East End Brewing – Monkey’s Uncle

No my good camera isn't around anymore, yes I kept a lot of bottles from the trip.

Monkey’s Uncle is a big beer. Very big. 10% ABV and tastes like it. But it’s more than just a strong beer trying to get your attention with it’s boozy qualities. This is a weizenbock with personality and charisma, as indicated by the badass pipe and fez combo the label shows off.

East End Brewing produced this bad boy sometime prior to summer 2011, and there were bottles left on their PA shelves when we passed through town. As was our tradition on the road we tried to let it sit for a few weeks before sharing it with hosts in a city miles away from where we acquired it. Rather that would have been our tradition if we had followed those guidelines, but instead we drank it down with folks right there in Pittsburgh.

It was served into pint glasses after a day or so in the fridge, probably around 40 degrees at pouring but I let mine warm for about 10 minutes before I started in on it. The pours were golden colored, a more opaque version of that hazy hef straw color that makes the liquid appear almost syrupy. Each of the four glasses had an inch or two of white lacy foam on top, and it smelled fantastic. Fruit and alcohol smells swirled together to make a sweet and intoxicating bouquet. The weizen notes of clove were there, but the alcohol smell was tempering them somewhat.

The smell did not betray the taste, as it has strong and imposing flavor like you would expect from a weizenbock. The alcohol gives way to the wheat body of the beer, which makes for a smooth feel on the way down. The bite of the beer comes mostly from its sweetness resting lazily on the back of my tongue, forcing a slow drinking mentality which is good considering the ABV.

This is a brew that would be great at a tasting event or as a slow sipper for a night when you don’t want to go with a standard high ABV brew like Barleywine or IIPA. It’s also unique as one of the only styles of high alcohol wheat beer that I’ve seen commercially available. It could even be used as a transition point for someone who likes wheat beer to move toward high gravity brews. All in all a solid entry into the thin Weizenbock field, and one that I would drink again.

There’s an upstate New York, and they make rad beer – Pt. I – Brewery Ommegang

As we left Quebec I think the bittersweet emotions were mutual, and even though I told the border officer I had missed the US the entire time we were gone the reality was a bit less straightforward. While the language barrier is minor thanks to the excellent Canadian English language education, a definitive separation between the cultures and customs in the US and French Canada still exists. In our case, the border crossing meant parting with some amazing French-inspired brews that rarely make it out of French Canada in exchange for the ability to find a bathroom a bit more easily. Luckily as we drove away from the tree-lined road I knew we were heading toward upstate New York and some of the best beer in the states.

This is how you make an entrance!

Our first destination was Cooperstown, where Duvel’s American step-brewery Ommegang operates a brisk business in delicious Belgian-style beers. We arrived in the early afternoon and attached ourselves to the rear of the formation on one of the tours. The guides were informative and fun, explaining most of the equipment in just enough detail to be interesting and fun but not encourage the know-it-alls on the tour. I’m never sure exactly what to expect when an intrepid tour-goer asks a seemingly innocuous question, but more and more I’ve noticed folks asking questions only to answer it themselves, which can be funny when viewed through the right eyes.

Every brewery should have a crest and a coat of arms - then when the brewery wars come I can just pick out the people with Clydesdales and The Rockies on their tabards and stab them first.

The tour begins outdoors, with a view of the silos and fermenters. The fermenters are huge, and you can see what awesomeness having a bit of cash on hand can buy – I can’t say I wasn’t jealous (who doesn’t want to make a 6,500 gallon batch of their favorite homebrew recipe?) I’ve got a Belgian Sweet Stout that’s just begging to be made!

The world's largest Klean Kanteens

After a quick jaunt inside we were introduced to the brewhouse, a sweet system churning out beer almost non-stop. The lab and some smaller fermenters and brite tanks live in the same building, along with another sign of the good times – a centrifuge filtration beast that pulls miniature particulate matter out of your beer so you don’t have to do it with tweezers at home. The brite beer appears to get packaged only in the building next door, though there were a few random containers around that were likely for experiments, special friends, and to make me wish I was a better burglar.

Where the magic meets the road - the brewhouse.

The packaging hall is warm, with a long bottling line that is used for both 12 oz. and 750 ml offerings. The kegger sat lonely in a corner waiting to make out with the next keg that will come it’s way early on Monday morning. Since all the machines were off the hall was deadly silent, but I could imagine the lines humming away and the immense amount of racket that must be kicked up when everything is in full swing.

This keg stack is only 1/6 the size of the warehouse, so there are 6 times as many full kegs inside. This makes me happy.

Following our walkthrough of the buildings we saw the outside of the refrigeration building, where everything is kept in storage waiting for trucks, as well as the kegs-in-waiting piled high on pallets in the parking lot. That led to the obviously best part of the tour – samples poured from 750 ml bottles of each of the year-round Ommegang offerings, which included Witte, Rare Vos, BPA, Hennepin, Abbey, and Three Philosphers. I’m going to take my cue here from the Aleheads and list each beer individually for quick reference.

But before the beer talk - beer porn!

The Liefmans Cuvee is added to Three Philosphers for a little fruity kick, but is on tap a la carte in the taproom - is good!

Witte – A thin straw colored pour from the 750 into a tiny plastic taster glass on the tour still gives off a pretty impressive bouquet of citrus and spicy yeasty smells. The taste doesn’t miss either, truly a head-on interpretation of a classic wit that tastes as it should.

Rare Vos – Intended to be Ommegang’s every day beer, the 6.5% amber ale was so good I went ahead and ordered myself one in the taproom as well. A terrifically balanced amber ale with strong carbonation makes for a happy time for me, a dark ale drinker with a taste for Belgians.

Belgian Pale Ale – The only Ommegang offering I’ve had before on tap was from a bottle at the brewery, the reverse of my normal situation. That having been said, the beer is still excellent and has pronounced Belgian yeast notes that many Belgian pales lack. It seems that you can either make an IPA/PA and ferment it with Belgian yeast (OK results usually) or craft a recipe around the Belgian style and add some additional hops (better results to my tongue) – this is the latter.

Hennepin – My first introduction to saisons a few years back, this farmhouse beer is still among my favorite versions of the style. Yeasty and funky with just the right balance of malt and bitterness you can’t go wrong with Hennepin on a hot day.

Abbey – The original Ommegang offering is dark brown with all the hallmarks of a Belgian Dubbel – sweet, earthy fruits, mellow finish, and the closest you’ll get to wine people admitting beer is amazing.

Three Philosophers – A quad clocking in near 10 percent and with residual sweetness from one of Belgium’s best sour beers, it’s easy to say this beer is fantastic. An enormous amount of sweet aromas and flavors head your way with each sip, from raspberry and vanilla up front to fig and dark cherry in the finish. The beer is like a juggler with something always in the air and something else landing on your taste buds – simply a delight.

And with that we made our way to the tasting room for a Liefmans’ pour and Rare Vos to accompany some Belgian-style frites. The menu in the taproom looked good as well, though we were mostly in it for the brews. The tour tasting also has a nice little array of pretzels and Ommegang-flavored spreads available to go with the beer samples – pretty awesome.

If you’re in Cooperstown for any reason don’t miss Ommegang – a fun, free tour that includes good info along with good beer and good food – what’s not to like?

As we drove away and headed toward Oneonta to stay the night we started to get excited for more of Upstate’s finest, and Ithaca was not a far way away. Until next time – Cheers!

Vermont – There’s a reason it’s shaped like a beer

Just do what the sign says and no one gets hurt

As we bore down leaving Maine I realized we wouldn’t make it to Long Trail Brewing in Bridgewater Corners – but it is a great brewery and I did have a few of their beers before we ever made it to VT. There is such a strong Long Trail following outside of VT that it made the top 10 lists of quite a few of the folks I’ve run into on the trip, particularly the IPA – can you guess which beer I tried first? The IPA I first tried in Philly on tap – it’s immediately sweet and smells deeply of citrus and malt – suffice to say it smells damn good and the taste equals the smell. The one thing about Long Trail’s IPA that stands out to me is the body and richness of the beer – it is strikingly bold and both the malt and hop flavors are extremely pronounced and linger long after each swig. Craft beer quite often operates on a mantra with powerful flavor as a core tenet – so much so that it is usually referenced as what makes a “craft” beer – and in the case of Long Trail IPA the brew delivers in spades.

Where once stood a small garage/barn, now there is only beer.

But I digress, back to Vermont and the beer we tried while actually in-state. Our first stop was Hill Farmstead, a brewery off the beaten path and a few miles up a dirt road from the nearest town. If you’ve never been to Vermont, it’s among the more beautiful places to visit in the country. The entirety of the state’s scenery is lush, as though a Bob Ross episode went wrong and all he had to work with were shades of green. The rolling hills and infinite tree lines welcome you to a place that seems at once serene and yet constantly in motion. This scenery gives way to a former family farm in Greensboro Bend with a grundy tank lying on it’s side still on a pallet in the yard and a few pallets of kegs and the old mash tun on the other side of the house.

They have to go somewhere folks.

The farm aspect really appealed to me, and Vermont seems like the perfect place for this kind of authenticity in brewing. Saisons are probably the best known “farmhouse” beers, but in Europe where there used to be distinct lines between beers produced by professionals and those made by farmers the lines are slowly blurring as over the last 20 years farmhouse beers have made their way into the mainstream. This was also the first brewery where we spotted a guest beer we recognized from our trip to Europe two years ago – De La Senne was among our favorite local brewers in Brussels and they were on tap here at Hill Farmstead.

The only place I had seen Taras Boulba since Brussels in 2009!

Tasty taps tantalize thirsty travelers.

We were only able to try two beers during our visit – Double Galaxy, which is an Imperial IPA made with Australian Galaxy hops and Everett, a Porter that is robust in every sense of the word. If you happen to make it up that way, be advised that Hill Farmstead is a cash-only establishment and without that sweet dough you’ll be leaving without their sweet nectar. The beers were both good, or at least I enjoyed the small taste I had of each, but it’s hard to critique a few ounces of beer or really analyze it too deeply. What I can say definitively however, is that Hill Farmstead is a place for innovation and stretching what beer should be – whether using hops rarely seen in the US or expanding on a style near and dear to beer hearts everywhere the brewery simply comes down to two guys working their asses off to bring you innovative brews.

And did I mention it's beautiful there?

We left the farm in good spirits and headed into town, Waterbury specifically, past the Ben & Jerry’s headquarters and to the local pub and brewery. The Alchemist is a brewpub that will be expanding to open a canning line for their flagship brews in the coming months. We took a quick spin past the building after our time at the pub and it looked to be progressing quite nicely if I do say so myself. The beers were quite good, and the brewery is entirely contained down below the seating for the pub so I will now inundate you with brewery glamour shots.

If you don't grain out in time they beat you with the mash paddle, or maybe that's just my homebrew club...

On the set of Alien 7

When I visit a brewery and there are this many side projects in the wings I just smile.

Last Inspected '91, Last Awesomed '11

Oh, and they have barrels too - it's just how they roll.

When we arrived at The Alchemist we were greeted by Jen who would be our tour guide for the brewery and our general purveyor of tastes of delicious beer. She set us up with a thorough tasting of the offerings on tap at the pub and we sat down to work through the list with a plate of fries topped with cheese curds and jalapenos (which by the way, are essentially the food version of magic).

Alchemist Family Portrait '11

The light beers at The Alchemist that we tried often followed a similar theme – well-hopped with a solid malt profile to exhibit relatively aggressive and strong hop flavor for the style. Light Weight is their beer 101 brew of choice, made with pils malt to be refreshingly light in body and hopped with Cascade and Hallertau to bring citrus notes and a clean finish. If you know someone in Vermont who isn’t sold on craft beer yet, send them to Alchemist and witness a conversion. If on the other hand they refuse to be convinced, you might want to order them a nice glass of Shut the Hell Up, a brew concocted to answer the age-old craft beer question of what to give someone who refuses to decide what they want. At only 3% ABV it is infinitely drinkable and though the low ABV means hop oil isn’t as easily extracted the brew is hopped strongly and powerful citrus notes stand out again. Hefty Weizen is a 6.2% wheat beer with tasty banana notes that hit immediately and subtle clove and boozy aftertastes that smooth the sweetness out on your palate. Donovan’s Red is named for an Irish restaurant in town and is exactly what I look for in an Irish style red ale – medium alcohol, medium body, mild hop presence, and malty as hell – this red ale is excellent.

Arty and Tasty - what more do you want?

Next in order were a pair of saisons – one made with yeast borrowed from Hill Farmstead and the other a gluten-free version of the saison style. Both topped 7% alcohol and the booze definitely shows a bit in each. Celia’s Saison is the gluten-free version and while good in my opinion for a gluten-free beer, it just wasn’t quite my style – made with sorghum and curacao orange peel the gluten-free aspect just stood out too much to be as enjoyable for me as barley beer, though the dry-hopping definitely ameliorated some of the difficult sorghum flavors. Sass Mouth was the other offering, and again it wasn’t the style of beer I would be likely to order again. Extremely rustic and with mineral and metallic overtones it leaned more in flavor toward IPA with regard to hopping and had barnyard spicy flavors from the yeast. While certainly an extremely interesting brew, there may have been too much intensity for me to really enjoy the individual flavors going on in the glass.

So this is what the table looks like when we drink - turns out I'm a freaking nerd.

At this point in the evening we moved on to the Final Four of our tasting and bid farewell to Jen and were handed off to Cory and Joel at the bar. The entire crew at The Alchemist was amazing, and you could tell that the place mattered to them, which always makes an impression on me. We started with Wild Child, an American sour beer that utilizes a sour mash and barrel-aging to attain a Rodenbach-like sourness and malty body. The orange brew harbors a background warmth that gives away its nearly 8% ABV but never overpowers any of the subtle tart and fruity flavors – this beer is absolutely in the top 5 American sours we’ve had on the trip this far. Holy Cow is a session IPA with mild dry-hopping and medium body that make for an easy drinking IPA that would be an instant candidate for deconstruction in my opinion – a tasting of this beer in its current form, and brewed with individual hops side by side would be extremely educational. Rapture ratchets up the flavors of the Cow and brings home the East Coast IPA flavor – earthy, boozy, and hearty the brew finishes with a hint of chocolate and dirt that I’ve now learned to associate with Galaxy hops. I finished the evening with Pappy’s Porter – while not a standout for insane flavors or weird procedure this porter was a great endpoint as a traditional and scrumptious example of the style that was smooth enough to compete with the lingering hop flavors and win. Also a local favorite, try the red and porter 1/2 and 1/2 in a pint glass and thank me later.

Vermont treated us well and we were appreciative of the time we spent drinking before we headed to a campsite to enjoy the night sky. On our way out the door we ran into a craft beer drinker from upstate NY finishing a cigarette on the bench in front of the bar. We chatted for a few minutes about where we should explore once we made it to NY, and what we had seen and done so far before he imparted a bit of wisdom. Walking back into The Alchemist to rejoin his family on vacation he turned while holding open the glass door and looked me in the eye, “Get a fucking job” he said with a sly grin. “Not anytime soon”, I told him.

The Breweries of the Great Northeast

I just finished an article on r/beer that directed my attention to the economic impact of microbreweries on local economies and what it might indicate to be successful business models in other sectors. As we’ve traveled across the country we’ve run into a fair chunk of small brewers living off the local land so to speak. Hess Brewing in San Diego does a large portion of its’ business right out of its’ own doors, pouring pints for locals who come to visit their modest brewing space. Barrier Brewing in Long Island distributes their kegs to the thirsty NYC area themselves and keeps afloat on their own hard work.

In other areas of the country this is impossible because of local laws – the South is notoriously bad, but the Northeast has a few blue law related issues left as well. Difficult liquor boards can put the squeeze on brewers of all shapes and sizes but even through this the Northeast is flourishing and a number of microbreweries are older than the average.

Our tour of the Northeast started in Portsmouth, NH where we intended to visit Smuttynose Brewing but ended up across the street at Portsmouth Brewing Company which had a few Smuttynose beers on tap and is a brewpub in its own right. We arrived later in the evening for a quick round of local brews before we headed back home for the night. The sister brewery of Sumttynose had a ton of beer on offer, so we of course opted for a sampler of their wares and enjoyed a flight that included Dirty Blonde, Black Cat Stout, a Red Ale, Oatmeal Stout, and their Wit, along with Stone’s Ruination and three Smuttynose offerings. The taster was literally every beer on tap, from the pub or not, which was a departure from most places we’ve been. The Portsmouth beers shared some overarching characteristics – all were relatively light in body barring the Oatmeal Stout, and all were lightly hopped for a West Coaster such as myself. None stood out as a blow you away beer, but I don’t think that’s the intention – this is a solid line-up of pub beers that will satisfy for a night of drinking without striking you as bland.

The Smuttynose beers were a bit different, each with a bit more character and a bit less staid. The Star Island Single was noticeably hazy and light, with smells of citrus and spice up front. A solid entry but not a show-stopper this brew would be great on the front porch with a few more bottles waiting in the wings. The Shoals Pale was again quite good but lacking in hop for my taste. It’s an amber medium-bodied ale that delivers a nice malty backbone with a nice earthy hop flavor though, and I would drink another. The best of the bunch in my opinion was Old Brown Dog, not surprisingly an ale right up my alley. A light brown/dark amber depending how you look at it the body of the beer is perfect, lightly roasty with tasty notes of chocolate and burnt sugar. The hop profile is more in line with my expectations, though that makes sense given it’s a brown ale – I’m still a West Coast hop nerd, but damned if I haven’t cozied up to the East Coast style too.

We pushed on from NH and arrived at Allagash in Maine unscathed, but driving a suddenly shiny car that had been power washed by the clouds. Likely among the better known breweries of our tour Allagash are renowned for their Belgian-style ales and one-off interpretations, not to mention their sour program. We prepped for our visit with a healthy lunch to soak up any tasting pours and drove to the brewery post haste.

A view from the front yard of the brewery - also all breweries should have yards.

The White that started it all for me.

The tour began in the tasting room with a few pours of the ‘Gash line-up which were all from their year round list – White, Tripel, Curieux, and Black. The White is just as I remember it, crisp and refreshing, the first American beer that made me realize we could put out brew that competed with international powerhouses. The tripel is as faithful as can be, intricately fruity and yeasty, corked and caged for your pleasure. Curieux is this same brew aged in Jim Beam barrels for a bit of added ABV and a lingering sweetness that exceeds the Tripel. Black is an earthy dark ale that is deep and mellow with a medium body and a complex mix of estery smells. Dark chocolate and coffee are lingering smells in this roasty brew.

The Jim Beam Barrels were being repurposed as furniture during our visit.

The Allagash tour is fun, moving from the tasting room first (which helps on most tours!) to the brewhouse, which was in operation even on the Fourth of July. After the brewhouse it migrates to the fermentation area, with kegging and packaging nearby as well.

More beer for me, and I guess you too.

Keg, Keg, Keg, Keg, Damnit Jim get off the line!

After the meat and potatoes of the tour, you get the dessert – the sour room. A chilly locker denoted with an Allagash barrel end mounted above the door welcoming you to the magic room. There isn’t much I can say about it, just look at the pictures, drool a bit, and enjoy.

Oh.My.God. So sexy.

All About Harpoon

Dear Reader,

Over the last few months I’ve entered about 50 posts into the annals of history by scrawling them on the cave wall that is this blog. They have been met with nearly universally mild interest, a smattering of attention, and a fair amount of kind words. The days in which my blog received the most hits were tense for me as I had written about Dogfish Head Brewing in Delaware in what I felt was an honest way. I had been mildly disappointed by my visit, not because of the quality of the beer or the service, but rather because I had built up the experience in my head before arriving and upon arrival it wasn’t everything I had hoped it would be.

I had written more, but decided it would be a disservice to Harpoon Brewing in Boston to include it here – suffice to say that everything at Harpoon reaffirmed my faith in the craft beer industry that had been so long in the building phase. Harpoon is what I want my local craft brewery to be – independent-minded, environmentally-conscious, and goddamn delicious.

This means that, technically speaking, we've arrived.

The tour begins at the entrance to the brewery, with bike racks that bear the Harpoon “H” and doors built to look like bottlecaps guarding the pipework for their outdoor fermenters.

Fermenters and piping, disguised as bottlecaps - quirky and functional.

Biking and brewing, the match made in heaven!

From there you make your way inside and up the stairway to the taps, store, and tour jumping off point. Each tour ends with 30 minutes of uninterrupted tasting from the taps, so as you arrive you are greeted by the previous tour making their way through the tap list with greedy smiles and minor stumbles. And you’re jealous, trust me. Each session of tasting ends with a ringing bell that lets the drinkers know they’ve got one pour left and they best make it a good one.

Happy folks at the end of the tour - 30 minutes of beer can solve most of the world's ills 🙂

Let me take a moment before I dive into the specifics of the tour and the brewhouse to touch on the atmosphere of Harpoon. Everyone is smiling – patrons, tour guides, guide dogs, everyone – and the feeling of the place is infectious. When you enter the upstairs area between the folks enjoying their free pours and the crowd of people waiting for their turn the excitement of the place is palpable – encouraged, aided, and abetted by the staff who seem to genuinely be having a good time pouring beer and giving tours. It seems like a minor detail until you run into places where the folks aren’t into the beer like you are, and it does harsh the buzz so to speak.

Cheers!

The tour itself starts on the brewing platform, with 140-barrel containers surrounding you as you sip on your first taste of the tour – in this case a bit of UFO Raspberry held in front of the immense boil kettle. The Raspberry and Hefeweizen are both delicious, as are the White and Pale UFO offerings. The UFO series are among my favorite discoveries of the trip, each unfiltered and showing what lacking filtration does to a slightly different beer style. While Whites are typically unfiltered as are Hefs, the Raspberry and Pale are fun twists on the same theme, and both work well. After a bit of time spent up top, the crowd descends toward the packaging area and storage of the brewery.

Their motto is all about priorities - first things first.

This is where something magical happened. Literally the most unexpected occurrence of our trip. Something that would’ve made the folks worried about insurance concerns cry themselves to sleep. Out tour guide did the following things, in exactly this order. He took a spray bottle of sanitizer, and quickly doused a spigot fed from the fermenter halfway down the row. He then had a torch handed to him, and blasted the spigot to rid it of any lingering doubts of contamination. Then, green IPA was poured into a pitcher and passed around the group so everyone could taste a green beer and get an idea of the brewing process.

He's pointing out that it's not in actuality green - I was astonished.

To those of you reading at home who aren’t brewers – go here, do this, drink green beer, because holy hell does it give you a great idea of what pours into your glass and where it comes from.

Beer + Pitcher = Smiles all around

While this may give some lawyers at home nightmares, for me it was a dream come true. I’ve had everything in the homebrewing process from wort, to uncarbonated beer, to shitty swill that I would pour down the drain sober, and yet this was on a completely different level. This was commercial beer, unfinished, and offered to the public as part of an ingenious outreach program – the first beer poured on your return is the finished IPA, maybe ten minutes after the green beer and of course soon enough to give an understanding of the changes happening in those big metal conicals.

What I can only assume is a pallet of UFO Hef for staff, which of course makes me jealous.

After a quick tour of the bottling line, a gorgeous view of the packaging area that made me weak in the knees (see below) and a few stories about the company and brewery we all headed back to the brewing platform and into the tasting room.

The building was built to withstand WWII era blasts, and now it makes beer - change for the better!

We made our way through the tap list available in the tasting room – a quick rundown here if you’re making your way out that is hopefully helpful. The Cider is a nice jumping off point, light and crisp with no major notes to put you off. The IPA is solid, hoppy, and tasty – and considerably earthy compared to the grapefruit laden West Coast IPAs I’m used to, while the Belgian IPA hits some strong Belgian notes but does miss a bit with the hops I thought. The BIPA could be a great beer, but it doesn’t quite hit all the notes our Belgian loving co-pilot was expecting.

The Anniversary Ale, Rich & Dan’s Rye IPA, was quite good with a solid spicy rye note immediately followed by what initially tastes like sweet hop and finishes dry and bitter. The Leviathan series tugged at my heart-strings, with an Imperial Rye that matches spicy and bitter up in a deathmatch in which only I can be the winner, and an Imperial IPA that hides a 10% ABV surprisingly well under notes of tart, bitter, and citrus. My personal favorite was the Munich Dark ale, a malty brew that was nicely balanced with a mild bitter finish. A tasty dunkel aimed almost specifically at me, the beer reminded me of sitting in my local corner bar in San Francisco sipping a Kostritzer and answering trivia questions poorly.

If you want to experience craft beer, you’re excited for the idea of good beer making its way into your routine, and you’re in the Northeast – Harpoon is waiting for you – what are you waiting for?

A one-off for those who love beards

If you read this blog, there’s a 50% chance we’ve met in person, and a 50% chance you’ve not seen me since I left on this odyssey, so here’s a photo of the new follicles I’ve been sporting. We were without internet or phone service in French Canada, but are back in upstate NY now and more posts are headed your way sooner rather than later.

Cheers!

Why you should go to Connecticut

Being from the West Coast my only exposure to Connecticut and its destinations has been through friends who either have visited or are from there. The conversation typically goes something like this.

Me: So what should I see when we’re in Connecticut?

Them: Um. Well, there’s … um … stuff

Me: Stuff? Where?

Them: Um. I forget I think.

And so it was with that hearty invitation that I headed across the border and into CT. I mistook one brewery for another, and we sat in wicked commuter traffic going to Willimantic, which meant waving to New Haven from the standstill freeway knowing I would have to be driving back to it the next day. Genius, I am.

After a few hours we arrived in Willimantic, dropped our stuff, and made a beeline for Willimantic Brewing Company, a brewpub Reddit had recommended a few months earlier. It seemed like a good stop to head to right after NYC to wash a bit of the big city out of our pores with some small town life. The theme of the town, and the pub, is frogs – they adorn bridges in town and make up a big chunk of the main sign for the pub as well.

Yes these things are on the bridge through town. Yes it's kind of creepy at night.

We grabbed stools at the pub around 9 or so, and sat down with taster sheets ready to fill them with five beers of our choosing. The co-pilot sat with a sheet filled with saisons and wheat beers, and was able to get all but one of her choices. I filled mine with the “core” 5 beers on the tap list, and only one was still available. I found out that at the end of each month, and we were there the 29th, the taps are taken over by the limited offerings that were brewed throughout the month. Each beer has a release date on the menu, but you might be able to go score a second date with your favorite brew at the end of each month if you’re lucky. So I enlisted a bit of help from one of the servers and filled in a list with mostly local beer, and one brew from out of state. Some of the breweries I had never heard of, and some the locals had never heard of, but most of the beer was good.

The in-house wheat beer had a little funk going on, and I inherited that from the co-pilot. I wasn’t able to place it from only a sip or two, but it might have just been a bit funky – that occupied the bottom of my list. The top spot was saved for the in-house IPA, there were two on tap but the bog-standard every day Late Night IPA was the one I dug most – A number of the recipes make use of older styles of malt and hops, and the Challenger hops in this brew made for a refreshing East Coast style IPA that fit the bill for the evening.

The bar itself is pretty awesome as well – a converted mail room that used to serve the town years ago, the mail slots still exist in some spots and have been replaced by tap handles in others. When I imagined small town brewpub in my mind, this was exactly what I pictured, and sitting in a CT brewpub chatting with a few locals as they tried their first Stone beer (that was a face worth remembering) was the kind of experience I’m on this trip searching for.

As we left Willimantic for New Haven I was dreading traffic, but we made it without incident and arrived in time to swing by New England Brewing in Woodbridge. Emboldened by my visit to Barrier, I went ahead and walked in to say hello and grab some photos.  The brewery is small but industrious, and they had three offerings available to taste for anyone who wandered into the brewery to look around.

The barrel is in the way, but the motto speak for itself.

If you’re after brewhouse photos head over to Flickr and check out the New England Brewing section – the brewery is pretty awesome and there is Elvis paraphernalia everywhere – apparently because one person thought the owner was into Elvis and it snowballed from there. The beers here were awesome, and even though I had tried Sea Hag IPA the day before in Willimantic, I indulged in another taste. They had canned a ton of Sea Hag earlier in the day and the pallet was resting on the floor, so I wandered over near it to snap some photos and took a sip of my taster. This is a good IPA, solid with a malty body and fresh hop flavor, but a bit too much pine for my taste. The flavors are all pungent and strong on tap, and the freshness is what struck me about all of the New England beers – the entire line-up smacks of strong flavors and fresh notes and while they lack in subtlety they rely on their forward flavors.

Gandhi-bot follows directly in this logic, and while it was my third taste I’ll write about it now if you please. This is a direct outreach from the Sea Hag in powerful flavors, a double IPA that melds strong alcohol and strong hop flavor beautifully into a burnt orange elixir. While the mouthfeel and body are middle of the road, the hop flavor and malt bomb are what you sign up for when you get the waiver for this beer, and it blows it away on both counts. A better-than-solid DIPA that cleans up nicely after its hop explosion and is drinkable enough for a few cans – yes please.

668 is the last offering from NEB that I got my hands on, and while it came form a can rather than the tap it didn’t suffer at all. A strong Belgian-style pale with distinct hop citrus notes and smooth malt body this ale is right up my alley. This is the third of the NEB beers to have a slightly orange tint to the pour, and a good deal of hop on the nose – flavorful and up front the brew hits hard but cleans up nicely and the finish means no rest is needed for another sip.

As a side note, NEB also has some of the best can art I’ve seen including 668’s confused neighbor illustration and Gandhi-bot looking like he’s about to breakdance. Check out some of the can art and enjoy a solid brew, that’s what summer is all about.

Hopefully we’ve given you a few reasons to make your way toward CT this summer, and when you make it there at least you won’t be hurting for a drink.

Cheers!

Bars and Brews in NYC – A weekend of craft beer

Good afternoon folks, on this warm 4th of July weekend I thought it would be a good time to sit down and have a little chat on the state of craft beer in NYC. We just finished our stay in Brooklyn a few days ago, and though the thrust of our tour across the continent is visiting breweries, we spent more time in beer bars during our stay in the Big Apple because the breweries either don’t offer tours or were full up. So Brooklyn Brewery and Sixpoint were not visited, we made it to Barrier in Long Island, and we spent a good deal of time in bars both in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

We got a few tips from locals of places to hit up, and the two that kept coming up were Pony Bar and Blind Tiger Alehouse both in Manhattan. Each had a board of about 20 beers, and to its advantage Blind Tiger also had a few cask offerings available the night we were there. Both featured a similar tap board, with a few offerings from Sixpoint, Brooklyn Brewery, Pretty Things, and Captain Lawrence. As I don’t get any of this beer in San Francisco I pretty much dove into the lists as much as possible going with a sampler and a pint for myself at Blind Tiger and another few pints when we arrived at Pony Bar. The co-pilot played it conservative, sticking to a pint at each bar and only lighter beers. I made my way through Pretty Things Jack D’or, Baby Tree (hers) and American Darling – a saison, quad, and lager in turn. Each of the beers fits nicely with the ale project theme, a bit off of the style but still drinkable and pleasant, only Baby Tree was a bit much for me with a strong alcohol flavor and not much “quad” flavor. I can’t say when it was brewed or how long it’s been in a keg, but that may have had an effect. The Brooklyner Weisse was a pleasant wheat beer, though I expected a bit of sour from the name and it was a straight ahead hefeweizen. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing that stood out either – a good hef for a warm day. I moved on from there to the Sixpoint stout (diesel? the board just said stout) and enjoyed the dark roasty notes of the beer after the funky and sweet brews that preceded it. The stout hit a lot of good notes, but was lacking a finish that had punch – not necessarily a bad thing if you’re looking to drink a few beers.

From that tasting at Blind Tiger we walked up the Highline toward the Pony Bar, past Anthony Bourdain shaking hands for the camera, and arrived at the bar parched and thirsty. I couldn’t resist a Festina Peche upon arrival, but turned to the Captain Lawrence Brown Bird for my second beer – a light brown and only about 5% alcohol this fit the mood of the place perfectly. Standing in a crowded Manhattan bar drinking a mild brown ale as the sun began to go down and contemplating my walk back to the train to Brooklyn where I knew dinner would be cooking soon, I felt extremely at ease. The trip to this point has constantly fluctuated between hurried and lethargic. Time to walk through another city and be a tourist rather than a local was refreshing if only for a moment.

The day of our departure from Brooklyn we aimed Red toward Long Island before we made our way toward Connecticut. Barrier Brewing in Long Island is once of those places you just don’t miss. I hadn’t heard back from the brewery (in fairness there are only two of them) and was debating getting on the road north sooner rather than later, but I had heard too many good things about this little brewery to pass it by. I’m glad I chose to head out their way, because they couldn’t have been more welcoming or more helpful.

Brewing up a single barrel, that’s 31 gallons, at a time Barrier is among the smallest breweries we’ve visited and also has maybe the widest variety in it’s roster. I tasted through a fair portion of the available offerings and still didn’t scratch the surface of what they have available – but more importantly everything I had was good. And good at minimum – most were somewhere between great and god damn! The Mollycoddle Mild I started with was perfect for carrying around as I shot photos of the brewery, pleasantly biting on the finish with some floral hop notes that complimented the low alcohol and malty flavor. I moved from there to Gosilla, the salt-spiked coriander-laced version of traditional Gose on offer at Barrier. This beer is one you can’t miss – a surprising take on a classic style it lacks the overly salty throat-drying effect of other versions of the style I’ve tried, leaning more toward a bright hop flavor married to coriander as an up front flavor, and mellowing to reveal a subtle salty background finish that cleans up the aftertaste and leaves you wanting more. This is a beer to sip with friends and enjoy at a tasting party before moving to the hard-to-drink stuff. I then moved onto the American Red, which brought me back to the West Coast with its hop profile and aroma – drinkable and moderate in alcohol a solid red ale all around. The Ruthless Rye IPA was the other of Barrier’s beers that stood away from the already impressive pack, with a perfect amount of spicy rye notes to undercut the strong hop flavors of the IPA this beer is exceptionally drinkable and enjoyable.

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We had an awesome time in New York, and while we didn’t ever come across the shrine to beer, Toronado type of bar that I’m sure exists somewhere in NYC, we still managed to drink tons of local beer and see an amazing brewery in its early stages – all in all a successful weekend.

Cheers!

Reddit Love and the rest of PA

After our time in Philly, we made our way east with hoagies and Tastykakes in tow, ready for any challenges ahead now that we had treats. And so we burned into Phoenixville a small town near Valley Forge and home to Sly Fox Brewpub’s second location. The original location in Royersford was recently sold to employees to help make some cash available for a production brewery soon to go into planning. You can read more about it here. But if you aren’t here for the brewing news where we travel, you’re here for the beer so let’s get to it. We started with a pint of Pikeland Pils and went with the lunch special for the day which was a chicken sandwich with BBQ sauce and too many other things to remember. The sandwich was good, and the Pils was prefect to wash it down. Sometimes food and beer just work together, and these two shared a sandbox well. The Pils is extremely light, but hopped well and has a pleasant bite and finish that is reminiscent of traditional German pilseners. Next I tried a few samples of different offerings, and of these the stout on offer stood out at only 3.6% ABV it was surprisingly light for a stout but seemed perfectly quaffable for a bright sunny day outside. I decided to make the move to the Gold Rush Lager, a CA steam-style beer that I was hoping would remind me of home. Living in San Francisco I’ve been spoiled by the widespread availability of Anchor Steam, and while the Gold Rush doesn’t quite match up with the king of commons it is a great example of the style. Medium amber hued and medium bodied this beer is right down the middle in every way, even the fermentation happens between typical temperatures. The balanced approach with the beer makes sense though, as the style doesn’t lend itself well to swings toward too much malt or hop, and this brew walks the tightrope successfully.

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After our night spent in Phoenixville exploring Wegman’s we drove further west to Downingtown, home of Victory and some of the only PA beer I’ve been able to get in California. We sat down to a sampler of 10 different Victory beers and a pizza in the pub, and I promptly started making my way through the beers. The Lager was good, but not something I would order out at a bar, and Victory has so many other amazing offerings it felt like a bit of a shout-out to their roots which was cool. Golden Monkey was among our favorites, and a favorite of the area locals too – we ran into more people recommending this than any other Victory beer. Donnybrook Stout was our second low alcohol stout in as many days, and it fell just slightly short of Sly Fox’s O’Reilly Stout to me though it went well with our pizza which was a bit odd. The Festbier was fantastic – exactly what I wanted from the style with a sweet malt body and hearty hop presence. The Headwaters Pale stands out as both a great pale ale (which there seem to be few breweries left making, with IPA taking over as the beer of the decade) and as an awesome fundraising effort for the local water system Victory utilizes in their beer. The Weissbiers on tap were both good, though I couldn’t remember which was which writing this, I think we preferred the Summer Love ale to both. And we also tried two single hop ales, which while notable for the differences between the hops weren’t meant as independent offerings as much as comparison beers I think. The malt body for the beers was solid, and really made it possible to taste the differences between the varieties of hops.

After our tasting we took the short but sweet tour of Victory’s brewing operation – the tours are shutting down this Sunday the 3rd, so we were glad to be on one of the last public tours of the brewery. It was a short tour, understandably since they’re brewing as you make your way through the brewhouse – the turnover of beer has forced a move to 24/7 brewing which means the choice basically came down to giving tours as they brew or stopping them altogether. Personally I think they made the right choice ending the tours – you can tell walking through that the space is maxed out with production levels where they are, and getting a large crowd through the facility would be a huge headache. The tour was cool but short, and we kept our heads down and our arms inside the ride at all times.

After leaving Downingtown we headed back to Philly for International Reddit Meet-up Day, and r/philadelphia played host to some San Franciscans for an evening. On the 57th floor of Liberty Two we nerded out for a few hours, lost at scrabble, drank homebrew to our hearts’ content, and generally enjoyed our time with our fellow geeks. We got our geekdom out of our system in one fell swoop, and didn’t have to think about beer for a full evening which while not a relief certainly was welcome.

So cheers to Philly, r/philadelphia, and the brewers of Pennsylvania who kept us joyful for almost a full week – from Yards to Victory we enjoyed every minute!

Much ado about Philly

As we drove across the Ben Franklin Bridge into Philadelphia I felt a bit relieved, as we were finally making our way toward a brewery I had heard back from. A fair bit of this trip has been about growing up when it comes to interacting with others on their turf, as I can be somewhat uncomfortable if I don’t feel in my element. On the other side of that coin, once I am in my element I usually am overly comfortable, so there’s that.

Anyhoo, we made our way toward Yards in Philly where we sat for a few minutes and ordered pints before meeting with the ops manager for the Philly brewery. We spoke a bit, sipped on our drinks, and he offered to send down Tom Kehoe, one of the founders of Yards and as it turned out, a damn nice guy. We each tried the other’s beer – mine being the ESA, or Extra Special Ale and her’s the summer Saison only on offer a bit longer. Saison first – it had a nice bite of farmhouse and properly spicy hops, but in my few sips I couldn’t really place it well among other Saisons, which is a good thing in my book – there’s nothing wrong with complex flavor combinations being introduced to more styles. As for the ESA, it was being served on cask at the tap room, and I immediately decided that was the way to go. It’s a significantly malty, wonderfully British beer, that hits all the notes a solid English should without falling into the trap of becoming dull. Aromatic hops and a moderately higher alcohol content make for a beer more pleasing to the American crowd I would think, and certainly more pleasing to me. While I enjoyed each bitter I tried during my time in England almost without exception, they do tend to run together and this modified take on a classic style makes for an excitingly enjoyable pint.

We also toured the brewhouse, shown around by Tom himself, and heard about the plans for expansion as we have at so many breweries around the country. Demand is growing at a rapid pace, and craft beer is preparing itself to take a leap in not only amount of beer produced, but notoriety on the national stage as a political and social issue. Craft beer represents a significant segment of the population as drinkers, and a significant investment in American small business compared to other industries. Now, here are the obligatory brewhouse photos!

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After our tour we made our way through a flight of the Ales of the Revolution, and finished with the Love Stout, made with oysters in the boil. The presidential beers were good, but the one that stood out to me was Franklin’s Tavern Porter which is based on an original recipe calling for molasses and spruce tips. The sweetness of the beer and the mild bitter notes really do call back to the past of beer, and one can imagine drinking the mild brew sitting on a porch in Philadelphia not far from Yards’ front door 250 years before as horse-drawn carriages pull all the ingredients to form a city, or sitting in a tavern across from Franklin’s loud oration about freedom being upset you can’t just enjoy your ale in peace. The love stout was another stand-out beer, smooth and strong, the definition of the word stout itself.

And with that we made our way to Manayunk, where we would post up for two days and nights. We headed out the next morning early in search of breakfast, and I would be remiss if I don’t mention Mugshots, where we pointed our vehicle on the recommendation of our hosts Alana and Jesse. The egg sandwich with guacamole is magic, enough said, so go there – eat it – smile – in the order of your choosing. Our next stop was meant to be Philadelphia Brewing Company, but after not hearing back and knowing that they are a production brewery, we decided to do the next best thing and head to South Philly Tap Room to drink their beer. Walt Wit was her choice, and it was a good one – probably my favorite of their beers. It’s light and was perfect for the heat we were sitting in, though the color wasn’t as yellow as I expected but more of a light amber, but it could have been the bottle. We also tried the Fleur de Lehigh and it was an interesting bottle – a sort of medium gold color, with a strong herbaceous scent that put me off a bit at first. A fair amount of foam gave way to a concoction that was hard to place, a bit Belgian and a bit pale, but also a bit herby and a bit medicinal, the brew hit my tongue in different spots with each sip and I didn’t have it figured out by the time I finished the bottle. We also had Kenzinger on tap at SPTR, and it might have been my least favorite of the PBC beers, though I can see it’s place in the world as a solid lager replacement – a Kolsch hopped like something else can definitely do wonders in getting Bud drinkers in the door. And so we wandered away from SPTR, having met a fellow Redditor for a beer and with more plans for that evening.

The Nodding Head was in our future, a local favorite of Philly folks and our couchsurfing hosts to boot, we made our way toward Center City for a beerstravaganza. The website for Nodding Head shows script on Google reading, “Taking over the world 7 barrels at a time” – and they mean it. The beer is quite good across the board, mostly faithful interpretations of foreign and local styles, with a few miscreants added to shake up the board. 60 Shilling is their Scottish Ale, entirely faithful to the style and damn good on top of that, it’s a malt bomb with low ABV that most folks expecting a Scotch Ale will be surprised by – no it’s not supposed to be boozy, no it’s not supposed to be hoppy, it is what it’s meant to be – amber, malty, and smooth – that’s it. I also went for the Berliner Weisse with woodruff syrup, and again it was true to the style, sweetly tart and mildly green after the syrup addition. The syrup and tart liquor blend to make a pleasant concoction that is light but flavorful enough to enjoy a pint. The grog also makes a good case for itself, a solid English Brown with all the extra bold flavors that were left out of the 60 Shilling, it follows the same recipe as the other brews by taking a foreign recipe and bringing it to Philly. I’ll only mention Will, a beer fermented with local wild yeasts, as I didn’t try enough to really fully comment on it, but it was an interesting flavor at the least and a snifter would be a good end point for a tasting of their beers.

That finished our time in Philly, and as we drove west we already knew we would be back in just a few short days – but that’s a story for another time.

Cheers!