VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA
Awesome large-scaled production facility with kingly metal-gated entrance leading to beautiful fire-pitted bocci ball lawn and expansive multi-bar interior with gigantic brew tanks, Virginia Beach’s prominent NEW REALM BREWING COMPANY lies a few miles Southwest of the Atlantic Ocean on the outskirts of town.
Doing yeoman’s work maintaining the candid slogan ‘rethink tradition, bend the rules and reconfigure boundaries,’ New Realm’s first brewery (20,000 square feet) opened in Atlanta, December 2017. This second location, with its spectacular indoor-outdoor setup, began operations in 2018 as a restaurant/ beer garden.
A red-bricked, black slate-topped open air bar awaits those preferring outdoor dining. Inside, the cement-floored, gray-walled main pub features community tables and seats plus two TV’s sidling the 20-plus central taps. Three glass-windowed garage doors lead to the capacious back-spaced, silver-tanked brew room.
During my sunshiny July ’20 noontime visit with wife, daughter and dog, Roscoe, grabbed a few seats at the far right lawn under a few trees to try three supreme ‘big’ beers, a fruitful wit, an Imperial IPA and two stellar stouts.
Juicy tangerine tanginess gained lemon-soured pineapple, passionfruit and peach zest for stylishly ambitious Sunset Passion Wit, leaving floral-spiced herbage upon the gin-nipped tropical fruited finish.
Juniper-nipped citrus zest splashed Mas Mucho Double India Pale Ale, bringing orange-peeled sweetness to lingered lemon-soured grapefruit bittering and tertiary pineapple-peach tang alongside dank pine tones.
Exquisite Rum Barrel Aged Quad (Wooded Reserve) brought caramelized Barbados rum sugaring to embracing vanilla-creamed chocolate sweetness and pureed raisin-prune-date dried fruiting plus toffee-spiced creme brulee alacrity.
Sweet cherry-flambeed bourbon warmth luxuriated Bourbon Barrel Aged Quad (Wooded Reserve), a lusciously complex full body with vanilla-sugared brown chocolate sweetness coating glaze-spiced raisin, plum and prune illusions in a dewy earthen setting.
Caramel-burnt sea salting welcomed charmingly fudged confectionery Chocolate Sea Salt Imperial Ale, anchored by toffee-sugared maple oats.
Piquantly candi-sugared brown chocolate sweetness guided Spiced Stout, a distinct dessert beer with ginger-snapped cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cumin and anise seasoning.
Bourbon vanilla spicing topped Doomsday Hound Imperial Stout – Bourbon Barrel, a rich chocolate-sweet nightcap with ancillary dark-roast coffee, toasted coconut and marshmallow illusions receiving a mild oak-charred bittering.