Toppling Goliath Brewing Co. | Decorah, IA
Beer Trip: Toppling Goliath Brewing Co. in Decorah, Iowa
Any beer lover in the Midwest is familiar with Toppling Goliath Brewing Company and all of the accolades it has won over the years. This place has been on a short bucket list of breweries for us to hit up, and we finally did! Our only regrets are that we didn’t do a tour and that the cold weather hindered us from being able to experience the seemingly awesome outdoor space.
The Brewery
Chris and Sue the T-Rex!
As you might imagine, Toppling Goliath occupies a huge facility to meet its demand and offers plenty of parking out front. Unfortunately for us, we visited during the winter months and their outdoor space wasn’t open - but you could easily visualize the large, grassy area being covered with tables and their covered canopy being a main hangout during the warmer weather.
The indoor space feels gigantic featuring ceilings close to 30 foot tall, a large staircase occupying the middle of the room leading to the reservable second floor, and a huge, stone fireplace to warm the cozy space. They have large taxidermy deer and elk on the walls that are almost dwarfed by the size of everything around them. The room features a bar at one end and tables, chairs, and couches spread about the remaining space - but our favorite feature is the 6-foot tall T-Rex made entirely out of Legos sitting at the base of the stairs!
Huge space decorated beautifully for the holidays!
Large stone fireplace featuring taxidermy
The Beer
In our opinion, Toppling Goliath has the best can graphics of all breweries, rivaled only by Clown Shoes. Their stuff is easy to find at the liquor store (meaning that it seems to always find its way into our fridge at home). With this said, we were very familiar with all of their mainstream beer and were excited to see what limited-release options they might have onsite. They maintain a whopping 30 different beers on tap at any given time, with 5 of them being flagships, another 5 seasonals, and the remaining being limited releases. With IPAs being their bread and butter, it made sense that this style made up half their selection while the other half included sours, blondes, wheats, and a pilsner (among others). They also had a lineup of high-ABV barrel-aged stouts that were only available for purchase in 4-oz pours.
The Pseudo Sue, a pale ale, is their most popular beer with just a faint bitterness to go with a hazy citrus taste. The staff informed us during this visit that this beer was named after Sue, the most complete T-Rex fossil ever found. Toppling Goliath actually has a partnership with the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History where Sue (the fossil) is on display with the museum, getting proceeds from the beer in exchange for the brewery using the name and dinosaur graphics. Our favorite beer of this visit was a spinoff to the Pseudo Sue called the Nectaron Dry Hop Pseudo Sue, offering a more noticeable citrus flavor and a dry, lingering finish.
Food, Merch, & More
The place almost has more of a restaurant feel to it than a brewery, with its sit-down service and vast food menu featuring salads, burgers, sandwiches, and pizzas. Based on the number of locals enjoying a meal, Toppling Goliath must be one of the better spots in town to grab a bite. We got the chicken bacon ranch wrap and would highly recommend this to anyone! In addition to great beer, they also have a full cocktail menu and a robust selection of seltzers.
The merchandise section is very robust, occupying an entire side of the space with basic items like shirts, hats, and glassware, as well as more unique offerings like footballs, lunch boxes, and Christmas ornaments. Of course, you can also get their beer to-go, which seemed to be a holiday gift trend for patrons.
