So last Sunday after church, The Man and I were driving down the road, fully intending to go home and begin tackling our to-do list, when all of the sudden I noticed a sign for “Lost Rhino Brewing Co.” I casually commented that maybe possibly we could check it out.
The Man turned off the road so fast my head is still spinning. So much for our plan to tackle our to-do list!
I had never actually heard of Lost Rhino until a friend recommended it a couple of months ago. (At a wedding in Northern California, no less!) So when we randomly saw the sign we couldn’t not check it out! It took us a few wrong turns to find it – it’s located in an industrial area of VA and doesn’t look like what I would picture a brewery to look like…although I’m not really sure what I did expect a brewery to look like! (Although I guess, to be fair, it’s a Brewing Company and not a Brewery. Are they different? I should probably google that.)
We decided that we’d each do a tasting and split them. A typical tasting is five 5oz glasses for somewhere around $9.00 – you can’t beat that, right? So originally we would have tasted ten beers…except that the girl doing the pours accidentally poured too many – so we ended up tasting all thirteen beers at no extra cost! Win!
Lost Rhino has a really good mix of pilsners, pale ales, IPA’s and darker beers. We went through the tasting in order of the board.
(Obviously the above tasters weren’t poured in the order of the board, and clearly from the picture directly above, I forgot to take the picture until after we had already started tasting. Oops.)
With the exception of select few, The Man and I really enjoyed all the beers. (We’re not IPA fans in general, and I’m not much of a pale ale fan myself – I don’t like when the beer is too hoppy).
My favorites were definitely the Holy Brew Brown Ale and (surprisingly) the Wandering Belgian IPA! I wasn’t surprised about the Brown ale as I favor some of the heavier beers but I didn’t expect to like the IPA! I also would have thought my favorite would have been the Final Glide Hefeweizen. I love me some Hefeweizen. Theirs was good, but not the best I’ve tasted. The Man’s favorites were the Sweet Spot (an unfiltered pilsner), and the Alt – a “chocolately German ale.” I have to say – that one was pretty darned good!
The Kolsch was really good, too – I’d give it a better description, but all I wrote down on my tasting notes was “Great!” So helpful, right?
While we were tasting we perused the food menu:
I apologize for the terrible picture quality. We ended up ordering a BLT (It was served on a pretzel roll, which pretty much sealed the deal), and a caramelized onion and something something flatbread. I wish I oculd remember what it was called, because it was awesome. It had goat cheese and bacon and potato and arugula – I know that much from the picture below! Both paired really well with the beer as well. We were tempted to also order a curried chicken wrap but didn’t want to overdo it…which was probably smart in the long run.
All in all our spontaneous trip to Lost Rhino Brewing Co. turned out to be a huge hit, and we will definitely be going again! If you happen to be in the Northern Virginia area anytime soon you should definitely check it out!
*NOTE: I did not get paid for this post…Lost Rhino has no idea I’m even writing this post. All opinions are my own, I just wanted to share what a great place I thought it was!
Bear Family Strong 