Try the ‘Blue Haired Lady’, and other tips to get the most out of Nantucket’s only brewery
You wouldn’t know it was the Wednesday after Labor Day by the size of the crowd at Cisco Brewers.
It’s raining, which shouldn’t help, but that doesn’t seem to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for what a flier bills as Nantucket’s all-day party.
“It’s better when it rains,’’ says one longtime Cisco goer, stepping off the van that runs to the brewery from the center of town.
A visit to Cisco is also a visit to Nantucket Vineyards and Triple Eight Distillery, whose storefronts flank a courtyard where beer, wine, and spirits drinkers mingle wearing trucker’s hats and tanks. On this day there’s a lobster-themed food truck and an oyster-shucking outfit biding time until we get hungry.
But first drinks. Beer at Cisco mirrors the island’s laid-back vibe, starting with Grey Lady Ale, a 4 percent ABV wheat beer brewed with Belgian yeast and spices. Brewed in the English style, Whale’s Tale Pale (5.6 percent ABV) is bitter and quenching. Sankaty Light Lager (3.8 percent ABV) is named after the famous lighthouse and goes down way too easily.
Rare is the Cisco visitor who comes exclusively for the beer. On the way over the van driver suggests we order a Blue Haired Lady — a Grey Lady topped with a 1.5-ounce blueberry vodka floater — and so of course we do.
“It’s insanely popular,’’ says the bartender, adding that he thinks GQ magazine featured it, and he’s right.
Distinguishable from a regular beer by a layer of Smurf blue, the Blue Haired Lady is pie in a glass, the brew’s spicy banana notes melding with the sticky, sweet spirit. Less successful on its own is the Sarawak Saison, which drinks as a heavy-handed, malty mess. Madaquet double IPA is a limited-edition treat.
Cisco is kid-friendly, especially in the afternoons when live bands play and the patio leaves lanes for strollers. I head back for another Blue Haired Lady just as the rain turns to a downpour, and the bartender makes room under his tent for several of us to snuggle up and stay dry. The bathroom line is just as communal and maybe even more Nantucket.
“I produce movies so I rent porta pottys for sets out in Los Angeles,’’ a guy waiting for the men’s room says to someone he doesn’t seem to know well, with one eye on the porta pottys out back. “It’s actually crazy how they’ve modernized it. But I’m not a porta potty kind of guy.’’
