Rocket Frog Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

This brewery in Sterling, VA is off-the-beaten path. You will have to seek it out, but you won't be disappointed. They have a wide range of beer styles and variants of those brews. I believe they keep about a dozen beers on tap at any one point. The taproom is cozy and you'll always find the big games on the TVs. The owners, David and Richard, are twin brothers and super-passionate about craft beer. They have visited many breweries over the years and incorporated what they liked from those visits into their taproom. One of my favorite touches is that they used a piece of the original Dogfish Head bar to build their bar. If you just one beer, you should probably get Angry Alice, but I also like their brown ale and kettle sours. If I was going to have one beer to session on it would be the Paper Wings Pale Ale.

 

Of the breweries we visited over the weekend, this one seemed like the newest one based on the small size and low number of taps. We were able to order two flights of 4 and knock out the whole thing. Every beer was very good. Service was good. Growler fills were available to-go.

This moderately small tap room sits on the production site in an industrial park in Sterling. It is literally a 3-5 minute slow stroll from Crooked Run brewing. The place is new and clean, with 3 community tables and a small bar, the former seats about 40 and the bar seats a dozen or so. There's not too much open space beyond that. The place was pretty busy when we were there (three weeks after grand opening), with friendly, happy customers.

The place is claiming to want to focus on Belgians and IPAs, though there was only one Saison on the menu of 11 beers for our visit. Five IPAs, a couple sours and a brown and golden ale rounded out the selection. All beers were either on point or close to what I expect for the styles. I actually really enjoyed the golden ale and appreciated the Saison enough to be looking forward to other Belgian styles they might produce. The IPAs weren't hazy NE style (a bit of a surprise these days), but were generally fairly balanced, nicely hopped offerings.

The staff were constantly busy and accommodating, friendly and knowledgeable of the young brewery's offerings. This isn't a destination taproom - more one to go enjoy a couple beers and maybe take home a growler or two. I'm looking forward to checking this place out as they produce more beer, the initial offerings are quite promising.