Over the past few years, Richmond has become a hot spot for
craft breweries. There seems to be one on just about every corner. There’s one
area in particular near my house called Scott’s Addition where these little places
have popped up like crazy.
Some friends were in town last weekend so we thought it
would be the perfect opportunity to do a little brewery crawl through Scott’s
Addition. All of the places we went were within walking distance of each other
and it ended up being a gorgeous, sunny day!
Since my girlfriend had just run the Richmond Marathon the
previous day, she wanted a burger. I don’t blame her. If I ran 26.2 miles (and
was still alive) I would want to eat ALL OF THE BURGERS. So, we hit up this fun
little place called Boulevard Burgers and Brews which kicked off our day of
drinking perfectly.
One of the things that I am super into right now is hard
cider. It’s the perfect beer alternative for someone who doesn’t like beer.
There is a new cidery that opened recently called Buskey that I’ve been dying
to try out. So, that was our first stop. And let me tell you – they did not
disappoint! They had an awesome selection of ciders ranging from traditional to
crazy flavor infusions like coffee and jalapeno lime. My favorite was the newly
released Pink Lady which was smooth and tart.
Our next stop was another recently opened cidery called Blue Bee. I was familiar with their ciders but this location in Richmond was brand
new. The atmosphere there was very cool with a huge outdoor patio area to hang
out. Unfortunately, their ciders completely disappointed us. None of them were
really very good. My chemist husband said it seemed like they had been
contaminated with Bret (which makes them sour). So, it could have just been a
bad batch. We’ll probably give them one more shot maybe in the spring.
Our last stop of the day was at Isley Brewing Company. This
was a cool place because they really had a wide variety of beers to choose from
like Belgian White, Pale Ale, Brown Ale, Porter and IPA’s. The whole group went
for their Plain Jane Blueberry Belgian White which was a huge hit.
This would be a great place to go with a group of people who have varied tastes in beer. They also do a ton of Trivia Nights – you can’t go wrong!
It was quite a day! I'm hoping we can have a round 2 sooner rather than later. :)
ReplyDeleteYes!!
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ReplyDeleteHi Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI am sorry that you did not enjoy our style of cider making. We make our ciders as white wine, using the whole fresh juice of rare and heirloom variety cider apples. We do not chaptalize, water the cider down, or add much to it after the fact. Where grocery store ciders contain 5-12% sugar, our ciders typically contain less than 1%, sometime 0%.
We currently do not make ciders using bret and are unlikely to do so anytime soon. The sourness that you were tasting is malic acid. Virginia craft ciders generally have a strong acid structure, higher ABV (more sun makes more sugar makes more alcohol), and less tannin than craft ciders from other regions. This is a function of our terroir.
I would love for you to come back on another day and do a guided tasting with one of team members. The ciders themselves are unlikely to change very much, but hopefully we can provide you with more information that will put its flavor profiles in context. Please reach out before you come via email at admin at bluebeecider dot com.
Best wishes,
Courtney Mailey
Blue Bee Cider Owner
That would be great - thank you for reaching out Courtney! I've had your cider before at a wine festival so was surprised by my disappoint that day. I'd love to come back to visit you guys and will reach out!
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