LAUREL, MARYLAND
Starting on a small pilot system in 2013, JAILBREAK BREWING COMPANY became fully operational as Howard County’s first production brewery a year hence. Crafting “dramatic” beers midway between Baltimore and D.C. along the Patuxent River in the small town of Laurel, Jailbreak occupies a large facility inside a tannish red brick professional mall.
The corrugated aluminum-sided, silestone-topped, 15-seat bar serves 16 draughts and top shelf liquor and an earthen flat-stoned wall backdrop complements the gray and black walls. A midsection couched lounge with four pinball games leads to the porcelain wood-floored pub area.
During November 2021, Jailbreak opened a mammoth left side kitchen serving fresh meats and fish to go alongside their wide variety of homemade elixirs. Several large lacquered wood tables and four sets of stooled seats fill out the high ceilinged dining room.
Windowed brewtanks behind the bar contained the nifty suds sucked down alongside a sausage and fennel pizza on my February ’24 trek. Canned beers to-go reviewed in Beer Index.
Brisk lemon zesting picked up sharp spicing for rye dried Southern Crossed Pilsner, a New Zealand-styled lightweight with Nelson Sauvin-hopped guava and gooseberry tartness softly embedding the muskily grained backend.
Spritzy lemon-dried Boats & Hose, a sessionable Caribbean lager, picked up mild floral spicing and slightest caramel apple, red grape and tangerine daubs for its papery pilsner malt gluiness.
Moldy orange-dried autumnal leaf crisping stamped moderate Vienna Lager, Crabtown Classic, dispersing dank oily hop moisture.
Mild orange zesting caressed the balmy banana-clove-bubblegum sweetness of citric hefeweizen, Feed The Monkey, to its sourdough base.
Lovely coffee-roasted espresso bittering draped by dark chocolate syrup for oatmeal raisin cookie confection of molasses-dried oatmeal stout, Kaleidoscopic Images Of Love, underscored by caramelized Maris Otter malting.
Kentucky bourbon-barreled maple syruping engaged luxurious English-styled Barleywine Is Beer, leaving rummy chocolate, sweet burgundy, sherry, whiskey and dark cherry illusions on its caramel-burnt bourbon luster.