Wild and Radical Radius: Desert Edge Brewery-Central City SLC

Radius is a special Desert Edge Seasonal made with ingredients only found in a 100 mile radius from the brewery. This includes local wild hops! This is no small feat considering most hops are grown in CO, Pacific NW, or in another country! Many malts also come from across the ocean! When you drink a beer that had malts delivered from overseas, hops grown a thousand miles away and then was bottled, packaged and shipped to your liquor store that can be a pretty hefty carbon footprint not yet accounting for all the energy spent in the beer making process. Lucky for us quite a few local breweries are environmentally conscious.

I made a special trip to taste this beer. Picking up the imperial pint (which is super cool according to Kyle who is probably the only person reading…) the aroma was all garlic. The flavor was garlic, onion, even a little spicy garlic undertones. The finish was super juicy and the bitterness is solid but very soft.

To go with my garlicky beer (a flavor characteristic from the wild hops) I ordered their mushroom burger with swiss cheese. It came with caramelized onions and garlic aioli. On the side was their house pasta salad that has a delicious citrusy dressing with feta cheese and roasted vegetables. Not listed on menu, I was surprised to see 1/3 of the plate covered with potato chips (Yuk!). The burger was VERY good with one fail- the bun. Since this is the common denominator in all burger fails I’ll give them a pass. To their credit it was sourdough and tasty, just falling apart in minutes. Maybe I need to take a burger handling class since this is what I have to say about most buns.

I enjoy going to Desert Edge over some of the other downtown breweries because it is in Trolley Square. They have some good always beer (utah pale ale is my favorite) and their seasonals always impress. No trouble parking, and you can walk around to different shops if you aren’t ready to drive. On my way out I was eyeing a delicious dessert counter. I will be back!