Best tap room in Northampton and the selection of brews is high quality

Have eat and drank here many times, most recently May ’11. Long and thin venue with the bar taking up a good chunk of the left hand side as you enter, a little English pub feel to the set up. Have been here both for lunch and the evening and has been pretty packed on both occasions. Younger crowd in the evening, more couples and family groups during lunch as you’d probably expect. Decent selection of 30 + on tap, largely east coast stuff but good variety in styles. The one time we eat here the food was really good. The server made a mistake with one of the mains but left us the wrong main to share and didn’t charge for the correct one. That’s how to redeem a mistake and earned him a bigger tip than if he’d done his job properly - don’t ya love tipping culture in the US ! Well worth a visit.

I can’t get excited to go to this place. And after visiting the Moan and Dove for the first time, I’m not sure I’m going to come back. I think the list selection is sloppy and not well thought out. The staff have always been curt and crabby. This feels mostly like a student bar that happens to have some craft-oriented beers on the menu.

Great local place with a ton of beer on tap. If you go in the off hours like I did the place is rather empty and the service is great. Nothing too rare to be found here but they definitely have their fair share of local favourites. Didn’t try the food but I’ve heard that it is pretty good. Prices are average to high, but not too bad.

A "western-mass" mecca for beer on tap and usually great food. The GIANT blackboard listing all the tap and bottled beers commands your attention in multi-colored, creative fonts. The artwork on the walls changes periodically but is next to enhance your experience. The small specials board enhances the delightful menu and with few exceptions, the food has been the perfect compliment to everything. Service is sometimes with an attitude, its a tough pace to work. But when you have a favorite beer with your favorite friends, munching on a favorite food...all is good with the world. Ain’t that the dirty truth?

The GOOD: 40 beers on tap, many of which, other places just do not have. It is on Main Street Northampton, a cool town. The BAD: Everybody who lives in Western MA, knows about the place. So, it gets packed. It’s not easy to get a beer with a ton of people in the place. AND when it’s real busy... servers get moody. If you go on a slow night, it would be a much better time. Try a week day, never a weekend during the summer months. I WILL go back, just on what they have on tap alone.

Great selection of beers on tap and by the bottle. High quality craft beers with good food. A great place in Western Mass.

We were not allowed in. My friend had a cup of water that he was carrying and was politely asked to get rid of, and did, and then the manager told us we weren’t welcome there. After about 15 seconds of yelling (no yelling before we were told this, I’m not some crazy person) the cops were there taking my info and the Manager told us we could go in. My friend did and said he was getting stared down by the bartender and the customers, Who would feel welcome there? So we left. I kept this very brief if you would like to hear the full story just email me electronmaster@gmail.com, It’s not ridiculous on my part, they were clearly i the wrong otherwise why would they invite us back in? I have been beer tasting since way before I was supposed to drink and have to say you should avoid this place, go to the Moan n Dove in Amherst instead.

My son’s teacher suggested we take him to the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst...y’know, the guy that wrote "The Very Hungry Caterpillar?" I realized that is a spectacular idea because I can work in a lunch trip with the family to one of the area’s solid beer bars. The winner is The Dirty Truth. It’s an extremely clean place with a wicked long bar and a wall full of about 40 taps. Pretty chill scene, slightly upscale but some hipster doofus mixed in. A couple of booths in the back, raised tables with barstools throughout. Our server (Benjamin I think?) was excellent. Our almost 5-year-old decided on fried chicken and a pancake and when it came out Benjamin said, "hey, we figured it might still be too hot for the little guy to eat, so here’s a fruit salad in the meantime." Well, how cool is that? He knew his beer pretty well and helped out with one I hadn’t come across before (Bear Republic End 08). All the staff we came across were mellow, helpful and attentive. The food was good for brunch; the Beautiful Bride had a breakfast vegi burrito which was good...my andouille & mussels omelette was solid (may work a little closer to the jambalaya feel with shrimp or crawfish if you ask me...I generally don’t like to mess with that stuff unless I’m pulling mussels from the shell, as Squeeze would vouch). Jr.’s fried chicken looked and tasted pretty legit. As mentioned, about 40 taps. They’re not wasting a single one, either. Quite a few from Stone, Bear Republic...hell, still Founders Breakfast (it wasn’t playing too badly, either). The Beautiful Bride had a Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen...a clean, sessionable classic. Nice bottles, too...including KBS. At $14 a pop for KBS it falls right around the 2x restaurant mark-up. Ok, maybe a C-hair above but who’s counting. Brunch entrees were between $9-11 or so. Not dirt-cheap but not ridiculous. Pints ran around $6 for the most part. Ditto. Not pricey, but not bargain-basement, either. This place is definitely worth a stop-in if you’re in the area, and is deserving of the praise I’ve seen. Something tells me that Jr. will want to go back to the museum again in a couple of months. Will be interested in the true lunch/dinner fare the next visit.

Pretty much one of the premier beer bars in the area that everyone raves about. The selection is big and the staff can make suggestions for anyone who is to intimidated by the menu. Food selection is simple but very good. The only detractors is the price and the fact that everyone knows about the place so it can get crowded and noisy