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| - All right, guys, I'm about to put my skinny jeans, flannel, and dark rimmed glasses on so be forewarned: there is a very hipster, snooty review coming up.
I love craft beer and it always gets me excited to visit small microbreweries across the country. What I typically find is that they're fairly hit or miss. Some menu items are boring/mediocre, but there are usually one or two highlights (sometimes, if you're really lucky, you find a real gem). Triptych falls into this category for me. While there were no gems and while I was not too impressed with their beers overall, there were two worth discussing. The first for me was the Mind The Gap. They describe it as a hoppy pale ale, which I'd say is pretty accurate. It pours a light golden yellow color and it's relatively low ABV (5.3%) but it has a really nice, fresh citrus-y hop flavor that I really enjoyed. They also had an interesting sour with some raisin notes. Other than that, the other beers didn't stand out to them. The Barrel aged stout is a fairly standard offering at craft breweries (but tasty enough), the XOCO is a smooth chocolate stout but it's lacking in chili flavor and complexity, the Phil's English IPA was sort of flat and boring, the Punky town had intense pumpkin spice flavor....if you're into that kinda thing (I tend to find these gimmicky, but hey, my jeans are too tight so cut me some slack).
Prices here are fantastic, though ($1.50-$2 for a 4oz pour) so I won't complain too much :-). Flights are the way to go so you can taste a bunch and find the one you really like.
I do love the atmosphere of this place. They have a large assortment of board games and it's easy to spend a couple hours here drinking and having a good time.
For a small microbrewery in the middle of a teeny college town in IL, Triptych deserves 4 stars. Though there weren't any standouts when I went I'd be curious to try more of their brews.
...that review wasn't too snooty, now, was it?
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