Mad Fox Brewpub

As I said in this post, my wife and I recently visited the Mad Fox Brewpub, located in Falls Church, VA just outside of DC. Pretty big place, looks like most other brewpubs. One half was tables and normal seating, the other the bar area with some other high tops I think. We got lunch with some friends of ours so I didn't spend any time at the bar. The food was pretty good. They even had something called Frickles which, if you couldn't guess, were fried pickles. Get it? Yeah. Delicious though.

It turned out to be their 1 year anniversary so they had some special beers to be released throughout the day. The first one was their Slobberknocker, an american barleywine, aged in oak barrels. I think they were some sort of bourbon barrels, possibly Heaven Hill, but I never got an answer. I'm pretending it's true in my comments though.

Smelled sweet with a hint of bourbon in the nose. Very thick mouthfeel. Started with a hint of hops, slight caramel, and some apple notes. Some sweet bourbon appeared along with some vanilla as I drank more. Good stuff, quite tasty. Very different than fresh slobberknocker, as well, which was very hoppy with a very subdued caramel backing.

After that I got a sampler: Saison, IPA, porter, and a Belgian Strong Pale Ale. They all had names, but, well, I didn't write them down.

Didn't take many notes but I remember the Saison and the Belgian Strong Pale Ale were quite good and the IPA was decent, but the porter was unfortunately kind of bad. It just had very little flavor and was overly watery. Oh well, you can't win them all.

So that was our visit to Mad Fox. If I had more time, I would have stayed for the Bourbon Barrel Wee Heavy and, the mother of them all, Batch 100 which ended up at over 20% apparently. But, I had to be social so didn't get a chance. Given the delicious oaked slobberknocker, I expect they were both quite good. I hope to see Mad Fox continue to do well so I can visit again some time when I'm in the area.