May 11, 2012
The brewer at Olde Main was nice enough to come in on a Saturday at 11am to give a private tour to our group of 10 people. The food was your typical brewpub fare. There were a couple good beers and the rest were average.

December 9, 2011
Nice ambiance, and service was pretty good, even when it got busy. Food was average, and the beer was disappointing. I wasn’t paying, so not sure what prices were like, but I’ve heard you can get some great drink deals here. Overall, I’ll certainly give them another shot, but the beer holds their score back.

October 9, 2011
Decent brewpub vibe but nothing spectacular. Food was okay - had a sandwich. Beers were okay at best.

August 15, 2011
Based on very rushed acquaintance, I’m giving Olde Main a pretty good score because (for a brewpub in a college town) it is doing so many things right. Good range of beers, decent if not stunning flavors/savors, enjoyable menu, hot food, good service. The OM crew has done a seriously GOOD job of set-up, marketing and merchandizing. The best of the three craft brews I tasted was the Off KILT Scotch Ale...wish I could have spent more time sampling. There’s always another trip...

January 23, 2011
I would never recommend this place to anyone. The majority of the beer here is way below average with their stout being decent, their pale lager being average and their chocolate porter being fantastic. The rest of their beers are awful and not worth trying. The waiter said the sampler was the best six dollars we could spend, he was very wrong. The food was pitiful. We ordered two appetizers, jalapeno cheese bread and cheese fries, which were $8 each. The cheese bread was four slices of bread with pickled jalapenos and a square slice of cheese (like you use for a grilled cheese) melted over it that doesn’t fit the entire surface of the bread. The cheese fries were soggy Ortega fries with nacho cheese and bacon bits. The waiter was not attentative either and most of the patrons were dressed as if they were at a special restaurant. On a positive note, the root beer was good. I will never go here again and I would not recommend anyone else go either.

January 6, 2011
This joint is a pretty standard brew-pub. Friends have kept me from ordering food every time I’ve been in explaining that it’s good enough, but maybe not worth the price. I left the Food as n/a and the Value score is just for the beer. One thing about Olde Main is that while their bottles are admittedly quite poor, and their standard tap selections range from acceptable to absolutely undrinkable. The brewpub is something else entirely. In spite this breweries problems stemming from what seems to be the product of hurried sloppy production of their main line of beers, the specialties at the brewpub are at very least creative and interesting. At best the brewpub only beers are very good, I have had a handful of beers I genuinely enjoyed that are only available at this location, so I find that if I’ve got a few minutes to spare as I’m driving through a pint here is generally worth my time. The happy hour specials are unbeatable.

October 7, 2008 [ Updated March 12, 2011 ]
Visited again recently. The place still stinks like stale beer, more than anywhere I have ever visited. The couple of beers I had newly were decent. Still good prices. Old rating follows. The place smelled like urine when I was there. I assume it was old stale beer. I had a few brews on tap and brought a few bottles home. The beers I tried were decent with no major flaws, but as much as anything, they were boring. Good prices, but maybe I hit happy hour.

July 28, 2008
Stopped by after a visit to my first alma mater on our way out to Utah during the Summer of Beer 08. Interesting ambiance, I can’t tell if it’s trying to be rustic or ritzy, but it works for me, exposed beams and wooden chairs with a really neat bridge crossing over the main dining floor. Oldies music played at lunchtime. The service was prompt and friendly, but she was also the main trainer so I would have expected that. The selection seemed good: six pulls, and a sampler. The beers themselves lacked much hoppiness but all in all they were not as disappointing as many of these guys make them out to be. The food was good. There was some kind of strange Iowa state tax on the beers. Overall, I had a pretty decent time. I have no idea what it would be like at night but it was a great place to stop for lunch before hitting the road again.

July 11, 2008
Olde Main is not the best place to get a beer in Ames. The food is not very good. They have recently began selling their beer in stores . Their beer is not the best.

December 16, 2007
I tried this place when I first moved to Ames hoping to have a place where brewing and people who love brewing would hang out. As it turns out it’s just another place for the college kids to get drunk at a good price. The beers are different each time you drink there, even a few days apart. The service doesn’t like me because I don’t know what I want even though it’s the same selection most of the time and I don’t order fast enough unless I hit the booth right away. Their glassware selection was going downhill fast last I was there, no more nonics available. I don’t eat the food, it is expensive. Overall I don’t visit very often anymore due to being so let down all of the time. I wish the owner would care about the beer as much as the restaurant part, he just opened a 56 tap bar above another college kid bar.