ELIZABETH CITY, NORTH CAROLINA

Along Elizabeth City’s downtown riverfront in an old hardware building, SEVEN SOUNDS BREWING COMPANY occupies a restored red brick dockside venue opened in the winter of ’22. A panoramic rooftop deck captures the still beauty of the Pasquotank River and the brick-walled pub room utilizes reclaimed wood and old beams to retain a vintage southern charm.

Seven Sounds’ cement-floored metal and wood furnished pub (with scattered beer barrel seating) settles below the pipe-exposed high ceiling. There are twelve draught taps at the pine lacquered L-shape bar.

In April ’23, my wife and I grabbed a few deck seats outback to quaff five ambitious stylistic creations on the riverfront.

Lemony passionfruit souring and salty guava tartness engaged Sea Of Love Pale Ale.

Matching its stylish banana-clove sweetness to crusty sourdough breading, Easy To Love Hefeweizen maintained a creamy vanilla-daubed eclair froth.

Mild ghost pepper heat tailgated the dark chocolate-roasted hazelnut coffee bluster of Nell Cropsey Ghost Pepper Porter, an applewood-smoked full body.

Mildly creamed milk-sugared coffee sweetness overlaid cocoa-dried dark chocolate bittering of lactic Front Porch, a milk coffee stout with distant cinnamon, anise and hazelnut wisps.

Luxurious Barleywine soaked rummy raisin, plum and dried cherry into candi-sugared crystal malting, picking up latent sweet burgundy spicing.