BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Banishing grief from a person’s mind via Homer’s Odyssey, NEPENTHE BREWING COMPANY will cure your ills with a well-respected, ever-evolving lineup of diversified beers. Next to Extra Space Storage, the commodious gray-bricked warehouse pub in the northern Baltimore mill town hamlet of Hampden (near Johns Hopkins University) took over a former sportsbar and opened for biz January 2019.

Alongside fashion boutiques and vintage shops, Nepenthe’s part of the entirely overhauled main drag. A 10-barrel brewhouse with two draught stations servicing sixteen taps, its twenty-seat marble top bar stretches across one side and ten community tables and several leveled tables fill out the plank wood-floored, pipe-exposed, red brick-walled interior.

An open kitchen serves fine pub cuisine. A large blackboard beer list centers the bar and two opposing TV’s provide further entertainment.

I tried one rich stout and a busy IPA variant on my December ’22 stopover, then downed seven more goodies thereafter (reviewed in Beer Index).

Part of an ongoing series, Spontaneous Deviations #2: Red West Coast IPA chameleonically combined an amber-grained red ale with a dry-wooded Cascadian Dark Ale. Its charcoaled Simcoe/Amarillo/Chinook-hopped pining surfaced alongside lightly embittered grapefruit, jammy red grape and sprucy juniper tones above bitter cocoa bean insistence.

Dutch cocoa powdered pistachio and almond roast gains Madagascar vanilla beaning for richly creamed Aphotic Run, an intriguingly mocha-nutted Imperial Stout with tarry hop char and flaked oats spine as well as setback almond biscotti, Amaretto, espresso and cafe latte illusions.