Hear me now and believe me later: Mr. Dunderbak’s is on a mission to bring authentically brewed German beer to every thirsty mouth. And on Friday night, battling the frigid cold, I was very thirsty.
The beloved Tampa restaurant’s brewery, Dunderbräu, had a huge tap list on display in the biergarten for Tampa Bay Beer Week. This celebratory invasion attracted a great-looking crowd — with every dining hall table fully occupied — but I was lucky enough to snag a spot at the bar.
Oh, goodness, the bar…
I sat down with a Dunderbräu beer in mind, but the guy next to me was looking up at the options in kind of a disoriented awe. He looked like me in any bar at any time — unsure, overwhelmed and dying for a drink.
“There’s 56 on tap,” I told him jokingly (but, seriously, there were, and even more in bottles).
The man’s eyes grew wide. His name was Jean, and he wasn’t even a beer person to begin with. However, he really wanted to try the place his buddies couldn’t stop talking about. So we sat at the bar, both staring at the house-brewed offerings.
I landed on Ned’s Red, a sharp, fruity sour with a beautiful cherry-brown hue.
“What’s it taste like?” asked Jean. All I could do was nod my head and offer him a sip.
Jean got a Ned’s.
“I would never have gotten something like this,” Jean said in between sips. “I didn’t know beer could taste like this.”
I sympathized with him entirely. I just turned 21, and my exposure to beer (before TBBW) was pretty lean, which left me dissatisfied with the idea of getting into the popular pastime.
Jean’s sympathy resonated, and he told me he came to Tampa from a small town in Pasco County. I was delighted to be sitting next to a former neighbor, as Pasco is also where I reside, whose deep belly laugh reminded me of home. Like mine, his beer experience was framed by six-packs of Bud and Corona — and the dark bottles our dads kept in the fridge.
“This place was made for people like him,” said our bartender, Aron. “Dunderbräu brews so many beers from so many styles for people who haven’t experienced foreign flavors before.”
On top of the welcoming atmosphere, Dunderbak’s and Dunderbräu earned a new regular in Jean with a friendly staff willing to take their time walking patrons through beer after beer after beer.
It’s all about finding the brewski perfect for you, I believe, and what better time to get neck deep in suds than TBBW? The weeklong festivities unfortunately come to an end Sunday. But Dunderbak’s — the OG European and craft beer bar in Cigar City — features that huge tap list for the remainder of TBBW’s run.
Prost!
This article appears in Mar 8-15, 2018.
