(Aslin’s tasting room in Virginia Beach. Photo by Diane Catanzaro)
By Diane Catanzaro and Chris Jones
How fortunate we are in Hampton Roads that the popular Aslin Beer Company has opened a taproom and brewery in Virginia Beach? Excellent beer, a diverse food menu, colorful outdoor seating, a two-hole putting green, and plenty of parking just across the street makes Aslin a winning destination. On Virginia Beach Boulevard at the edge of the VIBE District, cattycorner to the large free parking lot shared by the Virginia Beach Sports Center and the Convention Center and easily accessible via a crosswalk, parking is easy year-round even at peak tourist season. Aslin has their own small parking lot also.
Aslin already has taprooms in Herndon, Washington DC, Pittsburgh, and Alexandria. Alexandria is also is home to the main production brewery, although some of the other locations also brew for their local market. The new location in Virginia Beach has a small brewery on site that will begin brewing operations soon.
When we visited Aslin in July they had twenty-two of their beers on tap, covering a wide range of styles. We noted five lager/pilsners, five IPAs, three double IPAs, five sour ales, two peanut butter stouts (don’t laugh, they were delicious), a hefeweizen. Wine drinkers can enjoy a choice of six Virginia wines and house-made craft cocktails like Aperol Sunset, Painkiller, Sangria, and Mai Tai. They have a non-Alcoholic sour fruit beer for those of us traveling light. There is also a fridge with select beers canned for take-away. Every beer we tried was spot on.
Aslin brewed an exclusive beer for the Virginia Beach location, called Swell Maneuvers, a surfing reference. It’s a Mexican style lager with lime, and a sure crowd pleaser. The juicy lime presence in the nose follows through in the thirst-quenching taste, and a great lime-citrus balance that happily lacks that pithy lime bitterness that makes you think of Burma Shave. Very drinkable, and totally suitable for your next surf party, beach day, or backyard BBQ. With its approachable 4.5% ABV you won’t fall off your board. Another fun summer beer is the Radler. A combination of their clean and smooth American Light Lager and grapefruit, at 2.5% ABV it’s a perfect beer for hot weather hydration and ultra refreshing. Invented by Germans, ‘radler’ is a reference to the cyclists who want to drink at their local bier garden but keep the ABV low enough to ride the bicycle home.
Of course there are several IPAs, of both the hazy New England and West Coast varieties. A lot of us like the juicy tropical-note hazies, but often we long for an old school West Coast IPA with the crisp bitterness of the original style we fell in love with. Have it your way at Aslin.
Other beers of note at Aslin include their popular sour ales like Volcano Sauce and Tropical Sauce, both are conditioned on summer fruits and contain milk sugar. Yeast can’t convert milk sugar (lactose) to alcohol, so these beers will have a residual sweetness to balance out the sour fruit, and a fuller mouth feel. Another creative fruit beer offering is the award-winning El Frutero Watermelon, which they describe as a sweet-and-spicy watermelon margarita of a beer in a habanero-rimmed glass. Ay carumba!
With a kitchen called ‘Izzys’ and good-sized food menu, Aslin is a full-fledged brewpub. The kitchen opens for breakfast from 8 am – 11 am, with a focus on bagel sandwiches with eggs, smoked salmon, bacon, avocado, and more. Are you a coffee achiever? Aslin serves a wide range of specialty coffee offerings until 5 pm. The food menu switches from breakfast to lunch and dinner beginning at 11 am, with Korean and Nashville chicken sandwiches, salads, wings, ‘Fry-Chos’ (look it up!), smoked pork butt, wings, homemade pizzas (with many topping choices including anchovies, soppressata, vegan cheese, hot honey, and meatless sausage, in addition to the usual suspects like pepperoni and sausage). They also have smashburgers (including an Impossible Burger version). The lemon-garlic kale salad looks like a must-try on our next visit, along with an anchovy pizza.
General Manager Angelo Martinez is proud of the food, and has restaurant experience from Smoky Bones and Jimmy G’s Chop House. He mentioned that Aslin makes their own pizza dough, hand-stretched and baked to order, and that about 85% of the kitchen’s offerings are made fresh on premises. You order food from the kitchen with a QR code from anywhere on the property and your food will be delivered to your table. They do have a physical menu, just look for it in the taproom. Our Beyond Smashburger, waffle fries, and brussels sprouts were tasty and we enjoyed them in the indoor tasting room with the A/C cranked up to 11 while tasting samples of the well-made draft beers and chatting with multilingual beertender Maggie. We have found our new happy place!
What do we mean above where it says you ‘order your food from anywhere on the property’? Well, you have choices. There is the indoor taproom and bar. Outdoors is a good-sized beer garden with blue and yellow Adirondack chairs, picnic tables, umbrellas for shade, and couple of fire pits that will be great when the weather gets chilly. The beer garden is accented by colorful repurposed shipping container towers and one container that houses merchandise. Also outdoors is a covered bar area with seven core beers on tap, craft cocktails, and beer slushies. Up a set of stairs is an outdoor deck where you can drink in the view from above. Then, around the front of the tasting room is a two-hole putting green. Clubs and balls provided. There are large screen TVs outdoor for sporting events and movie night Wednesdays. Check the website for the live music schedule. Aslin has a friendly and welcoming vibe, excellent beer, and is a fantastic addition to the Hampton Roads craft beer scene.
Aslin Beer Company is located at 823 Virginia Beach Blvd, Virginia Beach, VA 23451, (757) 222-5581
Open 8 am – 10 pm Sunday-Thursday, and until 11 pm on Friday and Saturday.
