Warped Wing Barrel Room and Smokery

Warped Wing Barrel Room and Smokery, smoked meat and barrel aged beer; these are perhaps the two things I associate most with the season of fall. When I saw that The Warped Wing Barrel Room and Smokery was celebrating their 1 year anniversary this weekend, I couldn’t think of any better way to bring in the season.

For years now, ever since their grand opening, Warped Wing has been Dayton’s beer giant. Their dedication to quality control and branding has been tough for anybody in the state to compete with, let alone the Miami Valley. But something happened a couple years ago when they brought in a guy named Erin O’Neill; Warped Wing became a legitimate foodie destination.

The weather was perfect this weekend, calling for windows down so I smelled the Smokery from down the block, long before I pulled into the parking lot. Walking in the door has a nostalgic feeling to it. Art paying homage to their original location and barrel staves from their barrel aged program line the walls, but I had no time to gander, the smells had me salivating and ready to get straight to business.

I went to the bar and ordered just about every special anniversary offering they had. A flight of the new small batch smoked beers, a flight of tacos, some gumbo and a few sides. The traditional birria tacos were the star of the show. If you’ve never had a traditional birria taco before let me be the first to tell you, you are missing out. Think taco, meets grilled cheese, meets a French dip… but with slow cooked goat meat. These taco shells are first dipped in the au jus from the goat, then loaded with meat and cheese, then cooked on a flat top so that the cheese melts and the shell crisps up. The smell was intoxicating, the flavor was bold and as a result these G.O.A.T. Tacos live up to their name, the greatest of all time.

I did the hatch chile and fish taco as well and I would describe them as very authentic. The fish had the perfect amount of seasoning and char to compliment the sweetness of the mango papaya salsa. The hatch Chile pork had a great verde and hatch Chile combo going on, and I also associate hatch chiles with fall so that was a bonus for me.

Fall is also soup season as they say so I would be remiss if I did not order the gumbo. This is a recipe you can tell Erin has been working on for some time and honestly, it tastes like bourbon street at your feet until the break of dawn. Awesome job nailing this NOLA classic. Perfect brown coloring from a proper rue and you don’t get shorted on the ingredients. White fish, alligator, andouille sausage and shrimp all came together great in this well balanced dish.

You wanna know about the beer? Fine, I’ll tell you. Because I actually haven’t had an experience like this with their beer yet. Something really cool happened when Warped Wing opened up their new location and I think some people might have missed it. They got a small pilot system for interesting trial runs that they haven’t been able to do in the past. We are talking about a brewery that opened originally with nothing smaller than 30 barrel batches of beer (that’s about 10,000 cans) so traditionally they have had to stick to cores with occasional seasonals. Now, they can drop 5 new beers in one day and I’m all the way here for it.

The strawberry watermelon goes was as expected. Sweet, sour and salty. The sticklealt was true to the altbier style, clean and crisp. The Devil’s Candy smoked gose was really interesting. Cherry added a depth and sweetness that went really well with the smoke and the tangerine gave it a little citrus burst, then you still have that sour and salty taste so definitely a lot going on with this one. The s’mores stout was exactly like I left it last year and every year I remember before that, again I think these guys might have written the book on quality control.

The star of the show though for me was by far the Rauchtoberfest Boro Rauchbier. This beer actually gets its Smokey flavor by using malted barley dried over an open flame. In terms of complimenting the food Erin is busting out at this Smokery, I don’t think you could find or create a better beer. I considered getting a growler of it to take home, but ended up taking a couple bottles of one of their classics from the vault, the Grape Must, which I’ll be cracking on thanksgiving.

Five stars to the team at Warped Wing Barrel Room and Smokery. The beer, the food and the ambiance were all not only great, but incredibly unique as well. I’m excited to see what they come up with next.