FRAMINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS

Just half a mile down the road from Jack’s Abby, Framingham’s EXHIBIT A BREWING COMPANY was established by entrepreneurial brewmaster Matthew Steinberg during 2016. A highly experienced, well known Massachusetts zymurgist, Steinberg enjoys crafting a wide variety of brews utilizing mostly locally sourced ingredients.

Exhibit A’s large outdoor community-tabled beergarden leads patrons to the black aluminum warehouse currently staging storage but marked for a future beer hall. Across the parking lot lies the current brew room where large brew tanks sit across from the quaint epoxy-floored tannish barroom (with 12-plus taps, bronze ceiling tiles, casual high chair seating and countertop stands).

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, June ’21, my wife and I drag Roscoe the dog to an empty outdoor table to consume a few durable Exhibit A products.

One of Exhibit A’s most popular offerings, The Cat’s Meow, a zesty NEIPA, let lightly embittered yellow grapefruit zesting and spiced navel orange pickup grassy herbal-tinged pine lacquering over mildly vanilla-creamed oated wheat bottom.

Dry lemony orange-rotted fizziness gained a slight sour-candied glaze for wispily herb-spiced Goody Two Shoes, a mild clear yellowed kolsch with crisp bread crust bottom.

Light-roast coffee nuttiness consumed Briefcase Porter, overwhelming black chocolate-embittered Blackstrap molasses, burnt rye toasting, soured tobacco chaw and wispy blackberry tartness.

Creamily smooth Imperial Stout, Sunday Paper (a collaboration with nearby Barrington Coffee Factory), let milk-sugared coffee tones gain a bitterly tarred dark roast char swirling above caramelized chocolate molasses oats, picking up espresso, hazelnut and black pepper snips.

Vintage 2020 barleywine, Weights & Measures, stayed mildly caramel creamed as its brown-sugared bourbon licks gained dewy rye spicing to back its bittersweet cherry-bruised orange tang.