BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
In the heart of northeastern Baltimore’s revived Govans district, FULL TILT BREWING inhabits a pale blue-bricked, garage-doored shop. Local homebrewers Nick Fertig and Dan Baumiller joined forces in 2013 to open this friendly neighborhood pub, combining ‘traditional and modern ingredients’ for a solid lineup of mostly one-off brews in its backspaced brew room.
Full Tilt’s white slate-topped bar extends towards the rear with its 20 stools creating an elongated corridor with centralized draught taps, assorted bottled wines, cocktails and spirits. An unassumingly charming tavern (with multiple TV’s for sports addicts), a few frontal community tables plus several black and orange right side seats consume the interior. The pipe-exposed black ceiling houses stringed Edison lights and a front patio and upstairs mezzanine provide additional seating.
Despite having only a modest-sized barroom, its massive stainless steel brewtanks stretch towards the backroom ceiling, allowing for expanded brewing capacity in the future.
Alongside a few left side tables were two shuffleboard games and a brilliant wall-painted Full Tilt insignia.
Besides the typical stylistic fare done right, there were also a few highly approachable sour ales. My wife and I consumed nine sundry brews on a brisk December at noon while Argentina bested France for the World Cup.
Snappy lemon prickle teased light lager, Royale With Cheese, retaining mild herbal hop licks and barnyard-dried graininess.
Spritzy lemon fizz crackled for tartly banana bruised hefeweizen, Go Bananas, leaving herbal-snipped clove and coriander spicing on its poppy seeded lemon banana breading.
Juniper-licked lemony orange bittering softy sashayed thru lacquered pine contrasting salted caramel for moderate-bodied Beer Maria: Blonde Ale.
Orange candied spicing perked up Hops The Cat, a Citra-Mosaic-Sauvin-hopped India Pale Ale with dank pine resin and grassy floral herbage.
Soft-toned milk chocolate creaminess and light vanilla sugaring captivated High’s: Cookies & Cream, a nifty chocolate chip cookie confection.
Fudgy cookie dough enriched High’s: Mad Cow Fudge, a chocolate brownie ice cream alternative with nutty sugared coffee reminder.
There were also three Dan’s Jams sours available on our wintry perusal.
Murky rogue-rubied ‘pistachio blackberry ice cream sour,’ Jamba Jams, juxtaposed peachy blackberry tartness and distant pomegranate-cranberry bittering with cake-battered vanilla sugaring sans pistachio influence.
Gummy Bear fruit punch, Cannonball City, combined candied orange, tangerine and clementine tartness with tertiary cherry-pineapple tanginess in a vanilla-pinched lactose setting.
Candied peach souring and tart lemonade sugaring guided Life’s A Peach Ring, a lactose fruited sour with slight apricot-nectarine sweetness plus Gummy Bear powdering.