I have a wedding this weekend at Brown's Brewing (www.brownsbrewing.com), near Albany, NY. Anyone ever beer there? Particularly for an event? How is it? I sort of laughed a little when I first heard the wedding was at a brewery, but now I'm sort of psyched about it.
Well, you aren't going to have to worry about get trashed on their beers because they are quality. Most of Browns beers are pedestrian (at best) and some are much worse than that.
Browns does get a score of 90 (outstanding- last BA reviewer gives it a 4.4. Lowest it ever got was a 3.3- I am not saying this place is the Alchemist but give it a break) on this site, it's a nice place with a great deck on the Hudson River. Man of Kent is 25 minutes down the road. They were supposed to open a large brewery open to the public, kind of like Ommegang, outside of town. Did they ever do that? If you don't like the place you can walk over to the Dinosaur Barbecue next door- they have an excellent beer menu.
Brown's so much better when it was Troy Pub back in the 90s. Totally agree this place has gone down hill since Brown's bought it. If I recall, Brown's Whiskey Porter is pretty good, but I think it ends there.
Its local for me - the wife and I are there pretty consistently. I will agree to an extent that it "used" to be "better" but like mani said, the whiskey porter is awesome (my fav of their beers) as is the oatmeal stout.... and you have to have their reuben sandwich - I get one every time I am there. Its outstanding!
It was originally Brown and Morans, then Moran left and it became Troy Brewpub, then just Browns- I believe he has owned it from the start.
I think you mean "Troyalty Series #1 was 'da bomb'". Especially delicious with soy sauce, horseradish pickles, sriracha, Frank's Red Hot, and a chicken wing added.
So we had a nice time at Browns - the place was nice to hang out at, and the food was decent. As for the beer, I agree that nothing was earth shattering - however, the whiskey porter was surprisingly good. I was impressed by the amount of flavor for such a relatively low ABV beer. I didn't get the chance to check out the back deck, but I bet that is a very cool place to relax.
QC and consistency is the biggest issue here. I've had some great bottles of Whiskey Porter in the past, but more often than not there so much diacetyl that it tastes like they collaborated with Orville Redenbacher.
Yeah, I can't speak to consistency. I only had one pint and it was on draught. I had a few pints of the IPA - not incredible, but certainly good.
In my experience, the Whiskey Porter is always pretty solid on draft. Bottles are a different story. I think those come from their production brewery and not the brewpub...
