Pizza’s a draw at Ballston Spa brewery
Rochester. Generally built as a white pizza topped with pickle slices for tangy, acidic crunch, the trend spawned Big Mac pizzas topped with lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion and “special sauce” (usually Thousand Island dressing), and fried-pickle pizzas at state fairs surely competing with the mighty battered and fried pickle.
At Speckled Pig Brewery, the dill-pickle pizza is drizzled with hot honey and ranch dressing in a superb tangy, acidic and sweet combo. It’s a win for fans of salty, briny flavors shot with a “swicy” sweetness. With it, sip the Pink Over Blue gose for its puckering tartness cut by a pinch of salt or knock back the crowd favorite Restitution, a thirstquenching cloudy, citrusy New England IPA. Restitution is the only brew you’ll find on tap in other venues. But with each beer limited to seven or 14 double-batched half-kegs per fermenter, they aren’t anxious to move too much product, acknowledging that small-scale production allows for a more experimental approach.
Pizzas don’t end with pickles. A “Nashville Hot” loaded with chunky Nashville hot fried chicken, dill pickle slices, hot honey and ranch drizzle delivers the tang and acidic crunch of the pickle pizza with more heat and salt. It’s the table favorite. My Boy Blue, another white pizza, is topped in blue cheese, caramelized onion, thinly sliced Granny Smith apple, smoked bacon and rosemary honey drizzle in a sweet-salty umami smash. If pickle is divisive, the old pineapple on pizza debate will be revived by the 3 Lil Pigs, which pairs pineapple, bacon and pepperoni over mozzarella and housemade tomato sauce in a riff on Hawaiian. More conventionally, you’ll find meatballs on The Troublemaker, and The ’Rita is a classic marg.
Heid co-owns the brewery with his wife and Kelly and Randy Elliott, their real estate agents turned-business partners, who had purchased the vacant building, and the Elliotts’ son R.J., a graduate of the business school at New York University. Heid, a native of Delmar with an expansive homebrewing history, and his wife had been looking for suitable space for a brewery in Saratoga Springs, but the appeal of Ballston Spa, as a smaller community and more affordable location, landed them in the center of town, where Monday night trivia, Saturday live music and a recurring “Dine To Donate” Thursday fundraiser (benefiting community groups like Ballston Spa High School sports teams) have seen them roundly embraced. After opening last September, they raised capital with a $100 Founders Club campaign, with all investors — who are the first to taste new brews — proudly named on one wall. And let’s not forget the town’s natural mineral water. An Iron Springs Amber Ale honors the spa town’s healing springs.
Community shows up in the Coffee Planet Peanut Butter Porter, a collaboration with neighboring coffee shop Coffee Planet, resulting in a smooth stout with pronounced coffee, caramel and butter notes after four-months aging in bourbon barrels. An earlier Planet Coffee collab produced a Cinnamon Toast Crunch Coffee stout that took 24 boxes of the cereal to brew. New brews come from the capable hands of head brewer Terry Halstead, an industry veteran who joined the team, bringing experience from Adirondack, Northway and Schmaltz brewing companies. Those less into beer can sip housemade hard seltzers flavored with fruit extracts. Pizzas can be made gluten-free or vegan.
Regulars might order a flight of four brews in 5-ounce pours, but pros will share two to sample two-thirds of the menu. Flights are so popular on weekends that staff have the wooden frames racked and ready while busy servers, jokingly dubbed “flight attendants,” soon earn their wings.
On a Monday night, most tables are full, and on the weekend a pizza is fired every two minutes in the gas- and hickory-cherry wood oven, sometimes getting through 300 doughs. Heid has tweaked his recipe with assistance from Mark Hopper of Fiero Forni, the company that made their pizza oven, and a local who spent 25 years on the West Coast. Heid’s dough blends highgluten flour and 00 flour for a chewier crust than 00 alone, with a rise of several hours, if time allows. Its flavor is mild with little yeast tang but consistent with a puffy crust, lightly blistered undercarriage and enough stability for many toppings. Classic Neapolitan-style pizza would be too floppy, and Heid knows upstaters favor a New York-style pizza that can handle a one-finger fold. Personal pizzas cut into four are enough for one person and good to share if you order two or more.
The Speckled Pig already feels like an established local. Beer, pizza and competitive trivia? Go pig or go home.