PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
Since opening its 2,500 square-foot spot in Cranston during 2017, BUTTONWOODS BREWERY has expanded to thrice the size at the former Revival Brewing venue in the industrial red bricked warehouse section of nearby Providence in 2023. Teamed up with resident scratch kitchen, Screaming Unicorn, Buttonwoods’ rustic wood setting is the perfect setting for the cool local hang out.
Buttonwoods’ sterling cement-floored, black-walled, steel-columned barroom includes wood-designed community tables, olden chaired tables and cafeteria tables plus an overhead door and exposed pipes. An eight-seat lacquer wood-topped bar stations a dozen draught handles and a to-go refrigerator. A separate multi-barreled brew room stores the proprietary liquid.
Gaining early experience at Bronx Brewing before coming to Rhode Island, founding brewmeister Morgan Snyder has spent well over a decade crafting a wide array of letter perfect elixirs.
German krautrock denizens, Kraftwerk, play in the background as we downed six of Snyders’s snazzy suds on a Friday at noon in late June ’26.
I bought home Italian Pilsner, 401 Hoppy Pale Lager, Sudden Enlightenment Jasmine Rice Lager, Rooney’s Nitro Irish Red Ale, Object Permanence IPA, La Grande Truite Abbey Ale and Invisible Monsters Barleywine (reviewed in Beer Index).
The one beer to have if you were going beyond stylistic boundaries this warm summer day was an offbeat mollusk-derived barrel-aged Belgian ale. Utilizing bourbon-dried whiskey tones to sway its lightly creamed oyster-shelled saltiness and sweet tarragon influence, Golden Unicorn, a variant Belgian strong golden ale, picked up candi-sugared fig, date and raisin illusions.
On the light-bodied side, straw-like mineral graining saddled the musky Tettnang hop herbage of rustic German Pilsner, gaining alfalfa, buckwheat and wild oats snips.
Disguising its stylish coriander-spiced orange peel sweetness a tad, Woonasquatucket Wit placed musky lemon-soured champagne grape esters across musty herbal earthiness over white wheated dried oats.
Mild honeyed maibock, Screaming In The Woods, utilized coriander and hibiscus to saddle its sour lemon musk.
Waxy fruited Galaxy-Strata-Alora-hopped IPA, Razor Crest, retained lemon meringue, salted pineapple, navel orange, white peach and white grapefruit tropicalia given slight boozy rum sugaring atop creamy oats.
On the dark side, dry Baltic Porter combined cacao nibs with dark-roast coffee and gained mild espresso, molasses oats and dark chocolate licks.