Bobcat Cafe & Brewery

August Doom Saloon Tasting Part Duex

Hops and Roses
Brute
Brute, Trois Poules Français, Row 2/Hill 56, Pliny
Merc
Ken
CaveDave
Dino
Brux
Mischief Gone Wild, Trois Poules Français

After hammering the IPAs we moved on to a random mish mash or whatever else was brought including some gems like Brute, Hops and Roses, and everyone’s favorite whale: Bud Light Lime-A-Rita!

Bud Light Lime-A-Rita

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Awesome Dinner at The Bobcat Cafe

After checking out the bottling for Flood Suds I came back upstairs and grabbed some grub and beers. They had a pretty decent selection of beers on tap (the most house-made beers I’ve ever seen at a brewpub of the size) so we decided to try them all.

  • Baltic Porter
  • Brickwall Harvest imperial IPA
  • “Chewy” Double IPA
  • Dennis Hopr’d
  • Downtown Brown
  • Easy Rider
  • Kolsch
  • Marzen
  • Marzen auf Ahorn
  • Marzen auf Holz
  • Saison
  • South Mountain Stout
The beers were pretty solid and I would come back just to see what else Mark has brewing. It sounds like turnover of beers is pretty quick and Mark always has something new.

We followed up the beers with two dishes from their new menu. So new the waitress hadn’t even seen these plates yet. The food was insane. Elise got the Eggplant parmesan lasagna with fresh mozzerella and I grabbed the juniper crusted pork loin with homemade sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, mustard rhubarb gastrique, and chive spaetzle (let’s face it just about every meal outside of the camp site this week was pork for me). I can go on and on about how damn good this food was, but I’ll just show you what was left of the plates as evidence:

Needless to say, this place will be a regular stop for us when we make our weekend trips to Vermont. Great beers, food and atmosphere. Cheers to the brewer and the chef. The only thing missing is some outdoor seating where we can tie up Kuma!

Flood Suds Bottling at The Bobcat Cafe

I met The Bobcat’s Brewmaster Mark Magiera at the Summer Vermont BA Meetup where he brought along a some of Bobcat’s beers including Bourbon Barrel Aged South Mountain Stout and Bourbon Barrel Aged Unrepentant. After the recommendation of pretty much everyone at the meetup, Elise and I decided to go there for dinner that Monday. Lucky for me, Mark, Joe and the rest of the guys were downstairs bottling a new beer that day: Flood Suds.

Flood Suds is a Belgian-inspired Witbier using grains (mostly) from Vermont and hops grown by UVM Extension’s The Vermont Hops Project, to benefit farmers that were hit hard by Hurricane Irene last year. I’ve been told they’re using Lawson’s to distribute so you should see the bottles show up at the same places Lawson’s is available some time this month (possibly even the Waitesfield Farmer’s Market but I do not have confirmation on that). Draft will be available at the cafe and also the Vermont Brewer’s Festival.

This is the closest I have ever been to beer bottle production, and it’s definitely the smallest scale production I’ve ever seen (that wasn’t homebrew). Everything was done by hand including bottle fills, corking (with a floor corker), caging, labeling and boxing. Pretty cool stuff and I can’t wait to get my hands on a bottle.

All of this awesomeness was followed up with a couple of flights of beer (we tried every draft on the menu) and some of the best food I’ve had in Vermont. Pics of all of that deliciousness is coming up in the next post.