When I first moved to Glendale from Oregon, it may as well have been a dry city for all the good beer you could find. Red Carpet Liquors held down the fort (and still does) but if you wanted to go and say, watch the Blazers against the Lakers with a great craft beer, you had to head somewhere else.

Now we have two breweries that are all but in Glendale, a Whole Foods with a great bottle and can selection and now we have the Glendale Tap. Located near the iconic Dinah’s Chicken on San Fernando Road near Los Feliz Boulevard, the GT is reminiscent of Tony’s Darts Away. It has that dressed-up former dive bar style.

A thin bar with plenty of legroom looks at the impressive tap choices. In my opening night visit, they had two taps for Cismontane, three for Deschutes, three more for Dogfish Head and the list went on and on. The one clunker (and I sat right in front of it) was Miller High Life. Possibly ironic? Either way, I would rather have seen Eagle Rock or El Segundo’s handles instead.

There are two TVs but the room is dominated by the pool tables and the beer antiques on the walls. Old style beer cans and signage is everywhere you look, giving a beer museum quality to the place. The barkeep on duty was attentive and helpful in finding beers for each person that came in which gave the bar a pleasing air of non-snobbiness.

I am a big proponent of every community having a local where the beer geeks (and non beer geeks) can frequent and now Glendale has one.

The Beer of the Week is Tap It Brewing’s IPA. It was the surprise (to me) winner of the IPA gold medal which is one of the most competitive style categories at the Great American Beer Festival. I am not a fan of this one but it obviously swayed the judges. Now you can judge for yourself. Let me know if you think it is worthy of gold.

Your Homework this week is to NOT buy craft beer. Let me explain, each year the holiday ales come sooner and sooner. I have seen Full Sail Wassail and Deschutes Jubelale on shelves before Halloween. Personally, I celebrate my holidays in order. And the only way these beers (as excellent as they may be) will return to their natural time is if people start speaking with their wallets and buy them after Thanksgiving. So until then, pick up an alt-bier or catch up on the pumpkin beers from last week’s post.

Find more of Sean Inman’s writing on his blog, Beer Search Party.