Craft Brews Brewhouse and Restaurant Party

Left :“24 beers in a case, 24 hours a day. Coincidence? I think not.”
Right : Barley, hops, yeast and other ingredients used in beer brewing

At the end of last year, I received from Craft Brews for their Bloggers/January/Call-it-whatever-you-want party. For those of you who have not heard of Craft Brews, they opened mid December in Mutiara Damansara behind Proton and right next to Tesco & Petronas Station.

CRAFT BREWS is the new restaurant in town and it is anything but your regular beer and grub joint. This unique new outfit introduces the long-awaited brewhouse concept to Malaysia.

The non-halal restaurant comfortably seats 45 people indoors, and an additional 88 at the outdoor terrace for those who prefer to wine and dine al fresco. The extensive menu offers a variety of mouth-watering dishes, all designed to complement your pint of beer.

CRAFT BREWS will be serving four draft and 10 bottled beer selections where two coloured beers from the Singapore-based Reddot Brewhouse will be the restaurant’s signature, premium beers. This coloured duo – the Monster Green Lager and English Ale – will be served fresh on tap.

We were served dinner but I’ll talk more about that later. Then we had a beer tasting session. Apparently I actually know the guy who conducted it, Ben, who I met last Raya at Arai’s. I’m not a beer enthusiast so to speak (I prefer hard liquor myself) but it was interesting. Look at the pic above, the green ones is Monster Green Lager (light and one of my faves) and the reddish one is English Ale (pretty strong). Beer tasting is very similar to wine tasting. Swirl a small amount in a glass to aerate it a bit then look at the colour. Here are a few tips:

• To fully taste the flavour of the beer, you have to sip in some air as you sip in the beer. Try it! it seriously tastes different than just chugging it down.
• Beers that are light in colour are usually more hoppy tasting
• Beers can have other things added in them such as orange peel,or herbs. The green beer above, their famous “Green Monster” is brewed with spirulina (but there’s no yuckky spirulina taste, I can assure you)
• Salty and Sweet stuff compliments certain beers, depending on personal preference. Food in Craft Brews are specially prepared to compliment the beer they are serving

Honey Mustard Ribs, Tex-Mex Ribs, Homemade Potato Wedges & Eggplant “Chips”

I personally like the Honey Mustard Ribs with its sweet and slightly tangy sauce. The Tex-Mex is a bit spicy but nicely marinated in spices. Both ribs are big (in the pic u can see that its almost the diameter of the plate) and tender, fall off the bone. The Potato wedges are big and coated with batter. Very nice. The Eggplant “Chips” were anything but chips. This one had an Asian taste to it. Its like eggplant fried with small shrimp, onion and a bit of chilli.

Left (pic by spinzer) : Pretty beer towers all in a row.
Right : The other bloggers/twitter-ers that were there

Our goodie bag was really unique. Its a container with a Beer pass for 1 complimentary beer (1/2 pint) and ingredients to brew beer. From top left is Coriander, Orange Peel, Barley and Brewing Yeast (which I’m told is totally different from baking yeast). Interesting yes? I’ve yet to try it tho :P Has anyone else who went tried it yet?

Anyway, thank you Craft Brews for a night of food and drinks and great company :)

CRAFT BREWS is located at G3 Podium, Ground Floor, Menara Batu Kawan, No. 1, Jalan PJU 7/6, Mutiara Damansara, 47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor. It is open daily from 12 noon till late and Happy Hours are 5pm-8pm daily. For reservations, please call 03-7722 3000. You can also catch em on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/CraftBrews) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/CraftBrews).

** some pics from joshuaongys (read his post here) and nigelais