The Haven We’re Cravin’?: An Examination of Oberlin’s Hottest Pub

by Sebastian Cruz, Staff Writer

I’m starting to get really sick of drinking Miller Highlife. Its sumptuous, manufactured taste and base notes of weight gain have been getting me down something fierce. Twirling this swill ‘round my cheeks in my Woodland pod, lights for sundown on and ready. Drinking cheap beer is time-honored, good for a night in and feeling absolutely miserable about yourself, or everything else if you’re willing to be ambitious. $22.50 for a thirty-pack at Walmart, an old haven of sorts, a golden land of opportunity that we must now lay to rest for good, for there be another option. 

“Egad,” one may exclaim, “the Feve is the best—nay, the only!—drinking hole in the city. Now there is a new challenger, bespoke in design and not so humble in epithet, sitting right across from the famèd bar + restaurant. It calls itself ‘Haven.’ Laugh! Laugh and sneer at the hubris!...”

…so went my internal monologue after discovering Haven Brewing parked on Main St. like no big deal. Its slick, not-really-trendy packaging gave me significant pause. Craft beers with house-made food to boot, an experience to really be shared among the populace, student and townie alike. Are the menu items reasonably priced? Does that matter at this point? The Feve is a particular niche of half-bar, half-eatery, full-hangout joint for the booze-thirsty and socially-enflamed of this college town. What’s Haven to be if not redundant, and, speaking purely aesthetically, uncool?

Among our compatriots there is the fight for third spaces and yes, the destruction of communal spaces in real time is nothing less than abominable, but can a business alleviate that? Haven Brewing is makes some kind of concession toward that; emblazoned in default Google Docs-esque font:

“Drink. Eat. Connect.”

Which, in absolute fairness, everyone seems to be engaging in. Actually, upon my second visit yesterday (at time of writing), I encountered a flourishing 6pm crowd, teeming with old-timers, faculty, students, my adviser and his husband, and a string trio that appeared from, seemingly, thin air, right beside where my friends and I were sitting. 

“If you build a bridge, they will cross,” or however that adage goes. Its success as a place where people go to chill the hell out sort of stops at the water’s edge for the pure fact that people will go literally anywhere to chill the hell out nowadays. When it comes to their mettle as a bar and eatery, well, I’ve tested their flatbreads (unremarkable), pizzas (appetizing), and dips (baffling), so my recommendation depends on your tolerance for bullshit. My tolerance is particularly high, which is far from a good thing most of the time, so if you’re feeling flighty and fancy, get that damn Ugly Pretzel, yes that’s really what it’s called.

How do they compare to Miller? Does their semi-rotating cast of corkers hit the spot? They wouldn’t be a brewery without ‘dose brews, huh?

Perhaps underwhelmingly, their stuff is pretty good. Their flights are priced reasonably, four small glasses, two bucks a pop. The descriptions of the drinks won’t give you many clues and neither will the names, which is why I must emphasize it’s like pulling teeth to say that the “Winooski Bae” is one of the best lagers I’ve had stateside in recent memory. Also a fan of their Nocturnal Stout and their hilarious Carbon Brewtral, and my companions have expressed positivity related to their Beryl Sea and Liefenschtomper. 

In a better-written and better-explored review in, well, the Oberlin Review, Sasha O’Malley paints the picture of a student base teeming for a good place to get a good drink with good friends, so Haven is nothing if not just another one of those. There’s hardly a way to quantify places such as Haven; the Feve is just its shadow self, bereft of the local fare and flair of Haven’s drink selection, but cooler and darker, and also it has Two-Dollar Tuesdays. 

The value of either establishment is right there on the tin: it exists and you can go there, so long as you have at least ten dollars to spend, an open stomach and at least one person whose company is permissible. Failing that, drink Miller in your pod and be just as happy. I know I can.