MANCHESTER, CONNECTICUT
“Restaurateurs at heart and beer drinkers by liver,” ELICIT BREWING COMPANY began proving that motto November 2019. Inside a spacious red brick warehouse right along the Adams Mill Trail in Manchester, Connecticut’s rural wooded area just outside its small urban center, Elicit pairs brewer Brian Ayers’ wonderful rotating liquid fare and fab one-off concoctions with respectable pub food.
A large front deck and even roomier rear Beergarden (with spiffy Marilyn Monore wall painting, two firepits, patio furnishings and stringed Edison lights) surround the epoxy-floored, high ceilinged millhouse. Combining a beer hall, cocktail bar, lounge and arcade, Elicit offers fifty draught lines (with a bakers dozen home brews plus several local elixirs) at its white marble-topped bar.
A comfy foyer welcomes patrons to the sportsbar-like brew house. Right side community tables and high-back seating are available and to the left are windowed brew tanks and a separate kitchen. The brick walls are decorated by dramatic curved PVC beams. Several games sidle the main space.
My wife and I grab pizza and tacos for dinner while consuming thirteen rangy suds at the Beergarden September ’20. The following day, we took the dog for a walk along the river-bound Adams Mill Trail.
Corn-sugared lemon snips and floral perfumed spicing seeped into musky wet grains and herbal Tettnanger hops for German-styled Das Crisp Boi, a fine pilsner-Vienna malted pale lager.
Lemon-spiced crystal malt sweetness and grassy hop astringency plied Resilience Pale Ale, leaving a trail of guava, gooseberry and green grape tartness.
Spiced red-orange fruiting gained toasted caramel sweetness and a nutty remnant for Speling Bee Champion, a durable misspelled red ale with pithy lemon and tangerine peel illusions.
Stylishly dryer due to Hallertau Blanc-hopped green grape esters, Hefe Lifting brought mild white-peppered herbage to standard hefeweizen banana-clove spicing.
Juicy pineapple puree tartness embittered the lemony banana-clove expectancy of Yodeling Cherubs Pineapple Hefeweizen, a sharply tropical fruited offshoot of Hefe Lifting.
Lemony grapefruit zest brightened its bittersweet peach adjunct for crisply clean Doin’ Just Peachy, a spritzy fruited wheat ale with mild wood lacquering seeping into the honeyed wheat spine.
Lemon-soured green grape esters fronted Little Bo Blanc, an herbal Hallertau Blanc-hopped saison with leathery barnyard acridity countering the sweet wheat base.
Pink Himalayan sea-salted gose, Dueling Libations Margarita, sprayed freshly-squeezed blood orange-pureed key lime tartness atop Tequila-twisted agave for a perfect cocktail re-creation.
Lactic Dueling Libations Pina Colada unleashed creamy vanilla sweetness upon lemony orange zest, pineapple puree and coconut rum nearly as convincingly as its Margarita competition.
Sunny tropical fruiting gained honey-spiced pale malting for Drink This Outdoors, a sessionable IPA with yellow grapefruit, orange, pineapple and peach luster.
Extraordinary Marriage Counseling Double IPA stayed briskly clean as rummy pineapple-coconut tropicalia sweetened its lemony orange zesting and tangy peach reminder above sugary pale malts.
Black-malted dark chocolate dryness embellished Eligible Bachelor, a mildly nutty brown ale with light coffee roast.
Freeze-dried coffee tones led Nostrovia!, a slightly bitterer Imperial Stout with ashen walnut contrasting glazed hazelnut sugaring beneath the java surface.