Bissell Brothers

A Factory for beer drinking.

This is not what you expect from a microbrewery. You walk in and feel like they launch spaceships from here: a command center more than a taproom, all scale and polish and system. The building itself is a beautifully restored hundred-year-old train depot on Thompson's Point, and the bones are genuinely impressive. Not quite what we came for, but impressive.

The beer is great, no argument. The Substance did the job but Swish was the outright hit of the visit, an 8% double IPA that earns its reputation.

But you are anonymous here. Someone seats you, someone else brings the beer, someone else sells it to you, and the brewery flavor you actually came looking for gets lost somewhere in the handoff. The merch attacks you like Disneyland the moment you turn around.

Then there is the parking. You pay for it, and feed a meter, which means you decide upfront how long you are going to stay. Deciding the length of your visit in advance is a strange way to run a taproom. Somebody did not think that one through.

The food is okay. Order two plates, because one will leave you hungry. We came early, so take this lightly, but there were more employees than drinkers on the floor. It had the feel of a place running its machinery before the crowd arrives.

Good beer, really good. We will say that twice if needed. But this did not feel like a brewery with a tap room. It felt like a factory for beer drinking. A well-oiled one, but too mechanical for an experience we were after. And don’t forget to pay for parking.