CulturAle Press

Shenandoah Valley Beer Trail: Studio Brew The Ferguson Chocolate Milk Stout, Bristol, at the Beer Museum, Front Royal

Date:  May 3, 2019

The Story—  Front Royal has it’s own brewery now, and it’s a winner. but before you settle in there, take a stroll a few blocks farther down the road (and hook a left) to reach the Virginia Beer Museum.  We’re not sure if this is a tap room that wants to be a museum or a museum that wants to have a really good tap room, but you’ll find plenty to look at and plenty of good beer here.  When the bar is noisy, there are ancillary rooms that are not and you can get you beer from the 20 or so taps and wander around until you’ve seen what you want to see or found an historic setting to settle in with your beer.

Briston is on our bucket list.   It’s a shoe-in for the Brews and Snooze criteria, with a first class historic hotel and a walkable well respected brewery not far away.   It is a haul from any of our central populated areas, though.  You’ll need at least a weekend, and preferably a long one, to do the area justice.

The brewery tap room sports a dozen and a half beers and offers pub grub that includes a range of appetizers, sandwiches and pizzas.

The Beer—Chewy and creamy with lots of dark chocolate and roasts.  Chocolate is full, but not overly cloying, but shows some chocolate cake in the aftertaste.

Value —  Good.  Prices at the Beer Museum are about what you’d pay in an upscale bar.

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.

This week we’re featuring some beers and breweries we’ve found in researching our guide to breweries and inns of the Mid Atlantic, this time on a weekend in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.   Once again we present our standard caveat: only some the beers we describe will be at the brewery if you go there, but they’ll probably have a beer that’s close to the style and if they do one stout well, they’ll probably do others about as well.

 We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,  and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”