Life has been especially crazy the last couple months, I didn’t even publish a beer thoughts/links article in October and I honestly don’t have a huge amount of content for November (so I’ve added the two months together). The biggest issue is that I have limited time on beer social media, which is where I find most of the articles I share. I am hoping to pick it up going forward, I will do my best, but if I can’t find the time I might pause this series. We’ll see how it goes, but in the meantime here are some of the interesting news and notes from the last two months in local beer.
Downeast Magazine has a profile of Danny McGovern, who has been a mainstay of the Maine craft beer industry for 30 years. Lake St George Brewing isn’t too far from my parents place, I am hoping to check it out on one of my trips north next summer.
Bull Spit Brewing is opening up a second location in Maynard, in the taproom that was previously occupied by the now defunct Battle Road Brewing. This is actually very close to my house, so I really hope they have more luck than the previous tenants. The space is huge and perfect for a brewery, and there is absolutely demand in the area, especially if they can make reasonably good food and keep a family-friendly vibe for lunch and early-dinner service.
WBUR has an article on PakTek can carriers, the problems with recycling them (don’t throw them in your regular recycling!), and the awesome work being done by local groups to get them reused or properly recycled.
Hop Culture has a list of the best breweries in Connecticut. While these lists are always incredibly subjective, there are some very highly regarded places represented. I lived in Connecticut for 2 years while I did my post-doc (~8-10 years ago) and found the beer scene to be really lacking, but I don’t think any of these breweries existed at the time. This also serves as a reminder that I need to make my way back to CT sometime in the near future and check out some of these breweries!
The North American Guild Of Beer Writers announced their annual awards for beer writing recently. I didn’t win again, probably because I didn’t enter, to be honest I don’t think the last year has been the strongest for the blog for a number of reasons (the number one being my utter lack of time and energy to devote to beer writing). Maybe next year!
The Portland Press Herald has an article on Tom Bull, who operated two lager-only Maine breweries before he needed to retire due to health issues, and the huge impact his beers are still having on lager brewing in the state. I definitely need to get my hands on some of the Baltic porters mentioned in the piece.
Stasia Brewczynski has a guide to a perfect day of eating and drinking in Portland during the off-season. She admitted that it was especially hard to limit the number of brewery recommendations with so many amazing options in the city.
CasketBeer has an interesting piece on the problems of long commutes for brewers, especially in parts of the country where the notoriously meager wages in the industry don’t align with high costs of living in many metro areas. I imagine this is a huge problem in metro Boston, and probably even worse in places like New York and San Francisco.
Local pubs the Asgard and Kinsale are officially closed for good. This isn’t a huge surprise, but it sucks, I’ve enjoyed both spots over the years. Damn pandemic.
That is it for this month, I promise to try and do better in December, and I might actually hit that goal with my extra vacation time during the month! As always, thank you for following @HoppyBoston on social media and for liking/sharing/commenting on my posts. I hope everyone has a great holiday season with many delicious beers!
Hoppy Boston 
