Silver Harbor Brewing Company

Nice place food is very good beer is solid, tried 4 all were good,

 

Our family was driving to Holland, MI for a few days and thought that the Silver Harbor Brewery south of Benton Harbor in St Joseph sounded interesting and it didn’t disappoint. This was an outstanding and memorable stop. We arrived for a late lunch with our well behaved dogs and had a seat on their patio. It wasn’t crowded and was a beautiful afternoon. The welcoming servers, Isaac and others promptly took our beer requests, which was a flight of 4 of about 10 of their brews. The ones we had were all good, but my favorite was a barley wine called Shipfaced(12.5 ABV and 60 IBU). It was also available as a 4 pack of cans.
Our lunch was equally fine with an interesting and delicious salad, fish and chips, and a tasty appetizer of cheese/ w artichokes, spinach, and fried tortilla chips. We left very contented and looking forward to a great trip.
We also went on about a 4 block walk from the brewery to the beach which was off limits to dogs. But it looked nice.

 

 

 

I really enjoyed my visit here. I had a flight, and all the beers were good. More importantly for this visit, the food menu is quite varied and a step up from pub fare. I brought my aunt and uncle there, both non-beer drinkers; and I felt I had brought them to a restaurant that just happened to brew their own beer; not a bar. I had a salad that was extremely well done. The protein options included duck confit, which was nicely executed and something different than I would normally expect in a tap room.

 

 

 

Great place to go for really good food and some outstanding beer'

 

 

Stopped for lunch with 2 kids on a Friday. Kids got to design their own personal pizzas. Wife ordered soup and chili; I had a jalapeno bacon with fig-spread flatbread. Everyone really liked the food. Server was attentive even after the lunch crowd began filling in. Drinkswise, personally had 3, two-ounce samplers and wife sampled the Imperial Red and then ordered the full snifter. Solid place. Parking might be a little tricky when it's packed. Might be more of a restaurant than a brewery plus restaurant. Food is definitely on at least level footing with the beer.

7/8/24 - Updates since 2016: The last review was written when the brewery had recently opened, and the beers were just average tasting, but the beers have improved immensely since then. The food was good then, and very good now. Those rating scores were increased. My former overall rating was a 3.88 but is now 4.21.

Other changes since the last review are the outdoor seating availability, and the closure of the street where the pub is located. About 8-10 parking spots are available in front of the pub, and they are accessible via an alley from a free parking lot a half block away. It's easier to park in that lot and walk through the short alley to the brewery than to gamble on the availability of spots in front of the pub.

Not noted in the previous review is the availability of seltzers, ciders, wines and some craft cocktails for the non beer drinkers.
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This is a newly opened brewery that is located on a short one-way side street at the edge of the downtown area. My wife and I stopped here to try their beers and to have a snack. The interior of the place struck me mostly as a restaurant that serves craft beer more than it being a brewpub, but it had nice vibe. A few TVs were located above the long bar, and each was showing a different football game on this Saturday afternoon.

There are 16 taps here so we ordered a sampler flight of 5 of them for our evaluation. It was a very nice mix of styles, and we ordered a Brown Ale, an Oktoberfest, a Belgian Golden Strong, a Belgian IPA, and a BBA Imperial Stout. Each was brewed close to its respective style, but none struck us as exceeding style very much so that our scores ranged from a C to a B-minus grade. The brown and the Oktoberfest seemed a bit weak, and the imperial stout just wasn't notable as a BBA beer should be. However, most of the beers did taste a bit better as they warmed.

A unique thing that they do here is to 'smoke' a beer that you order. A pint of beer is placed under a heavy glass bell jar that has smoke trapped inside (smelled like hickory from the next table over). The people who ordered it let it sit for about 5-10 minutes before drinking it, so I don't know how much smoke can permeate the beer in that short time period.

We ordered an appetizer to munch on while drinking our beers, but the other items on the menu were very creative and if all of them are as tasty as the cheese dip that we ordered, the food would deserve a score much higher than the beers at this pub. If we're ever in the area again we'd stop more for the food than the beer, but maybe the other beers that we didn't order during our visit would have given us a different impression of their beer offerings.

A busy hopping place with a long bar. Food was tasty but get a reservation, because this place was new, I think word got around making it popular. I must admit 3 out out the 6 samplers were quite above average. The other were decent too.
Christian the Brewer has done a good job, and he was there serving guest and answering questions on a busy Labor day weekend. both Stouts were my favorites.