Rhode Island Brewpubs

(BP)Mohegan Cafe Brewery Water St. (across from Ferry) 401-466-5911

(MB)Great Providence Brewing Co 8 Priscilla Rd

(BP)Coastal Extreme Brewing 307 Oliphant Rd. 401-849-5232

(BP)Coddington Brewing Co 210 Coddington Hwy

Still around?

(MB)Hope Brewing Co PO Box 551

(BP)Trinity Beer Works Inc 186 Fountain St 401-453-2337

tom glaab(tglaab@clutter.com) reports:The brewery is behind the bar upstairs. There's also a bar downstairs which is easy to miss since the stairs aren't marked; some of the locals said the downstairs bar is the place to be.

(BP)Union Station Brewing Co.

Bob Paolino (rpaolino@earth.execpc.com) says :The beers at the Union Station brewpub were defintiely mediocre. I should note that they had only three beers available that night--there were empty spaces on the board for at least that many more. I had the pumpkin ale, which was very thin-bodied, and the spice character wasn't even all that good. My friend had the Golden Spike (? some rail-oriented name ?), which was your standard generic brewpub beer. Maybe a little fuller than the pumpkin and with a fair amount of hop bitterness but not remarkable. I did have a second one, a decent enough stout, even served at close enough to the proper temperature that I didn't have to wait very long for it to warm up to drinking temperature. So, no, it wasn't a complete waste, and the food, small trendy "gourmet" pizzas (made with spent grain), was pretty good, albeit a bit pricey.

(MB/BP)Emerald Isle Brewing Co. 11 Bank St

Bob Paolino (rpaolino@earth.execpc.com) says: It's called Emerald Isle Brewing Company, but they make _English_ style ales and they are served hand-pulled(|) Emerald Isle?? The owner's name is Ray McConnell, go figure, eh?

The brewery is in the back of an old mill complex (Agawam mill) in West Warwick. I want to say that I remember him saying that it's a 10 barrel system, but it seemed a bit smaller. I'm not sure on that point.

The beers.... Absolutely wonderful. They have two regular brews right now, a bitter called Bank Street Ale and a porter. A hometown friend of mine, presently at UCONN, joined me on the tour. He favoured the Bank Street Ale. I certainly agree that it's a very well-made beer, but my personal favourite was the porter. It's not that there was anything wrong with the Bank Street, far from it, but there are a decent number of well-made bitters out there (finding them hand-pulled is another story, of course); the porter, however, rivalled one of my favourites(Summit Great Northern Porter, from Saint-Paul), so I suppose you could say it scored comparatively higher because of that. Pale ales and porters are two of my favourite styles, so this place was beervana to me. We also sampled from what I understood to be a test batch of, if I recall correctly, an American pale ale. If I did understand him correctly on the intended style, it's certainly not an American Pale Ale as you would expect to find in the Pacific Northwest or Northern California. It definitely lacked that big hop nose I enjoyed in so many of the beers I had during my visit to Oregon this summer, but maybe by Rhode Island standards it's an American Pale Ale. ....or I could have misunderstood. Nonetheless, freed from the confines of style definitions, I enjoyed that one also.
tom glaab(tglaab@clutter.com) reports:Call ahead.. this micro is very well hidden, but worth the trip. Ray (the owner) had his Bank Street Ale, which was good, but he had also made a spiced beer for the holidays. I'm not a spiced beer fan, but his was very good. Adding to the ambience of the trip was the presence of several assistants, including Sean "I'm just the mailman" Finnerty, who allegedly stopped in after finishing his route.
Get more Emerald Isle information on this website