Brewery Tour: Mad Fox Brewing Company
/Entry to Mad Fox
Located almost in our back yard is a nice little brewery, Mad Fox. It has been about two years since we first visited, but only last week did we manage to make it to a brewery tour. Every first Saturday of the month they hold a few brewery tours open to the public. No reservation required but there are only about 15 spots. There is not a lot of room in the brewery itself.
If these photos don't illustrate it well enough, we were packed wall to wall. Its a little cramped but very clean. They use a 15-barrel system and "brew to gravity" for their beers. They have 6 30-barrel fermenters and each beer is brewed one half at a time; giving them a chance to fix anything that may go wrong in the first half.
On our tour we got to hear about the sour beer we reviewed previously. As the story goes, one of their barrels went sour and they blended it with the rest of the batch to make the sour Diabolik.
It was nice to finally see the brewery up close. As you walk into the building, behind the welcome desk, you are greeted by the bright tanks. In the dining room you are able to see the brewery through the windows. Along another wall of the dining room there are a few racks of barrels.
The bar is a little different than most bars in the area as they have up to 6 cask ales. The cask ales are usually a little different than their normal line-up of beers, for example dry-hopped IPAs or traditional English ales. They typically have about 10 house beers on draft, advertised by the blackboards on the walls. Most drafts are available in growlers and we've been known to use them as gifts.
Both the normal drafts and casks change fairly frequently as the place gets packed at times. The restaurant side makes great food, almost all from scratch. They even make their own ketchup. It's hard to go wrong with anything on their menu, I highly recommend brunch. They occasionally hold special events, such as the annual barleywine festival. Mad Fox is definitely worth checking out.
