MYSTIC, CONNECTICUT

Right next door to Mystic Pizza in a beautifully prominent beige marble-columned gothic edifice, BANK & BRIDGE BREWING began operations July ’21. Downtown Mystic’s second brewpub (after Barley Head), this ‘laidback production brewery and taproom’ also offers fine culinary cuisine.

Bank & Bridge’s pristine white-walled interior features several skinny beige-marbled community tables with plastic stools fronting the exquisite 14-seat slate-topped bar. Antique lights add to the vintage feel.

The cement-floored brew tank area is off to the right, a semi-private couched lounge area is situated near the front windows and wall-hung caricatures of Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse are to the left.

The fab pub food menu offers fried chicken, rib eye and cod sandwiches plus burgers and appetizers. Guest taps and red-white wines are available and a game room keeps kids busy.

My wife and I visit on a crowded Saturday afternoon to try all four available home-crafted brews plus Vermont’s Snow Republic Chocolate Twix Highway Milk Stout (reviewed separately in Beer Index).

Crushable light pilsner, The Joker, maintained a musky herbal grained rusticity, lemon-dropped tartness and dry cracked corn malting, staying true to style.

Fluffy cumulous-headed amber yellowed Mystic IPA, a New England-styled medium body, coalesced Citra-hopped grapefruit-orange zesting, Galaxy-hopped piney floral herbage and Nelson Sauvin-hopped pineapple, guava and gooseberry tropicalia above a delicate oated wheat base.

Brisk floral-spiced citrus zesting, hard-candied raspberry tartness and mild coconut watering emerged for Shock-Hop-alypse, a tidy NEIPA with minor pine resin.

Sharp redcurrant-juiced citrus tanginess emboldened Imperial IPA, Celestial Navigation, letting orange-peeled grapefruit, tangerine and clementine receive juniper-licked pine tones.