Friday 28th of June 2013 01:13:00 PM

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Was staying near here, so I thought I'd walk over and check it out. It does really well on Yelp and other beer web sites.
I expected Oldsmar to be kind of a backwoods, middle of nowhere kind of town, but it was really a fairly cute, but mostly strip mall-oriented exurb. The "Downtown area" consists of two large buildings and this place is inside one of them, along with a very good sushi restaurant where I ate later.
Food menu left a lot to be desired. A burger, nachos, a quesadilla. Food you would expect for a small bar, I guess. Someone ordered the chicken nachos while I was there, and they do pile them on, but I was still not sorry I skipped eating.
Happy hour from 4-7pm means $1 off all drafts. Drafts start at $4.50 for one of the lame ones and get up to $8 for a few. Most are $6 or $7 though. A lot of Florida drafts, including a Pinglehead, a Swamp Ape, a couple of Cigar City's, and a 7th Sun. They also had stuff like Paulaner, Heineken and Guinness on draft, and a large collection of pisswater bottles in the cooler. The draft list I found differed greatly from what was posted on their site, so don't rely on that going in. The list is categorized by overall style ("IPA," "lager," "cider," etc.) and the beer names are color-coded to match it the legend that indicate the style. Interesting way to do it, but it was too generalized, as some marked as "IPA" were actually double IPAs. Most did not have their brewery listed, just the ABV% and the price. It made me realize how much I judge beers based on the brewery.
I came in a little after 4pm and the place was dead. I was the only one in there for a while, save for one bartender who disappeared soon after as well. Music was satellite radio, which isn't always a good thing (it wasn't this time). The bartender I initially had did not know anything about the beers, just what was available to her on the list. A few minutes after she poured me a full pint of the 10% El Dorado IPA (written on the list as "Dorado"), she mentioned that they pour smaller glasses for the "high octane" beers. It didn't dawn on me until later that I was supposed to have gotten a smaller pour. I saw the same thing happen a few minutes later with a different bartender, but he realized his mistake a minute after and mentioned to one of the other staff.
And that was kind of the theme here: disorganized, not really aware of what was going on... Just an overall amateurish vibe.
I don't think I would go out of my for this place. If you're in the immediate area, then there's not much else, but there are certainly better beer bars in Tampa Bay.