I wasn’t expecting a whole lot when I first pulled up to Bold City Brewery. It’s a non-descript building in a cluster of small warehouses along the railroad tracks in an older section of Jacksonville. The buildings across the street were all painted up all up with highly artistic grafitti. A group of folks was sitting around in the parking lot drinking beer just outside the roll-up door.
I figured this was going to be a quick, one-time visit. Was I ever mistaken.
For starters, we learned that the painted up buildings across the road are actually some sort of an art school-studio. These weren't middle of the night tag-jobs but rather well thought out murals by very talented artists.
Once you go thru the door, you’re in a lively room with about a half-dozen tables and a bar at the end of the room. Each time that I’ve been there, the crowd has been a cross-section of Jacksonville, a mixture of college-aged kids as well as middle-aged people from all walks of life. It seems to be a place for everyone. Everyone seems friendly and we’ve had several interesting conversations with folks at the bar and the surrounding tables. The restrooms were surprisingly clean too!
Since it is a real brewery, they don’t serve food but there is a catering company that uses some of the excess space in their warehouse area to cook up brats, burgers, wings and pulled pork. The food prices are reasonable too. Six bucks for a burger, beans and slaw and it’s good. Vernon does it up right. What more can you ask for?
If you are a newbie to Bold City, they offer you a sampler tray of the 8 or so beers that they have on tap for FREE providing you buy something. These aren’t little shots but rather a couple of ounces each, just like what you buy elsewhere when you do the sampler flights. The guy told us the first time that you visit, as long as you at least try each of the samples and if you buy either a pint or a growler, the sampler tray is free. That’s a first for me. Who was I to argue about free beer?
The beers that I’ve seen there on tap are all relatively solid, straight-forward beers. They haven’t had anything like a bacon maple porter when I’ve been there but if you are looking for a good pale ale, wheat or brown ale, etc, you’ve come to the right place.
The Killer Whale Cream Ale is a nice, smooth, lighter beer that is easy to drink and is a good place to start for the American macro crowd. Duke’s Cold Nose Brown Ale is pretty mild and not that heavy so even on a hot day, you can enough a brown.
Their 1901 Red Ale is “not your standard Red Ale. This is a very ‘malty’, ‘roasty’ and complex Red Ale. The roasted flavor comes from the high presence of roasted barley.” It could easily be mistaken for a porter. Besides having it in the tasting room, I’ve enjoyed it around town too.
The also have a hefeweizen, a pair of IPA’s as well as an amber ale and an English ale. Some of these are available in stores around town in bottles too.
Besides beer, they have limited wines available too as well as soda for your DD.
My only gripe about Bold City Brewery is that their tap room is only open three days a week – Thursday – Saturday. That means I can only stop by once when I’m in town for work.
Check ‘em out, you’ll have a good time.
