QUEENSTOWN, MARYLAND
On a dank overcast Saturday at noon in mid-January ’24, visited Eastern Shore’s tiny town of Queenstown to grab some beers at TEN EYCK BREWING COMPANY. A female-driven veteran owned pub translated in Dutch as “at the oak,” Ten Eyck opened in the summer of 2019. A tight community of craftswomen whose recipes run the gamut from light lagers to pastry sours, each brings a certain specialty to the entire brewing project.
Its right side brown paneled section serves as the main pub while the aluminum topped high-ceilinged warehouse holds the large windowed brew tanks and an overhead door leads to the backyard sail cloth-covered pergula biergarten.
The red brick-fronted, stained concrete-floored taproom recalls an upscale cabin with its bracketed exposed pipes, nautical light fixtures and slab wood designed back wall. The bark-topped rectangular bar has twelve taps and several TV’s and wood tabled chairs fill out the warm interior.
My wife and I settled in to try a dozen varied elixirs. Many retained a softly ensconced minerality.
Dry aluminum-cleared lightweight, Taco Cat Mexican Lager, spread corn-floured flaked maize atop salty citric neutrality and phenol hop astringency.
Fermented in oak, ‘delicate’ bronze-hued moderation, Chesapeake Lager, placed salty orange spicing and dry straw-grained rusticity inside a fizzy capsule.
“Extremely quaffable” Shorebilly Kolsch allowed mild IPA-like orange peeled grapefruit bittering to penetrate musky Noble-hopped herbage and candied lemondrop tartness over saltine crackered pilsner base.
Lemony banana-clove-bubblegum frontage let mild herbage spread into A Great Day For Hay, a less sourdough breaded hefeweizen.
Zesty lemon, candy-coated orange and pomelo-tangelo snips sidled the mild evergreen conclave of (410) Maryland Cold IPA, a crisply tropical Citra/Strata-hopped sunshine daydream.
Rummy pineapple-coconut Pina Colada sweetness countered lemon-limed Margarita brining placated tart fruited sour, Beach Juice Pina Colada, a highly acidic eye squinter.
An interestingly offbeat hybrid, Side Dish Imperial Brown Ale, brewed with roasted sweet potato given maple-glazed vanilla sweetness, embraced marshmallow-creamed sugaring and mounting Aunt Jemima syruping on the nose (plus black cherry, hazelnut and chestnut wisps).
The nutty coffee-stained dark chocolate entry of dry Tuckahoe Stout received molasses-sapped flaked oats backup.
Fermented with cardamom, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon to contrast its pink Himalayan salted black peppercorn seasoning, dry-spiced Marrakash Imperial Coffee Stout zoomed forth with a loud mocha boom of dark-roast coffee and dark cocoa powdering.
Smoothly sweet fruited stout, CAKE: Chocolate Razz, plies brown chocolate sweetness to tart raspberry adjunct, picking up tertiary blackberry, boysenberry and mulberry illusions.
A spiced variant, CAKE: Cin City, reached cinnamon coffee territory, acquiring delicate star anise and blackcurrant licks.
Another approachably smooth-watered dark ale, Heaven Sent, a sublime Imperial Stout aged in Heaven Hill Bourbon barrels, gained vanilla-honeyed caramel sweetness, tidy cola-walnut-hazelnut conflux and black cherry snips.
