This answer shocked me in its gall and ignorance. First, as a homebrewer and as a guy who's been drinking beer since before this young lady could tie her shoes, I know what hops smell like - and they don't smell like vomit - and I know what DOES smell like vomit - contaminated beer! Whatever introductory or continuing training SABC offers their staff, it has apparently not included the words "butyric acid", "clostridium", or "pedicoccus", which are all big no-no's in brewing because they a) make your beer taste like vomit, and b) are signs of contamination. Instead of insulting my intelligence, she should have considered the possibility that something had gone wrong with that beer, whether during production, aging, packaging, or serving.
She did, to her credit, offer me a draught of something else. However, I wasn't interested in taking my chances on getting another pukey pint and my tastes of another one of their beers left me negatively impressed. The person I was there with was drinking an oat stout - a STOUT! - that had less flavour than watery porridge. Desiring neither contaminated nor boring beer, I declined the young lady's offer.
Like I said, I wouldn't come here again for free beer. read more