I approached this place with mild skepticism. "We unapologetically brew hop pronounced styles ..." I'm no hop head, but I appreciate a well-hopped beer. With stiff competition from another local brewery, I was prepared to write this place off as one-note. It's not. But...how much can you really do with hops?
A lot. You can apparently do a lot with hops. In fact, you can make a highly hopped beer taste...not hoppy...or at least not the hoppy you might be expecting. Mellow to highly bitter, the beers I had covered the whole hop spectrum. Beers with hints of grapefruit and melon, coffee and chocolate from beer to beer to beer. This is no one-trick pony.
The "Better 1 or 2" is one of the best beers in Pittsburgh.
I sampled five of their beers (a sampler and a 16 ouncer) and didn't find a weak offering in the mix. This place is going to give my favorite a run for the money.
Decor is a clean, minimalist industrial. The sole non-functional bit of decoration I observed was a map of all the microbreweries in the United States. No wasted space on clean white-tiled walls. Edison bulbs hang on pendants over the bar area. Signage consists entirely of a large flatpanel board announcing the beers on tap.
No food inside, although the food truck du-jour was bringing food inside for hungry patrons too cold to wait outside for it.
I liked it. A lot.