CulturAle Press

Shenandoah Valley Beer Trail: Front Royal Lion of Winter Schwarzbier, Front Royal, Virginia

Date:  May 4, 2019

The Story—  Front Royal is a fine brewery and worth a visit on its own.   The town and surrounding area, however, slide it up to a bucket list status.  Woodward House on Manor Grade,  a 1950s motor hotel turned B&B is a great place to stay and enjoy the town.

Front Royal brews a range of good to excellent beers.  We thought about featuring their oh so successful rye IPA, but those beers aren’t all that hard to brew.   A Schwarzbier, however, is even a challenge for brewers in states that were behind the Iron Curtain — Communism was an anomaly that crushed creativity, but somehow managed to allow some endangered beer species to continue to exist.  The best Schwarzbier — as opposed to Dunkels that you’d find near Munich — almost thrived under the hammer a sickle of East Germany.

The Beer— Full bodied but clean Schwarzbier.  More chocolate than most but without the usual edgey lactose in your face.  Slightly chalky and creamy as it drinks with mild herbal hops that somehow hold the other flavors at bay.  Ellie like it’s balance and cleanliness.

Value — Very Good –  We paid four bucks for a quarter liter.  But it’s an exceptional beer at a more or less average brewpub price.

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.”