KEUKA PARK, NEW YORK
Concentrating on crafting Brit-styled brews and a few American ales since opening during 2020 (after five-plus years at a smaller locale), Keuka Park’s LYONSMITH BREWING COMPANY occupies a former ice cream shop. A pristine family-styled cafe for English beer lovers, Lyonsmith competes favorably with Seneca Lake’s Beerocracy.
A pale green walled pub with loungey right side gaming, several four-chaired wood tables and an eight-seat wood top bar with tulip-cupped lighting, Lyonsmith’s eight silver-backed tap handles retrieve head brewer Dave Smith’s backroom brew-tanked liquid suds.
My wife and I visited the first day of December ’23.
Dewy peat sweetened Reid’s Mild Ale, leaving earthen truffle, wattleseed, rye and chestnut illusions on spritzy dried fruiting.
Sessionable, yet assertive, Rylie English Pale Ale let dry leafy-hopped fungi penetrate toasted amber grains as well as acorn, macadamia and hickory nuttiness, finishing with a slight rye tease.
Rustic Wide Open Throttle Golden Ale let mossy English mild ale fungi and pale ale-malted ESB-like mineral graining meet tenacious herbal onrush as moldy apricot and rotted orange allow musky dried fruiting to penetrate basil, rosemary and lavender vim above musty horse-blanketed wet hay bed.
Offbeat herbal eccentricity, Dorset Coast Summer Ale, plies lemon-soured ginger spicing to sage, lavender, cilantro and tarragon perfuming plus coniferous fern minting atop malted white wheat base.
Floral-spiced red and orange fruiting dabbed Irish-styled Rhiannon Red Ale, a crisp barley roasted moderation with slight cocoa powder influence.
Mild whiskey-soured rye entry picks up lemon-bruised spoiled orange and tangerine tartness for Peasantman Royal Bloodline ESB, hiding its earthen floral aspect.
Peat-smoked English-styled porter, 1814 Flood, let its Band-aid-like beechwood curing caress dark chocolate malting and nutty earthiness.
Uncommon Medieval-styled foraged gruit, Witchcraft, utilized heather tips instead of hops to serenade its dandelion leaf bittering, floral lavender perfuming, lemon-salted lime peel tartness and desiccated orange rot above light cellar fungi.