CulturAle Press

Shenandoah Valley Beer Trail: Dirt Farm Scott Brown Ale, Bluemont, Virginia.

Date:  May 6, 2019

The Story— Dirt Farm has a well-earned reputation for brewing a range of good beers in a rural setting.   A farm brewery that won’t challenge you with a line up of “farmhouse” beers, it’s part of a trio of breweries almost within sight of each other that can make for a great pub crawl— if only you didn’t have to drive so far back to civilization to sleep.  Get a friend or family member to give you a birthday present of designated driving for a day and catch all three of them.   We reviewed Bear Chase yesterday and we’ll save B Chord in nearby Round Hill for a later series of posts, but today we focus on our original destination in the area: Dirt Farm Brewery.

Dirt Farm is the granddaddy of the farm breweries in the area dating all the way back to 2012 — eons in Virginia beer years.   Three generations of farmers moved to Loudoun County in the 70s and from a relatively modest now farm over 500 acres in and around the brewery.  It has a similar view to Bear Chase although it’s a bit lower in the hill.   It’s a smaller operation than nearby Bear Chase, but has much more of a farm feel to it and echoes of family involvement are more palpable.  It’s still very much a business, but feels a bit less business-like  For all their many similarities, the two breweries present a nice soft contrast    Bear Chase is a bit more sophisticated in its premises and in its beers; Dirt Farm is, well, more Dirtfarmy.  Don’t miss either.

If you follow this blog, you’ll know we present styles that we don’t like more often than styles that we do.   We’re (Hop Pocket) hop heads — you can enrapture us with a decent use of interesting hops that is somewhat short of a world classic.  Getting us to want another brown ale or anything wild takes far more skill.   We brought a crowler of Dirt Farm’s Scott Brown Ale home with us and we were so glad we did.

The Beer—  Chewy and even with toasty brown malt, some biscuit and very soft stone ale fruit and a lingering echo of Hydrox (not Oreo) cookies.   A bit more hops than most and a bit of a roast edge keeps it from being too sweet.

Value — Very Good (close to excellent).  This was an eight buck crowler.  That’s way under market price in most breweries (Dirt Farm, please pay no attention to this man behind the curtain!), and might be a reason to bring home an OK beer.   But this beer is well above OK.  I’m only sorry we didn’t buy a half dozen for the week.  Do not leave this brewery without crowlers of what they don’t have on tap.

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.”