Tommy Washbush
The Crunch Wrap Supreme with birria braised brisket:.
The Crunch Wrap Supreme with birria braised brisket: one of Young Blood’s standard hits.
After launching operations on King Street in mid-Awful of 2020, and expanding to Northstreet, the mini food hall, in 2022, Young Blood Beer Co. has entered a new era with its DeForest facility that serves as both a taproom and center of brewing operations. While questions abound over whether craft beer is going extinct, Young Blood’s expansion feels decidedly old-school.
Young Blood isn’t taking the easy route. Its three locations serve somewhat different menus. The DeForest location is arguably the most elaborate, with apps and salads, burgers both meaty and vegetarian, fried chicken, and hot dogs, topped off with house-made pizzas. There is a noteworthy south-of-the-border vibe, which works just fine with what I’ve always felt was Young Blood’s broadly Floridian personality.
Florida, after all, has long been known for some wacky beer trends, and Wacky Beer Trends could be the title of Young Blood’s biography — or a name for one of their beers. Pink Lexus is about as self-evident as they come, a watermelon-heavy fruit punch sour; Fire Banana Cookies is a tropical sour with cinnamon and Nilla wafers. As with most “pastry sours,” you gotta want it, but I wanted it.
I liked the hazy double IPA called Different Beefcake Please, and the excellent Hop Butcher collaboration brew That Tingle in Your Spine (another hazy DIPA) from a collab-heavy taplist in the wake of Great Taste of the Midwest.
Dive into both the fundamentals of Young Blood’s beer catalog and its food menu with an alliterative Sunday special of a single smashburger and fries with whatever happens to be on tap handle 1, for a mere $13.
My beer was a pleasant festbier called Gus Polinski’s Clarinet. The burger had a nice sear without being too flattened, and the special sauce had a little extra something going on. I guessed tahini (incorrectly), but secret sauces gonna secret.
The menu is simple and divided into appetizers, salads, hand-helds and pizzas.
If Mexico, broadly, provides the melody at Young Blood, the Mediterranean sings harmony — a little Latin-meets-Latin. Just as good as the standard smashburger, the falafel burger delivers a crunchy exterior, a creamy interior, and nutty richness. You can find additional Levantine notes in the flatbread plate and the Mediterranean pizza; all of this is vegetarian.
Young Blood knows better than to refuse to play the hits from its other locations, though, and you can find the Crunch Wrap Supreme on the DeForest menu just like at King Street. It is, in truth, basically just a flat burrito; it lacks the interior tostada that makes the original version from Taco Bell an American classic.
Fried cheese curds are executed well, as is the chicken sandwich; I got mine sauceless and added a perfectly fine Caesar salad in lieu of fries. The salad came with an unexpected bonus Caesar dressing on the side. Sauce was, apparently, destined to appear. Buffalo, barbecue, and the ubiquitous hot honey are also options.
A hot dog was nondescript, but a Monday dog-centric special gets diners a discount on the sausage if they sit on the expansive multilevel Young Blood patio with their four-legged friend. Plus, there’s complimentary puppy chow (the sweet treat, not dog food) and a pup cup of whipped cream (for your dog, but no one’s policing that).
Unlike the pre-made Salvatore’s pizzas available at Young Blood Northstreet, Young Blood DeForest makes its own on site. That allows diners to build their own, or choose from a selection of set recipes. The almost-overloaded Kitchen Sink (aka supreme) pizza made a strong case for building your own with a tight toppings set. But I’m relieved to report that the kitchen cut it into squares by default, the ideal delivery vector for a cracker crust pizza. It was a touch spendy, but also felt hefty for a one-size-only pie, so your value assessment may vary.
Young Blood is already such a hit in its rapidly growing DeForest neighborhood I actually bailed on one visit when no two adjacent seats or unclaimed tables were open anywhere, inside or out. It felt like a throwback to be in a taproom with this much activity, and attention to visual detail, but it’s the value-adds that really made the visits stand out.
Young Blood Beer Co. DeForest
4181 Savannah Drive, DeForest
no phone
youngbloodbeerco.com/taproom/deforest
$6-$25
