TOLEDO, OHIO
In an old red brick building off Route 79 near industrial port of Toledo lies high-ceilinged multi-purpose venue MAUMEE BAY BREWING, visited August ‘06. Its large spread includes banquet facilities, several dining areas, and a commodious bar with immense liquor-stored antique-mirrored mantle. Wood cabinets with beer bottles and cans take up open spaces along stairwells and backrooms while kitchen serves sandwiches, pizza, burgers, and chicken.
On tap, sucked up light dry-bodied maize-soured wheat-chaffed malt-sweetened Buckeye Beer (bottled versions available), wheat-cracked corn-sugared grapefruit-peach-dabbed Glass City Pale Ale, crystal-malted grassy-hopped maize-backed Fallen Timbers Red Ale, blandly acetous fig-nut conflux Kolsch, and dry smoke-hopped chocolate-malted butterscotch-soured hazelnut-tinged Nut Brown Ale.
Better selections were sweet coriander-spiced, orange peel-dried, tart-candied, lemon pith-embittered Belgian Wit, butternut-swayed, barleywine-snipped, Vienna malt-roasted Dark Lager, and soft-tongued, Centennial-hopped, orange-fruited, cask-conditioned IPA (a strangely oxidized dandy that never allows acidity to ruin resounding pine-needled floral-dried peach-grapefruit bittering).