Last night I took a walk down to a new beer bar/restaurant in New Haven, Cask Republic. Cask Republic resides on 179 Crown Street. Some of the online info says 181 Crown Street, but that is the Wine Thief's address. This location is right next to a parking garage, the previously mentioned Wine Thief, and right around the corner from Prime 16. I was surprised to hear about another quality beer establishment opening up in New Haven, but incredibly happy about this. We now have Cask Republic, Delaney's, Mikro, and Prime 16 in a few mile radius. Plenty of options to go get a quality draft beer. Now the only things I have left to complain about are the lack of a quality brewpub and a package store with a large craft beer selection within walking distance!
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I didn't hear anything about this place opening until last week. They currently do not have a full food menu available, but all their beer lines are up (in the mid 50 range + plenty of bottles). Cask Republic is supposedly a sister restaurant to the two Ginger Man restaurants in Greenwich and Norwalk. I have not been to either of these places, but they have a good reputation.
On walking in I was surprised about the size. It's not a huge, place but is pretty big and feels spacious. We we're greeted at the door by a friendly, but clearly green employee who took awhile where to seat us in an empty restaurant. The seating seems geared more towards groups of 4 or larger as there were only a few 2 person tables throughout the room. We sat in the down stairs section that is right by their walk in fridge. The walk in fridge is a fairly interesting feature. You can see all the kegs they have hooked up through the windows as well as the well organized bottles that are available. The decor is mainly dark wood with sparse beer paraphernalia on the wall. The place is kept a little too dark for my taste and we had some issue with flickering overhead lights. Overall it is pretty nice place inside, nicer than Prime 16 or Delaney's in my opinion.
The full food menu wasn't available, but I was aware of that going in, so it wasn't a surprise. I ended up going with their pretzel roll sandwich which had pork and sauerkraut with a dipping sauce and freshly cut french fries. I was impressed, very nice pub food. The sandwich prices look like they'll be in the $10-15 range with entrees being slightly more expensive.
The beer menu was the most impressive part to me. All quality beers on tap. Quite a few Captain Lawrence, NEB, and other new england breweries on draft. I ended up geting a citra dry-hopped New England Brewing Co. Sea Hag on cask, Captain Lawrence Espresso Stout on nitro, and a New England Brewing Co. Imperial Stout Trooper. All were very good and I can only hope that they develop a larger cask selection over time the cask Sea Hag was a great start! The prices for most of the american craft beer seem reasonable $5-8 for a 16 ounce pour or 12 ounces in some cases for the bigger beers. I was pretty shocked at the price of the Belgian offerings, lots hovering around the $12 range. The bottle prices were sky high as well. The biggest example I could pick out was the $29 bottle of Imperial Stout Trooper, which cost $12 from the brewery and they were selling a 12 ounce pour for $6! One nice thing they were doing was serving small portions of Brewdog's distilled spirits Sink the Bismark and Tactical Nuclear Penguin for only an arm and not the arm and a leg buy the full bottle would cost you. One other quibble was the serving temperature of their beer. It seems that since all the kegs are in the walking in fridge they are all kept at the same temperature. This resulted in the Stout Trooper we ordered being ice cold. This took quite awhile to heat up and this brew is much better at warmer temperatures and I feel bad for people who get this served so cold and gulp it down before it has a chance to reach it's maximum taste.
Overall I will be visiting Cask Republic in the future and I look forward to their expanded menu and great beer selection.
Serving temperature of the beers was my biggest complaint as well. Not sure how they can fix this if all of their beers are in the same cold room. Once they get their menu dialed in and fix the lighting, it will be a nice place though. The larger seating area will will it a nice alternative to Prime 16.
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