Dudleytown Brewing, Windsor CT
13 April 2025
Dudleytown is new to me but it’s a spot I’ll definitely go back to on a regular basis! They’re located in an industrial park kind of area, in new construction, and I’m sure their outdoor patio in front of the building would be very enjoyable in good weather. The inside is rather spacious as well.
At the far end of the building is the food kitchen, Saults, which has only recently opened. You can get a table near the kitchen and have table service, or you can sit elsewhere (which I did, at a high-top near the bar) and order both food and beer from the kitchen and bar, respectively.
Dudleytown prides themselves on crafting each beer as authentically as possible by recreating the water profile from that area. They start by performing a reverse osmosis process on the local water to create pure H2O stripped of minerals and chemicals, then build the desired water profile according to the style being brewed. From what I tasted, this works!
Unfortunately, they don’t offer flights. They do have half-pours so I did three sets of two. As a side note, the half pours seemed to me to be roughly 6oz each and no more than 7; the full pours I saw looked like 12oz or maybe 14 at most.
Left to right (and the other sets will be described the same way), these are:
Soothsayer – Rice Lager, 4.8% – This was a bartender recommendation (one of four) and it was absolutely wonderful. Clean, crisp, beautiful flavor, subtle rice addition — it’s almost certainly the best rice lager I have ever tasted anywhere.
Berried Bones – Fruit Sour, 5% – Another bartender recommendation, this was every bit the equal of the Cranberry Sour I had at Hitchcock Brewing a couple of years ago and it’s a beer I could happily drink all day long. There’s a lot of berry flavor in this beer and the sweetness perfectly offsets the sour, creating a brew that doesn’t make you pucker but that has just enough of the sour to it to keep it interesting.
Ghost – Hazy IPA, 6.8% – This is their most popular Hazy IPA. It was good, with lots of tropical fruit flavors, but the extra flavor was accompanied by extra bitterness that I didn’t appreciate today.
Open Portals, Hazy IPA, 7% – In contrast to the first, this beer (another bartender recommendation) was relatively mild yet still fruity due to the abundance of Citra hops. I can see why this was recommended: it’s a perfect entree to the IPA world for someone who isn’t sure if they like them yet, and it’s an ideal showcase for the brewer’s talents. There is a bitter component, but it’s in perfect balance to the flavor. Once again, this is a beer I could drink again and again.
Saults has a rather varied menu but the pizza was recommended, so I opted for one of the specials, Rabe Pizza. This has sausage, broccoli rabe, red onions, roasted garlic (whole cloves of elephant garlic!), and a chili pesto in addition to the red sauce and mozzarella. It was a bit more than I needed for lunch but was so tasty that I finished everything but the outside crust bits (which I would have happily eaten if I’d been able to).
And finally, my “dessert” beers:
Death of a Saint – dry Irish stout, 4.1% – They serve this on nitro and it as smooth as anything, a perfect Guinness clone. This is the fourth of the bartender’s recommendations and it was absolutely worth having.
Decadent Decay – Stout, 5% – In contrast to the first stout, this one is full of raspberries and white chocolate and that makes for an interesting combination of flavors. I’m not entirely sure still how I feel about the flavors — there’s the berries, the sweetness, the fullness … and this is all layered on top of a traditional stout flavor. It was a good match for the Death of a Saint but perhaps not one I’d like a full pour of necessarily (depending on my mood).
Dudleytown doesn’t have a big tap list — 11 beers (4 hazy IPAs, a pilsner, a rice lager, a wheat, 2 sours, 2 stouts, and 2 hard seltzers — but the beer and the food are both top notch and I’m glad I found them. I was also impressed by the fact that Codes of Conduct for both children and dogs are prominently posted at the entrance and on the website; both are welcome, but parents and owners are also expected to maintain acceptable behaviors. I shall return!