I am always very hesitant about brewery chains. Generally, they don’t experiment and make adequate beer that is for the masses. I found that McMenamins Six Arms was just such a place.

The McManamins group apparently has brew pubs, restaurants, wineries, hotels and even entertainment complexes across Washington and Oregon. Good for them, but bad for the beer.

I did the standard flight here which started with a beer called Ruby. This is a raspberry ale that some how comes out tasting a bit more like grapefruit than it does raspberries. The nose is sickeningly sweet, like beer candy, which makes it hard to drink. Not sure that this beer is for the serious beer drinker.

Hammerhead Pale Ale has no nose and not much taste up front. It finishes bitter, but not in a good way– it is like a delayed reaction.

Hill Top IPA smells like vanilla and caramel to me, but my husband got definite notes of vinegar. Despite the sweet nose, the beer has very little sweet taste except right at the beginning where you get some caramel. The beer finishes way too bitter and overall leads to the beer appearing to be two beers in one. It is definitely not well balanced.

Thundercone IPA also didn’t have much nose. It was strongly bitter and had a difficult to describe gagging taste at the end. There were also notes of chlorine in this beer.

I would suggest that these brewers stick with the stouts and porters and these were the best beers of the lot.  The Terminator Stout had a good coffee nose and was slightly sweet in taste. The sweetness did balance well with the coffee flavors making a very drinkable beer.

Paeters Porter was very much like the stout just a bit more smooth on the mouthfeel. It appeared to have been served on nitro but our server didn’t express that it was.

So what do I say about this place? I wouldn’t go back for the beers when there are some many good breweries in the city. However, I would be interested to visit some of their other locations. They recently purchased an old school which now hosts a bowling alley and movie theatre. This might make an interesting trip.