Let's play Guess what's on tap!

Don't you just love going into a bar/restaurant and asking the wait staff what's on tap to get into this exchange:

me: what do you have on tap?
her: we have tons....what would you like?
me: what exactly do you have?
her: tons..just about anything and everything
me: have a list?


...after much effort, the list is produced and it contains the following:
Bud
Yuengling
Miller lite
Coors light
Sam Adams
Sam Adams Seasonal
Guinness
Smithwicks



wow

And yet they'll rattle off the 60 salad dressings they have.

brewt00l said:

Don't you just love going into a bar/restaurant and asking the wait staff what's on tap to get into this exchange:

me: what do you have on tap?
her: we have tons....what would you like?
me: what exactly do you have?
her: tons..just about anything and everything
me: have a list?


...after much effort, the list is produced and it contains the following:
Bud
Yuengling
Miller lite
Coors light
Sam Adams
Sam Adams Seasonal
Guinness
Smithwicks



wow

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At least there's Guiness and Smithwicks. It could be worse.

Cool enough, the american legion I used to frequent now keeps Blue Moon and a Troeg's on tap at all times...in addition to Old Mil, Coors, and Miller.

That's better than the "We don't have draft beer" response I've gotten at a few places...

jezter6 said:

At least there's Guiness and Smithwicks. It could be worse.

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yeah, it could be...I might have actually had to drink a smithwicks

The thing that gets me about this whole thing btw is that we are talking about 8 taps...8 not "tons." I've played the game with rattling off random beer (nothing rare) in these situations and it's always a waste of time.

Just show me a daym list if you can't remember 8 taps.

Yeah, I would consider 25 taps and up, "tons"... And those are beer-bars that always have a list at the table or have them on a board somewhere anyway.

How can't you remember 8 taps?!

I remember when all kinds of beer meant Miller AND Bud.

HA! I had an almost identical situation not long ago. You get this little voice in the back of your head that keeps saying, "look, you min wage ******, don't f*ck with me...I drink beer in my sleep that you can't even pronounce, so just tell me what the f*ck you have on tap and stop playing these imbecile games!"

Same thing happened with me. The dude didn't even know what an IPA is (when I asked him, he cocked his head to the side like a stupid puppy and muttered something about Stella ) I'd have no ill will towards people like this if they would just stop with the "I guarantee you we have anything you're looking for, just name it" game. It's just such a ****** move.

Funny last night went with a few friends to this place for happy hour and Domestic Drafts were $2. Can you believe the restaurant didn't know Sam Adams was a domestic beer?? You'd think they would have figured that one when the invoice came from Mass.?!?!

I had a $3 Long Island, then another one, then another... Then 18 wings... Dragging a** today.

Yeah...this is something that I seem to encounter quite a bit in this area, especially at the taverns that have less than 10 handles.


Let's not even get into the local that prides itself on their great beer selection (which actually is very good) then hires high school kids for the waitstaff and provides zero beer/wine training. Porter...what's that, a steak?

chillHayze said:

Funny last night went with a few friends to this place for happy hour and Domestic Drafts were $2. Can you believe the restaurant didn't know Sam Adams was a domestic beer?? You'd think they would have figured that one when the invoice came from Mass.?!?!

I had a $3 Long Island, then another one, then another... Then 18 wings... Dragging a** today.

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Sadly that happens all the time. What 'domestic' in this case means is really 'Domestic non-premium.' Sam Adams is typically sold under the 'Premium' label because it's not BMC.

The worst thing is when Yuengling is sold as 'Premium' beer one state away from where the crap is made. I mean, $4 for a Yueng pint is just f-ing crazy.

Hey, I'm pissed as hell that every liquor store in my area now carries the exact same Sam Adams / Leiny's / Goose Island selection, a bunch of Polish and Italian lagers, and pretty much nothing else.

Stone's Arrogant Bastard is a great beer, however, I can rattle off scores of bars where I would NOT order that particular beer. For someone to ask what beer you would like without telling me what they have is just bad business.

Do you guys just enjoy giving the waitstaff a hard time ? This is like the 3-4 thread like this I've read here.

If I were you, if they said they have everything just name it, then I'd just go ahead and order whatever it was I wanted. When they came back in a few minutes and said "Sorry we don't have that" then I'd just order something else... After a few trips to the bar and back they'll get the idea to come back with a list of what they have on their own.

By the way, Ruby Tuesday's has a small but decent selection of microbrews on tap these days. The last time I was there I sampled every beer they had on tap that did not have "Sam Adams" in the name. Six different beers total. There was an orange corriander flavored whit that I really enjoyed and two IPAs that I would probably drink again.

Best of all, most of them are listed on the menu so you'll only need to ask about the seasonals on tap. Since there are only a couple, its unlikely that they'll tell you "we have everything - just name it"

Typically, when I'm waiting to be seated, I walk by the bad to look at what they have on tap, but I find that most places that I frequent know what they have anyway.

If someone told me they had "tons" and actually had that lineup, I think I'd laugh at him.

I'll just tell them anything from a hand pump that is not served at <5°C. (That rules out Greene King IPA)
If they don't know what I mean or they have nothing I'll ask for a Newcastle Brown.
If they don't have that I'll have water, from the tap with ice and lemon.

Mutilated1 said:

Do you guys just enjoy giving the waitstaff a hard time ? This is like the 3-4 thread like this I've read here.

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If the waiter is cool, no. But if the waiter is a smug ****** who likes playing "guess the lineup" like mine was, then yeah...if he's gonna give me a hard time, I'm gonna give it right back.

If I were you, if they said they have everything just name it, then I'd just go ahead and order whatever it was I wanted. When they came back in a few minutes and said "Sorry we don't have that" then I'd just order something else... After a few trips to the bar and back they'll get the idea to come back with a list of what they have on their own.

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Which is what I did. "Do you have any IPA's"? Pretty straightforward.

By the way, Ruby Tuesday's has a small but decent selection of microbrews on tap these days. The last time I was there I sampled every beer they had on tap that did not have "Sam Adams" in the name. Six different beers total. There was an orange corriander flavored whit that I really enjoyed and two IPAs that I would probably drink again.

Best of all, most of them are listed on the menu so you'll only need to ask about the seasonals on tap. Since there are only a couple, its unlikely that they'll tell you "we have everything - just name it"

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That's the way you do it. What you don't do is have a meager selection of mediocre beer, then play games with your customers, even after they've asked you specifically, more than once, not to. My wife was a waitress for a long time, and I have nothing but respect for most of them if they do a half-decent job (you really have to screw me to get anything less than 20%). But my experience in Farmville was an example of a waiter that didn't respect the customer enough to either tell me what they had or admit that he didn't know them all by heart.

Mutilated1 said:

Do you guys just enjoy giving the waitstaff a hard time ? This is like the 3-4 thread like this I've read here.

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The whole point is to save everyone involved a hard time. Tell me what ya got and we don't have to beat around the bush. The same response when you ask about other items on the menu would be equally frustrating unless the place has an exhaustive selection or you want the most common examples.

Using tons to describe a numerical quantity of something instead of mass is a pet peeve of mine.

It would be unacceptable to not be offerd a food menu and then be asked what it is that you want to eat, would it not?

That's pretty typical unless you go into a taphouse. They'll have 6-8 taps and all but 1, maybe 2 are BMC swill.

I posted about a similar experience a couple months back, but I'm far too lazy to go find it and post a link

I had a similar experience recently. I went to a bar/restaurant and when i asked about their beer selection the waiter pointed to the row of bottles on display over the bar that was about 40 feet away and said "we have all of those"

Great, now just let me pull out my handy binoculars......