WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA

A rusty bridge connects teensy Foxburg to an access road three miles from Route 80. This well-maintained one-horse town with municipal building, church, general store, and wine cellar tucked inside a valley retains elegant old Americana charm reflected by its riverbank brewpub-restaurant, FOXBURG INN ON THE ALLEGHENY (visited April ’06).

Featuring a formal banquet hall, newly constructed waterway walk, and loft level brewpub, Foxburg Brewery had casually aggressive heartland grained beers poured from glass-encased copper kettles, and a decent bottled beer collection strewn across the bar walls. Alongside delicious crab-stuffed portabella caps I imbibed buttery banana-lemon-spiced Toby Creek Pilsner, thinly dry berry-trailed Allegheny Ale, and musk-y maple-raw fig-date-tingled cocoa-beaned pilsner-bock mix Foxburg Lager. Better were vegetal tea-dried hop-roasted fig-jigged Silver Fox Red Amber and sticky black licorice-fronted prune-centered pumpkin-spiced Foxburg Inn Stout (with earthen peat, unrefined molasses, raisin-fig, and medicinal hints).

Unfortunately, Foxburg’s beers were somewhat inconsistent. By the end of ’06, the brewery closed but the restaurant remained.