Welcoming sign at Pub 27 in Pompeii
The Friendly Fermenter New Beers Resolution NEIPA, Harrisonburg, Va.
Date: October 10 , 2018
The Story— The Friendly Fermenter is a tiny brewery tucked away in a basement level off-the main drag (albeit a small drag) in the exceptionally good beer city of Harrisonburg, Virginia. We entered it with some trepidation– we’ve been to plenty of basement breweries that were indeed bottom dwellers– but this little gem served us a range of good beers and some that were well above “good.” We’re highlighting our (OK, Bob’s) favorite here, but the FF is a nano brewing 60 beers or so a year. You probably won’t find this one, but we’re pretty confident you’ll find beers you like.
Harrisonburg is too small a town to deserve the wealth of brewing treasures– except for the fact that the people of Harrisonburg clearnly know and treasure what they have. Depending on how far you want to draw the circle, a half a dozen or more breweries can fill a weekend, and the city boasts at least two absolutely first class B&Bs that are walking distance from the brew crawl.
We visited the city years ago when a single brew pub struggled to convince locals that good beer didn’t always taste like B-B_ Bud, but today the plethora of brewing cites augments one of the outposts of Capital Ale house multi-taps that occupies the site of the city’s original brew pub.
The Beer–It’s my birthday and I get to make the call by myself today — It’s really dank. Ellie tolerates dank and likes it when it’s a part of something more complex, but I like dank almost as dank as a brewery can do it without running afoul of the law outside Colorado or the Netherlands. This one is rich and very dank. Herbal and leafy hops join with a dry chalk into an inviting bitter. Chewy and rich as it drinks. Ellie thought the oily herbal bitter stomps the smooth gold malt . I say “bigger boots!!”
Value — Good to very good at five bucks for a standard glass. Of course, I’d say that’s a bargain –and much better than going to jail for smoking weed.
All this week we return to the US to highlight some great beers we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night. Look for it in 2019.
Later, we’ll return to HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE 2018– Surprisingly good beer in “bad beer cities.” The best we’ve found in researching our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.) We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.
About these posts: We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year. The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings. Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.
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