We’ve recently had the chance to visit a few brewpubs in upstate New York.  A couple weeks ago, we went to Bandwagon Brewpub in Ithaca.  Their menu was somewhat limited at about a dozen entrees, but did have some interesting options — and I loved the cornmeal waffles with shrimp and andouille sausage.  We got a flight of Bandwagon’s beers, which packed a few surprises:

• Raspberry Jalapeño: I initially dismissed this as a novelty chili beer, but found it pretty enjoyable.  The raspberry was more creamy than tart, and there was just a little chili heat.
• Ezra Red Ale: Very hoppy aroma, but pretty mild and even a little sweet.  Nothing wrong with it, but not really winning me over either.
• High Step Weizenbock: Like a sweeter hefeweizen.  By this point in the flight, I was starting to wonder at liking the novelty beer best.
• Pirate Eye PA: Very sharp resin.  I’m not a big IPA fan, but I found this undrinkable.
• Sully’s Irish Stout: Smoky and dry.  I’ve warmed to stout recently, especially malty imperial stout.  But this is a very dry Irish stout, which I just didn’t enjoy much at all.

So their food was good, if not a ton of options.  And none of the beers really captured my imagination, though the Raspberry Jalapeño and High Step Weizenbock were both pretty good.  So I had a great time, but I probably won’t be drinking any more of their beer.  In fact, we took the kids there for lunch last week, but we got beers from other NY breweries.

One of those breweries is Rooster Fish from Watkins Glen.  We drove over to Corning to see the excellent glass museum and were driving through Watkins Glen on our way back and stopped for lunch.  They had a much bigger menu, with a lot of good options to agonize over, even for the kids.  Instead of having a pre-set flight, they let you get samples of as many beers as you want.  The next table had a couple with samples of all 12, but we stuck with just 5:

• Aspen Wit: a nice and spicy hefeweizen, reminding me of some of the better spicy/herbal German hefeweizen we tried.
• Summer Sky: much more tart and clean.
• Tripel Witch: probably my least favorite of the bunch, this tripel was reedy and herbal, reminding me of some of the tripels we tried and didn’t like.
• Mysterious Amber: tons of toffee and caramel, almost a little too sweet, but very nice for a malt-lover like me.
• Scotch Ale: very peaty and smoky, a wonderful wee heavy that isn’t too sweet or chewy.  Ranks right up with my favorites.  We picked up a growler of this to take home.

So it was a much nicer experience all the way around.  Of the beers we tried from the two breweries, I think I liked my least favorite from Rooster Fish (the tripel) as much as my favorite from Bandwagon.