Sly Fox Brewing Review – A Great Time at The Highline

Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on July 6, 2023.

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When we first visited Sly Fox Brewing, it was for their downtown Pittsburgh location just steps away from Point State Park.

To put it bluntly, we were not fans.

While the beer was true-to-form for their traditional styles, we just generally thought the space was small, cramped even when the patio was closed, and wasn't the kind of place we would make a dedicated trip downtown to enjoy. If you work nearby it is great for a quick round, but we just never found ourselves prioritizing a second visit.

Thankfully, Sly Fox Brewing has opened a second location in Pittsburgh, at the stunning Highline in South Side (close to Station Square right on the Great Allegheny Passage), and has quickly become one of our favorite spots for beer in Pittsburgh!

Sly Fox Brewing at The Highline is Perfect

Sly Fox at the Highline

The Highline project has been a fascinating restoration in Pittsburgh in recent years, and one of the very first businesses announced to go into the building was none other than Sly Fox Brewing.

At first, we thought this was an interesting development since Sly Fox already had their downtown taproom just a few blocks away. But it really takes visiting The Highline to understand why this step up was necessary. The brewery space is huge, the views are incredible, and the Highline complex itself, when finished, will likely go down as one of the best restoration projects this city has seen in recent years.

Views from The Highline

Having a large brewery as a core tenant in one of the most premium spots is just the icing on the cake, and this particular location solved virtually all of the concerns we had at their original downtown spot!

Beer at Sly Fox Brewing

As far as brews are concerned, we first should talk about the three beers we had at our first visit to the downtown location. These were the Royal Weisse (German wheat), the Vulpulin IPA, and a seasonal Christmas Ale for the holidays.

These were all straightforward iterations of their styles, and was respectively one of best hefeweizens we have had in western PA (it'd give some German brews a challenge), a clean IPA that has become a regular in our rotation, and a holiday spiced ale that was quite intense with mulling spices (moreso than any other holiday variety we've had in the past) that we hope to try more of in future Christmas seasons.

While the new Highline location has been featuring more inventive and novel recipes, Sly Fox strikes us as the kind of brewery that sticks to cranking out the best iterations of the classics first and foremost.

The reason we had to intro these beers the way we did is because after having visited the Highline location a half dozen or so times in its first year, we find ourselves going back again and again to the brews we had in our first visit- particularly that absolutely lovely hefeweizen that I have ordered on every single visit.

The Pizza at Sly Fox is of Note As Well

The Pierogie Pie at Sly Fox Brewing Pittsburgh

On the food side of the spectrum, we opted to check out a couple of pizzas during our first visit, the Pierogie Pie and the Buffalo Chicken, both of which are seemingly available at The Highline location now as well.

The Pierogie Pie was pretty interesting in that it featured garlic oil, caramelized onion, bacon, pierogies, cheddar, sour cream, and green onion. The flavors were reminiscent of a white pie with some pretty savory toppings and definitely felt like you were eating a pierogi on the puffy dough.

The Buffalo Chicken pizza followed a pretty typical model for this kind of pie with Buffalo sauce, a cheese blend, chicken, tomatoes, spinach, and a ranch drizzle. While it was not terribly spicy from the sauce, it ended up coming together for some pretty good flavors and would be the pie we'd get again if we were to return here.

While the pizza was slightly on the doughy side from what we were expecting from the pizza ovens, we still quite enjoyed the flavors on the pizza and absolutely love that their Highline location has a rather expansive menu beyond that including wings, sandwiches, and much, much more.

Overall, while we had a less-than-stellar experience at the downtown tasting room for Sly Fox Brewing, we have to reflect and realize that the space was perhaps our biggest concern above all others. With their second location at The Highline, this concern has been removed and, conversely, is perhaps the finest place to enjoy a beer in the city- especially when the weather is great and you can sit outside.

When that happens, we'll likely be there with a Hefeweizen in hand. This one is a winning combination all around!

Sly Fox Brewing is located at 300 Liberty Avenue Suite 100 in downtown Pittsburgh, just across from Point State Park. In 2022, they opened a second location at The Highline at 46 S 4th Street in South Side. The Highline's garage typically offers free parking for visits less than two hours.

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2 thoughts on “Sly Fox Brewing Review – A Great Time at The Highline”

    • Appreciate that. I will say that I will be updating this article shortly. While we are *not* fans of the Point location, we have to admit that the new Highline location is simply stellar and fixes more or less all the faults we mention at the downtown location. We love that spot!

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