BJs Brewhouse in Warwick

BJ’s is a national chain, most seem to be located in the southwest US.

I’ve been to several over the years but not to the RI location. I imagine it’s the same.

It’s really a harmless place with mediocre beer & mediocre food. Some locations sell non-BJ’s beer & have decent taplists of outside beer - I was shocked to come across Russian River Blind Pig several years ago at a California outlet.

Decent place to catch a game or gather with co-workers on a weeknight but definitely nothing to get overly excited about. From what I recall they had great Happy Hour drink deals but that won’t matter in RI.

 

Yeah BJ's is a chain, it's basically a poor man's (homeless man's?) Yard House: they push their own beers and have 18-20 taps from other breweries, almost a cheesecake factory-sized menu like YH used to have.

I went to the RI location once opening week, the outside beer selection leaned local with Foolproof, Grey Sail and Gansett seasonal, and also Stone and Sierra Nevada standbys. I ordered the BJ's "Goliath" imperial red IPA which was malted appropriately for a straight red ale but nowhere near an IPA, it was just hoppy enough to frustrate my palette between an Irish red and red IPA style.

The food was pretty good as I recall, served piping hot which is tough to do during the crush of opening week.

Being such a distant location from other BJ's I wonder how fresh their in-house beers will be (I didn't see brew tanks and not sure if they can contract brew their recipes with someone locally like Isle Brewer's Guild).

 

I remember the head brewmaster or whatever from BJs - Michael Ferguson - had that TV show Beer Geeks that was pretty decent. Wish it was still on.