I wanted to go to a brewpub to celebrate my 40th birthday, but I wanted to get off the beaten path of Gordon Biersch and Rock Bottom. I love both of those places, but I was looking for something a little different, and somewhere we don’t go too often. I wanted great beer and food, a fun, casual atmosphere, and excellent service. So I picked Franklins!

On Saturday, December 11, we celebrated my birthday at Franklins Restaurant, Brewery and General Store in Hyattsville, Maryland with my family and my sister’s family. I hadn’t been to Franklins since the summer, when we celebrated Father’s Day, so I was looking forward to tasting the winter beer menu. Franklins always has at least 10 house beers on tap, and I ordered the sampler, which included:

• Bombshell Blonde (4%), Franklins lightest offering, an American blonde ale brewed for the local college students.
• Rubber Chicken Red (5%), an American Amber Ale
• Twisted Turtle Pale Ale (6%), an English-style Pale Ale
• Sierra Madre (5.5%), a West Coast-style Pale Ale
• Private IPA (6.5%), a deliciously hoppy IPA
• Stonehenge (4.0%), a classic English-style Brown Ale
• Miami Weiss (5.3%), an American Wheat beer made with orange blossom honey and orange peel
• Pumpkin Pie Stout (4.8%), a nitro Stout that blends pumpkin, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg
• Saison (5.5%), a Belgian-style farmhouse ale
• Golden Opportunity (6.5%), a Belgian-style golden ale

I had the first five beers on the list during my last visit to Franklins, but the second five were new to me, and I savored each one. Both of the Belgian-style brews were excellent. We also loved the Wheat beer, enough so that we filled our growler with Miami Weiss to drink while watching the Caps game at home that night. But my favorite was the Pumpkin Pie Stout, and you can read the story behind this brew on the Franklins Blog.

The general store connected to Franklins once again proved to be an excellent distraction for the kids in our party. While I explored the beer sampler, the kids explored the general store, and they returned to the table with small toys that kept them occupied during the meal.

To cap off the dinner, my sister and brother-in-law gave me a birthday present – a bottle of Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Ale (Fritz and Ken’s Ale, a Stout). More on that beer in a later post!

Franklins 10 Beer Sampler