Sunday 16th of September 2012 12:07:21 PM

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Favorite Beets: Final Absolution Triple, Under the Kilt Wee Heavy, Redwing Raspberry Wheat, Ring of Fire

This is the gold standard for Detroit beer. 20-plus beers on tap, ranging from very good to excellent in quality. I'm not a fan of jalapeno beers at all, and even the Ring of Fire is delicious. The decor is early D&D basement chic, but the service is prompt and you never really wait for a drink. The food is horrific, but you can bring outside in and Lazybones (right around the corner) is the best BBQ in the Detroit area. Who knew there was so much going on in Warren?

Friday 1st of January 2010 11:33:34 AM

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Dragonmead was the second stop of my beercation. I was excited by the prospects of the many beers they advertised on their website. They even have mead as their name implies.

So walking in on a Sunday afternoon found Dragonmead to be pretty dead. This was not unexpected. The inside is woody and dark enough to be cozy. There are medieval themed decorations all around. There is a very small bar right in front of the door. Although we generally prefer sitting at the bar, we chose a table because we were meeting someone for conversation.

The beer menu was printed in a little paper pamphlet and it appeared quite extensive. It was grouped by style: American, Scottish, Russian, Barley Wine, Belgian, English, Cask, German, Mead, Norweigan, Polish. We started working our way through it by ordering samplers. They give you a card, on which to write the beer names, then it is returned with beers in that same order.

In general the beers were good. I wouldn't say any of them were bad, but none of them were exceptional. I like a lot of big flavor and it just was not present in most of the beers I sampled at Dragonmead. The pale ales in particular were really weak on the hops.

Beers of special note in my opinion:
Final Absolution Trippel (took home a growler)
Excalibur Barley Wine
Under the Kilt Wee Heavy
Juggernaught Double Red
Bishop Bob's Holy Smoke

I also tried the mead of course. You cannot get it in the sampler, but I ordered the dry and the sweet mead. The dry was not to my liking. I found it to be a little watery and sour. The sweet was more like what I usually associate with mead. This particular one had a little hint of spice to it as well.

Food is not really an option at Dragonmead. They hinted at this on their website, but I was misled by this description "offer a small array of pub-style food... hamburgers, chicken bites, french fries, onion rings and poppers".
When I tried to order burgers, I was told those were not available. We ended up getting some deep fried mini tacos, some cheese and crackers, and a very tiny chunk of venison sausage.

The service was like a sine wave. Sometimes it was up and sometimes down. I don't know if this was because we were not regulars or what. On more than one occasion I felt compelled to walk over to the bar to get attention. At other times our server was helpful and conversational. It was not very busy, so perhaps she was just burned out after a hard weekend.

Overall, Dragonmead was a fun experience. I like the variety of beer styles. I think they could probably do better if they concentrated on fewer examples of each style and then rotate to keep people interested. I have seen this approach successfully executed at other brewpubs.
I would come back to Dragonmead to give it another try, but unfortunately it is a little far from Chicago.

Thursday 12th of November 2009 11:43:26 AM

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Dragonmead has it all. Good Beer, A Huge Selection, and a Creepy dragon painting with a naked lady in the mens bathroom!

Some of the beers are pretty mediocre. I feel like sometimes they focus on quantity over quality. The prices are can also be a bit steep for what you're getting. The sampler tray is a steal though. The service is usually pretty good, sometimes slower than it should be if they're busy, but the staff is always friendly. If it's on tap try the Ring of Fire. It tastes like fucking Nacho Cheese.

Saturday 15th of August 2009 05:42:26 PM

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Stopped by here on a visit to Detroit after it was recommended by a patron at Kuhnhenn's Brewing (also in the area)...and I'm so glad I did!

The number of beers on tap (41 from their updated weekly menu) was just amazing, and I had two sampler trays (10 6 oz. samples)for about $20, plus a mead sample. All were delicious (my favorites were their famous Final Absolution Trippel, the Dragonslayer Altbier, and the Juggernaut Double Red). The 'Ring of Fire' was also a spicy treat, and I was pleasantly suprised by their 'Under the Kilt Wee Heavy' scotch ale...I normally don't like that style, but it was good.

They offer most drafts in 1/2 pints, pints and growlers, and it seems very affordable for such great beer.

I happened to run into a couple of the owners there (on a Tuesday afternoon), and they were incredibly friendly. One owner, Larry, asked me to join a tour he was going to give to a visiting bar owner and a distributor he works with, and it was the best conversation and tour I've ever had. I homebrew, so I had tons of questions for him, and since there were only 4 of us, we talked for a good LONG while.

Jerry, the amazing bartender, kept bringing us fresh beers while on the tour as well...most amazing service I've ever seen! He picked out the first 5 samples for me, and he clearly knew his beers. He even gave me a recipe of his for home brewed mead he makes at home.

I wished they had more food selection rather than just appetizers, as I would have stayed there for a long while if I could get some good food to match with their wonderful beers (though I found out they also do takeout orders from neighboring restaurants, like Kuhnhenn's).

Biggest drawback: You can't get Dragonmead beer outside of Michigan (or really even the Detroit area I think). It doesn't seem they are interested in expanding production or bottling much of their beers. I'm sad more people can't enjoy them (or myself again without traveling 550 miles).

Friday 3rd of October 2008 10:39:00 PM

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This place is worth a visit no matter your beer preference. They have 30-40 beers on tap, all made in house. This includes a number of meads and sodas. They have a weekly beer menu for the new beers on tap. The menu splits the beers up by country style of origin, American, Belgian, German, Russian and of course Scottish and English. A nice selection of both cask and nitrogen versions (about 6 of each).

Lots of good information about the Michigan Brewers Guild on the walls along with various awards they have won.

A nice feature is they have a very limited menu of appetizer type foods, but you can also bring your own food in.

Growlers are very cheap only $3.99 and $8 to fill.

I was there on a Thursday night, it was quite busy and they only had 2 servers/bartenders so it was a little understaffed. But they hustled and did a good job covering the floor.

I had Earl Spit Stout, a very dry stout, not the most smooth one I have had, but good flavor. London Brown had won a number of awards, it was good, but certainly not the best brown ever. Finally I tried the Woody Perfect Porter, this one was excellent, very smooth and chocolately finish.

Monday 7th of January 2008 12:00:37 AM

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Beer selection is huge. 30 taps of their own beer, some meads, some sodas... all dragonmead.

I like this place a lot, it's got a great vibe to it... it's going for a grog shop in an older time, but it has these retarded warning signs that stand out like sores... but they're effective, because they are the thing that's not like the others... it's a place to belly up and work the steel with the beer devils. The sampler is 5 beers at 6oz each for 8 bucks... and I got thru 3 samplers. oh my.

service was fun this last time because the place was packed and 3 female waittresses decided to play up the more male contingent at the bar by inappropriately groping each other which prolly bettered their tips. It was a floorshow in vegas at the end of the day of good beer.

Dragonmead is right off the highway. That's good for finding it and bad for drinking... If you want to go there and try a sampler or two then growler up, that's fine... if you've come to throw down... bring a dd... it's a hard ass day.

and beware the bourbon excalibur.