About a month ago I was driving through Wyoming with my daughter (on a trip back from Golden, Colorado, which is another post), and decided on a stop at the only local brewery along Interstate 80 west of Laramie: Suds Brothers Brewery in Evanston.

So where is Evanston? In the southwest corner of the state on I-80, only about 5 miles from the Utah border. With approximately 12,000 people it’s the eighth-largest city in Wyoming; beyond that, the most notable thing I can say about the city (besides the brewery) is that it made a good stop for gas and food while traveling east or west along the freeway.

So, let’s dig into Suds Brothers. We stopped mid-late afternoon for a late lunch/early dinner and I checked out the beer offerings. According to the website:

Suds Brother Brewery has been in the business for the past 12 years. We are a great brew pub restaurant and brewery located in beautiful, historic downtown Evanston, Wyoming in the old JC Penny building on Main Street. We are also the only brewery in town with 3 award winning brews.

However, it turns out there’s another Suds Brothers location, in Colorado, which is affiliated, and what the website doesn’t tell you is that the Wyoming Suds beers are all brewed in the Colorado Suds location and shipped to Evanston. This despite the fact that there is a working brewery located at the Evanston location! So, I was hoping for some local beers, but they were all brewed in Fruita, Colorado, some 278 miles away. Oh well.

The reason the waitress gave for not brewing on-premise is that when they fire up the brewhouse, it gets too hot inside. I don’t know if she meant in the brewery, or in the entire restaurant. At any rate, I ordered up the sampler tray to try out the beers.

Here are my (shorthand) notes on each of the eight beers:

• Bizzy Bee Heffe: Unfiltered, wheaty, nicely crisp for a hot day.
• S.O.B. Mexican Ale: Clear, straw colored, mostly clean with a touch of DMS. Light lager style (despite labeled as “Ale”).
• Nut Brown Ale: Nutty aroma, very light touch of roast. Bit of astringency but decent.
• Winter Brown Ale: Tastes old, stale. Dusty malts with no hops. (I did ask the waitress if this was a leftover seasonal, she thought it was brewed more recently…)
• Red Monkey Butt Amber Ale: Decent maltiness, a bit thin with a bare hint of roast.
• Salt Water Sour: Weird aroma… Kind of like brackish water? Tastes okay, mildly tart with a bit of saltiness. Amber color… Like a dark gose?
• Misty Mountain IPA: Not fresh. Bitter without much hop flavor, a tad vegetal. Light malts.
• Eagle Rock Porter: Nicely roasty, lightly sweet molasses, nutty.

Based on my on-the-fly Untappd ratings, the two best beers were the Bizzy Bee Heffe and the Eagle Rock Porter.

The food was really quite good, though I realize I only ordered fried food: a starter order of fried pickles (done right, as pickle chips instead of spears), and then a plate of fish and chips. The fry on all of it was crisp and delicious, not greasy, and the fries were battered and double-fried I think. The fish was moist and flaky, and all around it was a tasty plate.

The atmosphere and decor was about as “western Wyoming” as I would expect, not a bad thing, just lots of wood, with a western saloon vibe peppered with ’60s and ’70s music posters and odds and ends—more Grateful Dead and The Doors than Merle Haggard, interestingly enough. There was an upstairs loft-like area with some video lottery gaming, overlooking the brewhouse.

Overall, my final verdict is that it was a good stop for food and a break after a day of driving (with more to go), but I would love to see the beer locally brewed, especially as several just tasted old and stale.

Suds Brothers Brewery
1012 Main St.
Evanston, WY 82930
(307) 444-7837