Six Long Months I Spent In Dublin
We all know plenty of people in the middle of America who have gone to Ireland for a semester or some other period of time I don’t know the term for.
I meet such people all the time. It has an impact on them - usually an unsettling one. What do you think it would do to you upon your return to the US?
Elliot Nelson went to Dublin, spent 6 months there as a student, fell in love with all the beer there - yes, all, even Smithwick’s - and so at the age of 25, just 3 years ago, he opened a pub in America. An Irish pub of course.
McNellie’s is in Tulsa in Oklahoma and has 300 beers available for your, well drinking. 60 of those beers are on tap including of course their top-selling beer, Guinness - which according to their Guinness distributor makes McNellie’s the biggest seller of Guinness in all of Oklahoma.
I must confess if I was a beer distributor for a big name foreign brand I’d tell all my outlets that they’re very special in some statistical way. You are the biggest selling three story establishment in a twelve state radius, so you are.
But anyway can you guess what McNellie’s 2nd biggest selling beer is? It’s Kansas City’s own Boulevard Wheat no less.
The No. 2 beer here is Boulevard Wheat, brewed in Kansas City, which Nelson said is seen locally as a big regional beer. Among the local beers on tap is Choc, an unfiltered wheat beer named for the Choctaw American Indians who originally made it, which is in the top 30 beers at McNellie’s.
“We sell more beer than anyone in the state, so the Top 30 is still pretty good,” Nelson said.
He added that this year he will open a restaurant in downtown Tulsa called El Guapo’s. which is named after the villain in the 1986 film “Three Amigos”, and a McNellie’s pub in Oklahoma City.
“Ultimately, my dream would be to open up an uber-McNellie’s in Chicago with 1,000 beers available,” Nelson added. “But that is some way off yet.”
Read the full story over here
See Also:
• History of a Pub, an Irish Pub
• Open an Irish Pub
• The Closing of Irish Pubs in Kansas City
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
They have good taste in Tulsa. Boulevard Wheat is the mutt’s marbles - My favourite thing about Kansas.
You rate it higher than Boulevard Pale Ale then, Primal?
I would, Eolaí. But perhaps I’m biased having treated my liver to copious quantities of wheat beer* during my years in Germany. Boulevard Wheat, probably as it’s unfiltered, came closest to what I, I mean, what my liver, was used to.
*Mainly Frankenthaler Brauhaus Hefeweizen