Gettysbrew Restaurant and Brewery

No Longer In Business

Update March 2008: the building is deserted, but there’s a sign that says Closed for the season, so it seems there’s a chance they will open again for the 2008 tourist season, but also the sign says they are looking for a buyer. Average numbers given to not skew the ratings (like it matters, as you can see).

Visited July 2006. The new owners, who took over the place in June 2006, had the first beer brewed by them ready in July - same recipes. When we visited they had brewed 3 beers, and was looking into doing some interesting seasonal beers amongst the plans was a 10% Weizenbock. The beers where OK, nothing like the really horrible ratings the last owner and brewer has gotten on the site, so go and sample their beers. The ambience of this place is just fantastic, not much has been altered here since the civilwar, and the place was used during the battle of Gettysburg as a field hospital for the Confederates, and hence it is said that the place is haunted. The owners are extremely nice, though they don’t know that much about brewing, they kept open late for us, as we ended up being the last customers on a late Tuesday night, the landlord even drove us home to our downtown hotel, since we had walked there, which cannot be recommended since it is quite a hike out of town. Anyways the walk on a pitch black street made us see a whole forest full of fireflies - an amazing sight.

DON"T DRINK THE BEER. this is terrible beer. it taste like it has a bactieria infection. it is all lousy. they dont even serve soda. they make their own root beer that is just as bad. If you must go order water.

Awful. Just awful. Simply the worst craft beer ever brewed -- elaboration not worth the bother. If it weren’t for the constant influx of new tourists/victims, it would have gone out of business the month after it opened. The only reason to go is to find out if it’s really as bad as everyone says it is. Spare yourself the agony and take our word for it.

EDIT Dec 2006: REJOICE, for the end may be near. They are currently "closed for the season" whereas this had heretofore been a year-round operation, and they are looking for a buyer. Here’s to hoping they open after "the season" with a new buyer and brewer who knows what the great white hell he’s doing, or absent that, never reopens at all!

This place is in an old barn. And although I’m in the area all the time, their hours are hardly conducive to my getting there more often. Their beers pretty much are lame and the service has been spotty. This place was outshown by the now closed Gettysburg Brewing Co. And now that Appalachian is in town, I have to assume that they’re much better, too.

I didn’t eat there, just went in for a beer so I can’t rate the food. The beers did not fit the style they were named for at all. Not very good, either. The brewers obviously did not know what they were doing - beer was like that of a beginning homebrewer.

Our food took over an hour, and they screwed up the order. No offer of a discount or anything, either. Food was okay at best, beer was mediocre. The only thing that saved it from being the absolute pits was the really cool civil-war building it’s housed in. Otherwise a complete waste of time.

This is a horrible place. I read the reviews on PubCrawler, which most of them were horribly bad. I thought to myself, &quo;Could it really be that bad?&quo; So I went. And it was. I should have just listened to all those bad reviews. The beer is awful, downright despicable. All were way undercarbonated and flat. The flavors were sour and thin. Actually, there were hardly any flavors to begin with. Honestly, I couldn’t tell the bitter apart from the barleywine apart from the dark lager or whatever it was supposed to be. If you were going blind into a tasting with these beers, you couldn’t tell what style they were supposed to be. The food was miserable as well. I noticed a guy working behind the bar, stuffing things into what appeared to be microwaves. And the food on my plate was evident of it being cooked in a microwave. The chicken strips I got were tough and chewy. The spicy chicken sandwich I ordered had the very same strips on it, and the ’spices’ were French’s spicy brown mustard. My wife’s meatballs seemed to be from straight out of the freezer into the microwave and onto her plate. In addition to all that, the prices are just the same as if you went to a restaurant that actually had good food and beer. As I mentioned before, please, do yourself a favor and stay away.