Switchback Brewing Goes Ale In on Beer Garden and Tap House 

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• Daria Bishop
• From left: Chicken Schnitzel Sandy, fries, E-Z Betty Spaghett, BLT and Switchback Ale at Switchback Brewing's Beer Garden & Tap House

For its first 10 years, Switchback Ale was only available on draft. When the unfiltered flagship beer from Burlington's Switchback Brewing finally made its way into 22-ounce bottles in 2012, people went nuts.

The local staple ale hasn't changed much — it made the news again in 2015, when it came out in stubby six-packs of blue-labeled bottles — but the brewery itself has changed more than a casual fan may realize. Employee-owned since cofounders Bill Cherry and Jeff Neiblum sold the company to its workers in 2017, Switchback is starting another new era: one that involves running a restaurant.

Switchback's Beer Garden & Tap House held its grand opening on July 12, anchoring the biz firmly in its South End spot. While Switchback opened a tucked-away tasting room in 2014, the new 20-tap bar is on a much more visible side of the 120-year-old brick building. With more than twice the space indoors and an extensive outdoor patio, the tap house gives the team space to show off what else they can do.

"It's reflective of what Switchback is now," plant engineer Gretchen Langfeldt said. "Ale and a lot of other things."

Everything's bigger, even the pretzels. Those jumbo Bavarian-style twists are served dangling on a hook, and they're roughly one and a half times the size of a toddler's head, according to my measurements.

The pretzels are one of a few items customers will recognize from the former tasting room, which was hidden behind the brewery and only visible to drivers and walkers continuing down Flynn Avenue to Oakledge Park. It had a dedicated following for its McKenzie hot dogs — and for actual dogs, which were welcome inside.

Because the new Beer Garden & Tap House has a full kitchen, dogs (other than service animals) are only allowed outside in the beer garden. But the Switchback team now owns the whole property and plans to host "dog parties" there in the future, marketing manager Abbe Carroll said. The former tasting room will also be a venue for private and public events such as dinners with brewery tours, which are not otherwise offered.

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• Daria Bishop
• Jumbo soft pretzel with housemade mustard and Karsten Premium Lager-infused Cabot cheddar sauce

In the new tap house, longtime regulars will also recognize the McKenzie Switchbrat, an ale-infused bratwurst ($12) that you can top with the same housemade mustard. The rest of the fare, head chef Chris Cantrell said, is all new.

A native of Knoxville, Tenn., and a 2008 New England Culinary Institute grad, Cantrell has cooked all over the country, most recently for Burlington's Farmhouse Group. At Switchback, he has assembled a German- and Southern-influenced menu of beer food at its best.

Early on a recent Wednesday evening, I stopped in with my family to meet friends headed back from the playground at Oakledge, the aforementioned toddler among them. I know, we're those bring-your-kid-to-a-brewery people. But the spacious restaurant gave us plenty of room to be chaotic away from other diners.

A friendly server stopped to take our drink order and pointed us to the counter for food. I ordered a pretzel ($12) and tangy, pickle-brined chicken wings ($16) to share. Two of my dining companions opted for the juicy smash burger ($18), which features Cabot cheddar and Wickles Pickles, one of Cantrell's nods to his Southern roots (another being Duke's mayo). I chose the perfectly thin, crispy Chicken Schnitzel Sandy ($18), which came topped with peppers, onions and tomato aioli. The kids were satisfied with the pretzel and bites scavenged from their parents' plates.

Cantrell plans to change 90 percent of the menu seasonally, both to take advantage of local ingredients and to keep things exciting for the cooks, he said.

"I want the food to reflect the brewery in flavor," he added. "It's approachable, but with a little more craft to it."

The beer is an ingredient in some of the food, such as the E-Z blond ale-battered zucchini and squash ($14) and the Karsten Premium Lager-infused Cabot cheddar sauce, which is an add-on for the pretzel ($4) or a topping for fries ($14). There's also E-Z in the broth of the mussels ($18) and, most surprisingly, a Citra Vista lager wort reduction is folded into the Wicked Whoopie Pie filling ($10).

"We're working with the brewers to get byproducts from the brewing process," Cantrell explained. The wort — the unfermented starter of barley and sugar that kick-starts the yeast — gets reduced to a sort of simple syrup.

"It tastes almost like a sweetened oatmeal," he said. "It's got a different earthiness to it."

Appropriately for a brewery, beer is also infused into the short and sweet cocktail menu, which features whiskey and gin from Switchback's Essential Spirits collaboration with Middlebury's Appalachian Gap Distillery. Managing partner Josh Weber, who comes to Switchback from Burlington's Rí Rá Irish Pub and the Whiskey Room, has transformed Zaboo Hazy IPA into a grapefruit-agave paloma, Karsten Premium Lager into a tomatoey michelada with a Tajín rim, and E-Z blond ale into the E-Z Betty Spaghett.

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• Daria Bishop
• Josh Weber pouring a Switchback Ale

The latter was my drink of choice. A classic Spaghett involves pouring Aperol and lemon juice directly into a Miller High Life bottle; Switchback's version ($12) had even more flavor (thanks to a better beer) and came blushing pink in a pint glass. My husband, in a "when in Rome" moment, opted for a classic Switchback Ale ($6), which tasted exactly as it always has.

The extensive tap lineup had me wishing we could stay for a second drink. It was packed with Switchback's sleeper hits, including four from the smoky Flynn on Fire series. And it featured two beers from the brewery's exciting new employee-led side project, Askew Beer.

The Askew tent was a highlight of the recent Vermont Brewers Festival, where I wasn't the only one buzzing about its Secret Handshake, a grapefruit Kölsch. Started a year ago and supported by the company's employee stock ownership plan, Askew gives Switchback's employee-owners a chance to go a little wild, Langfeldt said.

"There's a lot of restrictions when it comes to the Switchback brand and staying true to it," Carroll added. "This lets our brewers put all their ideas into the world in easier, smaller batches. It's the same quality, but it's not so rigid."

While brewers Morgan Capron and Tony Morse and director of sales and business development Sean Pagano spearhead Askew, everyone on staff can contribute their own ideas, which are collected on a whiteboard hung up on a cooler. The zanier the better, Langfeldt said, even if they're not all hits.

"We've certainly had some that I was like, 'Yep, no. Not that,'" she said with a laugh. "That's the fun part, the experimenting. Switchback didn't get made overnight, you know?"

Two Askew beers — Askew IPA and Rime and Reason, a cold IPA — are available at a few places around town. But managing partner Weber has been hoarding Secret Handshake for the new tap house, he said.

That beer was brewed in collaboration with Waterbury's Prohibition Pig. The team hopes the new space will give them room to work with other local breweries and businesses, said Amy Lieblein, who handles Switchback's digital marketing and communications.

Weber wants to celebrate those collaborations, and he hopes a convivial scene will draw folks to the South End's many breweries — and to Switchback's new event lawn, visible from next-door Burlington Beer.

That grassy area has recently served as an unofficial dog park, but it was a race track in the 1800s when the property was a fairgrounds, before the brick building was erected, Langfeldt explained.

As the Champlain Parkway heads into its final stages of construction, it's a good time to be part of Burlington's South End — a neighborhood that has grown and changed a lot over the past 22 years.

"And we've grown up with it," Langfeldt said.

The shiny tap house, accented with classic Switchback blue, is just the right mix of old and new.