Start Line Brewing, Hopkinton MA

7 September 2024

Start Line was our second visit of the day and we had a flight and food. To start with, the parking lot was jammed full — we had to park around the side — but where the people were, I don’t know! There didn’t seem to be enough people indoors to warrant that many cars, but there may have been other rooms I didn’t see.

As with Bog Iron, you order at the bar and pick up your drinks; food is delivered to the table for you.

Start Line has a larger beer list than Bog Iron but many of the options seemed to be variations on a single beer (lighter, heavier, hoppier, etc.). These are the four I had:

Craic – Irish Red Ale, 4.8% – It was perfectly fine but my immediate impression was that it wasn’t on a par with the beers Bog Iron produced. (This theme continued through the flight — everything was good, but not “as good.”) It was better than some Irish Reds I’ve had and not as good as others, and I’ll leave it at that.

Hayden Rowe Pils – Pilsner, 5.0% – If you order a “pint” of this one you get a 19-oz stein pour. I actually enjoyed it the most of the four simply because it was very good at being what it was without being “like everyone else.”

Hop Load Hazy IPA – NEIPA, 6.6% – Again, this was a good NEIPA but it didn’t have anything to really make it stand out from the crowd. There are so many good examples of this style; I enjoy being surprised and delighted by a great one and this wasn’t it.

Hop Load Citra IPA – NEIPA, 7.1% – Do you see what I was talking about with variations on a theme? There were other “Hop Load” variants on draft as well! This one was supposedly heavy on Citra hops but not so much as to really stand out from the first one I had.

So the beers are decent but not best in class. How’s the food? As it turns out, their menu is surprisingly large (two full pages!) and rather varied. I chose the “Adult Chicken Fingers Platter” with four large and very tender chicken fingers, their own BBQ sauce (excellent!), onion rings, a pickle (unfortunately, with a rind that was too tough to chew), and a very delectable chocolate chunk cookie that tasted homemade.

I almost opted for the BBQ Brisket Sandwich instead but shied away from it as sometimes the brisket you get is far too fatty. Given how good this choice was though, I’ll definitely try the brisket on my next visit, whenever that may be.