Salmon Pants Brewery

 

 

Today I chose to check out Salmon Pants on my lunch break. It’s probably frowned upon to drink any beer on a lunch break but thankfully I didn’t need to have very much while I was there. I got there at 1pm and there was no one else there except for the bartender who was vacuuming the floor, obviously trying to keep busy. I sat at the bar and looked at their tap list...

Tap 1: Yuengling Pilsner
Tap 2: Banana Lager
Tap 9: Lionshead Light
Tap 12: New England IPA

There were 4 beers on with a 12 tap system and only 2 were made on the premise. The lady was saying how they had a big event there and they’re trying to catch back up on their supply. They had two on the list that said they would be on in 3 days. The Banana Lager was pretty shitty to say the least... the NEIPA was better yet stuff had something a little off about it. I think whatever it was may have been well hidden by the amount of hops they probably packed into the keg or something. I was honestly hoping to try more of their stuff. I had every intent of trying at least 4 or more of their beers today and planned to write reviews for each one. I wrote the two that I could. I feel like I need to potentially go back in a few weeks or at least call ahead of time to see if they have more on or not.

I enjoy their open mic nights and happy hours on Friday ! They support sustainability and their surrounding community .

I enjoy what they did with this place. The Southside needed this place and these gave it to us. There seems to be some haters but I support what these guys are doing .

I lived in the Lehigh Valley for 20 years ('96-'16) and my dad sent me a Morning Call article about this brewery opening, with the "next time you visit" thing going on. So I visited on 12-14-18 when I was visiting for my birthday.
Nice place upon entering, bartender was attentive, acoustic duo playing in the corner. I ordered a flight of 4 of the 5 beers they had available. And to be honest, not one of them was true to style. There were 2 Pilseners, a Hefeweizen, and a Chocolate Porter in my flight. Honestly, just undrinkable, whatever style they were going for. I homebrewed (poorly) for a good 5 years, and the off flavors I experienced were present here. I honestly waited for the bartender to turn around so I could leave cash for the flight plus 20% tip and leave 70% of the beer un-drank.
I visited 2 other breweries in the Lehigh Valley after leaving Salmon Pants, and heard a lot of unsolicited rumors of brewers offering them help with their carbonation issues, and just basic advice in general. And they declined. In any and every brewery-based community I have experienced, it is in no way a competition. When breweries work together, EVERYONE benefits. Perhaps Salmon Pants is so new to the game, that they do not realize this. They could have had so much help getting up and running. The brewing community would have supported them more then they could have imagined. No concrete confirmation of anything I am saying, but just the beer community talking.
As for food, it seemed like a crock-pot pulled pork offering, and frozen pizza heated up, with toppings added.
This entire experience seemed very un-finished, and flying by the seat of (possibly Salmon) pants.
In all honesty, was this brewery really ready to open when it did? Maybe more market research, time honing brewing skills, and creating an inviting and interesting experience would have benefitted this establishment.
I sincerely hope they can turn this around. A lot of breweries take some time to "dial it in", and perfect their recipes. But they usually have a few perfected before they open, and they experiment/perfect some others. This seems like a stretch for Salmon Pants, though perhaps the dialed in recipes were not on tap when I visited. Further, the rumor going around is that they are begging people to go on social media/beer related sites to give perfect scores regarding their beers and establishment to rival reviews like mine, which are, quite honestly, deserved. Not the way it works...