Foghorn Brewhouse
This week the blog takes a long overdue trip to Newcastle and Foghorn Brewhouse.
In recent years, Newcastle has started to develop a reputation for trendy and (more importantly) high quality watering holes and eateries. This was my first trip up to Newcastle for a fair while and I was extremely happy to find that this reputation was most definitely well-deserved.
Foghorn Brewhouse is an absolute must-visit for lovers of quality beer and well-done American cuisine (two things particularly near and dear to my heart). The interior is exactly what you’d expect from a well-appointed brewpub. Large shiny brewing apparatuses, big open spaces with plenty of seating, even a bunch of games set out to help wile away the hours over some top notch food and booze.
Starting with the food, ‘American’ cuisine has been a big thing at pubs and bistros in recent years. One of my pet hates (and yes, I do have a fair few) is the categorizing of any burger as ‘American-style’ or, even worse, any chicken wing as ‘Buffalo’. However, I can attest that these two specific examples were done extremely well at Foghorn. There was probably another dozen delicious-looking (and artery clogging) options on the menu I could have gone with as well.
The beer was also an extremely pleasant surprise. Foghorn Brewhouse currently doesn’t can or bottle their beers. If you want some, you’ll have to head down to the brewhouse itself or a few local restaurants and bars that they supply. Oftentimes with brewpubs like this, the beer is adequate at best and the beer-brewing seems almost like a gimmick rather than a centre of focus. Again, Foghorn Brewhouse dodges my ire on this count as well. Because my goodness they make some tasty beer.
The variety of beers was excellent ranging from a good range of pale ales, a couple of reds, hoppy IPA’s, and some really good stouts. Honourable mentions go to Red Right Hand Red IPA, Boganaire IPA, and the Big Idea Beer Red Rye IPA. I could happily spend a night on any of those three. However, for my money, the two standouts were the Young Americans IPA and the Sligo Extra Stout.
The Young Americans offered a really bitey hoppy kick with a good balancing of a bit of maltiness as well. Again, my beer terminology is going to let me down here, but the type of hoppiness (hop profile maybe?) is the exact type of hoppiness I love in an IPA. I could drink it all day (and took a squealer home with me).
The Sligo is a rare stout nowadays. It’s just a damn good stout. There’s no funky flavour combination, there’s no special brewing process, there’s no unorthodox ingredients. What there is, however, is a ton of rich, smooth, delicious stout flavour.
There’s that much good food and that many good beers on offer, it was impossible for me to properly sample all of the good stuff Foghorn Brewhouse had on offer. But of what I did have, there was very little that I didn’t love. I think the best I can sum it up would be to say that if I lived in Newcastle, Foghorn Brewhouse would definitely be my local.