Little more than a single, comfortable and efficiently furnished pub room attached to a small brewery, Full Boar is a feral brewpub at its finest. It is also one of Syracuse’s newest small breweries.
The owners have done everything to escape back to the wild world of creating interesting beer for its own sake, and for the sake of developing a loyal relationship with customers. The offerings at Full Boar are not expansive, but they are all interesting in the way that beer drinkers want them to be. Familiar styles are crafted with a specific touch and a bold eye for expanding possibilities. It is this type of brewer’s vision that has historically pushed American craft beer into a hop-lovers utopia of IPA bliss and has brought public attention to more obscure European styles.
The first available menu option, Full Boar Red Tusk Red IPA, is a fitting introduction to the character of the brewpub. A beer that leans more toward a red ale than an IPA, Red Tusk offers the drinkability of your favorite reds with a subtle nod to its hop-forward namesake. While not exactly red in color, more of burnt amber, Red Tusk is an interesting meld of two styles that intrigues without pushing too hard.
Following the Red IPA is Plank Road Pale Ale, a 5.5 percent golden and cloudy offering that has the characteristics of a flagship beer for Full Boar. Plank Road offers up all the freshness that you want from a pale ale, with only a modestly sharp edge on the hops. You get all the light and dry citrus flavor you want from a pale, and a profile that only suffers from a slightly weakened finish. The softness on the end of this beer may be more of a feature than a bug, as the alcohol is completely masked and the flavor comes through.
The star of the show was, without question, Full Boar 377.3 Brown Ale, which has an imperceptible 6.2 percent alcohol. This Brown Ale is another intriguing meld of two styles from Full Boar, as 377.3 offers a sour twist on the traditional flavor of browns. As sours have become more popular in the past five years, producers large and small alike have done their best to push the previously fringe style of beer onto public palates with varying degrees of success. I’m happy to say that 377.3 is on the high end of the success chart, both in terms of its aims and results.
When the IPA boom pushed Americans toward a new and heavily-hopped range of high alcohol beers, brown ales were left on the other side of the flavor equation. They focused on a more subtle range of malted flavors. 377.3 offers up all the smooth nutty flavors of malt that you get from traditional, commercial browns like Newcastle, but pushes the boundaries of flavor with intense sourness. Unlike some sour offerings, 377.3 does not linger in the mouth and clears nicely with a finish that is smooth and characteristic of the beer’s namesake. Whereas Red Tusk and Plank Road might be slightly short on malt, 377.3 shows that the owners of Full Boar are passionate about including a strong delivery of those flavors with this one.
In fact, Full Boar as a whole is dedicated to intriguing the drinker. As the craft beer market has expanded, so has the knowledge of the consumer and Full Boar rides the line between exploration and catering to familiar tastes brilliantly. Considering that the brewpub has only just started production, the upside for the future seems tremendous.
What we need to do is to support brewers who cater to specific regional interests and palates which are the heart of the craft beer boom. In this way, we hope to encourage them to continue to carry on the independent detailed approach to production, which is the spirit of the feral brewpub.
