Sampling Suds At

My Place Pizza

By Jeff White

“This is my style, in moderation, great by the fire,” Rich Treadwell said as he joined a room full of beer lovers at My Place Pizza recently and hoisted a glass of caramel-colored beer above his head, in an effort to see how the soft light refracted through it.

“It’s according to one’s taste,” Mr Treadwell explained of brew preference. At this particular beer tasting, the focus rested on hoppy barley wines and old English ales. “I’ll never be an expert, and I don’t consider myself an expert.”

But Mark Tombascio, who has been brewing his own beer since 1993, is.

Beer tastings have become a regular attraction at My Place, and it has been roughly one year since Mr Tombascio, who co-owns the restaurant with his mother and brother, drew his first crowd to sample a selection of light lagers. Since then Belgian ales, English and American pale ales, brown ales, lambics, wheat beers, and American style pilsners have all been sniffed, swished and sampled.

“We want to make people aware of what is out there,” said Mr Tombascio this week. Over the past year, usually on the first Tuesday of every month, upwards of 50 patrons pack My Place’s back room for the tastings. Food is provided, and discussions are led by two experienced beer judges who take turns commenting on and observing the nuances of various brews.

That a beer has particular nuances may be news to some of the uninitiated, and that is why Mr Tombascio conducts these tastings. The characteristics of broad styles such as stouts and Oktoberfests are discussed along with some history behind the brewers and their beers.

Participants learn to appreciate the “nose,” the first step when sampling a beer. Clasping his hand over his wine glass, Kevin Arrington swirled the sip of Grim Reeper barley wine around before removing it and taking in the volatile aromas. Next comes the beer’s appearance. Is it cloudy? How is the carbonation? Is there good head retention? Color?

In fact, much of the studying done at Mr Tombascio’s beer tastings happens before a glass is raised to a participant’s lips. Patrons offer their comments and observations, bouncing their theories and knowledge off the beer judges.

But when the actual drinking does commence, a morning-like scene recalling mouthwash ensues as participants carefully mull over a beer’s complex flavors before swallowing. A beer’s overall “drinkability” might be the most important consideration during one of these nights, as it allows for subjective taste. A customer has only to ask him or herself: Would I drink a few glasses of this? A positive response will yield a high score for the beer.

If this process makes you think of how wine is sampled, it will be little surprise that beer tastings help in part to dispel a common misconception that beer is not complex enough to be matched with particular foods. On the contrary, insisted Mr Tombascio. “We want to make people aware that beer can be paired with foods.”

The tastings have gone over so well for Mark Tombascio that many of his customers are wondering what he is going to do for the next year. Will he just start the cycle over again? Maybe, he said, but only if he can get completely new beers for each category.

For now, Mr Tombascio is looking ahead to his next tasting, in March, when he will cover bock beers and dark lagers. He hopes to hold another tasting in April that will revisit some Scotch ales, along with detailed instruction on how to brew beer at home. Mr Tombascio said he plans to bring in the ingredients for homebrewing that night, and sometime during May hold another tasting when some of the homebrews can be sampled.

Typically at a given tasting, 10 to 12 beers are sampled as patrons record their comments and observations on a detailed chart supplied at the tasting’s outset. The cost for the night is $20, and reservations can be made through Mr Tombascio at the restaurant.

The Tuesday night tastings at My Place have helped solidify the restaurant as a premier location for beer lovers. On any given night, Mr Tombascio will have seven brews on tap, including Celebrator Double Bock, Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, Hammer and Nail Brown Ale, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Bellhaven Scotch Ale, Grim Reaper barley wine and always one lambic and one cask-conditioned ale. In addition, over 100 different bottles of beer line the inside of his refrigerators

And like all beer lovers, Mr Tombascio looks for every opportunity to share his passion with other enthusiasts. He regularly organizes trips to local brewers, the most recent being a planned trip to Brooklyn Brewery in March. Cost of the trip is $15 dollars, which covers transportation, the tour, and of course samples of various brews.

On a larger scale, Mr Tombascio is helping to organize a trip to Belgium toward the end of summer. Although the trip is currently full, Mr Tombascio said that a waiting list is being drafted. Cost for the trip is $1,100 for eight days, two breweries per day.

In the near future, a beer tasting is slated for Sunday, March 27, from 2 to 5pm, at which an oak cask of JW Lee’s Harvest Ale will be the focus, sharing time with a raspberry lambic from Cantillon. 

Anyone interested in upcoming trips or beer tastings are encouraged to contact Mr Tombascio at 270-7061.

“It’s a great time to be alive if you love beer,” Mr Tombascio pointed out recently, noting the resurgence of breweries across the country. Still, he remarked, brewery numbers are nowhere near where they were before prohibition. Clearly, there is a ways to go, which no doubt pleases Mr Tombascio, who is currently preparing to sit for his third beer judge’s certification test.

“I hope it lasts,” he said of beer’s growing popularity.