Last year, this place, just outside Amherst, MA, came top of a
Beer Advocate poll on the best places to have a beer, and since we're huge fans of the second-placed establishment, Brookline's
Publick House, we thought it necessary to take an overnight trip out to the west of Boston to rate the place for ourselves.
Our first impression was slight bewilderment, partly because the bar is in the boondocks, a couple of miles south of Amherst at a nondescript crossroads, and also because it was so quiet inside, though the crowds arrived later. Our confusion was multiplied several times over when we discovered that, with the exception of a giant barrel of peanuts inside the door, the Moan and Dove doesn't serve any food, extremely unusual in the US, especially for a place that serves such a fine range of beers.
Once we figured out what to do for dinner - there are nearby pizza and sandwich places and you can bring food back to your table at the Moan and Dove - we were better able to focus on their beer menu: a large chalkboard told us what was on tap, and the card menu listed a considerable number of bottled options.
The list of beers on tap was pretty strong, ranging from the easily predicted Guinness to the far more unusual, like a Spezial Rauchbier (I don't recall ever seeing a Rauchbier on tap in the US) and Cantillon's flagship gueuze. The bottle list was also good, although a frustrating number of the bottles were unavailable: they rarely update the printed menu (they've had the same one for several years) and they signal out-of-stock items by writing them on a chalkboard. Since the chalkboard isn't visible from the bar and is pretty cluttered it was no surprise that we tried to order at least five or six items that were not in stock; it wouldn't take much thought or effort to improve that part of their system, which is unimpressive for a place serious about its beer.
Between four of us, we tried eleven beers, and our top-rated items were the aforementioned Cantillon gueuze, Cantillon's Vigneronne (a lambic with muscat grapes, very tart), Loterbol blond (from Brouwerij Duysters, again with a tart finish), and Moinette brune (from Brasserie Dupont, a maltier beer than the other three which garnered high marks).
Overall, I think we felt that while the Moan and Dove was an interesting stop, with some very fine beers, it wasn't up to the exceptionally high standard set by the Publick House, which, to our minds, should be atop more or less any list of places to have a drink (and food!); we would certainly drop back in if a journey took us near Amherst, but we're unlikely to plan another trip just for an evening at the bar.
