This is usually my favorite week of the year. Every year on the weekend before Thanksgiving I take a trip to Vermont with my college buddies, we’ve been doing this trip since we were in school and it now involves a stop at Hill Farmstead. Later in the week I would be headed up to […]
I have a pretty solid collection of glassware from local breweries. I have a glass from nearly every brewery that I visit on a regular basis, glasses from many places that I have visited and regularly buy their beer in distribution, plus a few other impulse buys and random additions to the collection. I know […]
Sometimes it can be really difficult to separate the art from the artist. Despite a life spent loving epic fantasy, from Tolkien and Lewis to Martin, Jordan and Sanderson, I didn’t get into the whole Harry Potter craze when the books first came out. I was probably just a little too old and it didn’t […]
Flying Dreams Brewing Company was founded by owner/brewer Dave Richardson, who spent years honing his craft at the Gardner Ale House. They launched a production brewery in Worcester in 2015 and also sold beer to go, but the space lacked a taproom, which quickly became a necessity for a local brewery. As they were searching […]
This is going to be another relatively short beer thoughts/links column, it seems like many of the outlets I rely on for content are struggling with the pandemic, and many breweries are just trying to get by. Also, my time is stretched pretty thin right now, so I have less time to search online for […]
With everything happening in the country this year it is no surprise that discussions on inclusion, opportunity, diversity and social justice are taking place across many industries and platforms. I know these discussions are happening in biotech and pharma, an industry where I work as my “real job”, and another place where certain minority groups […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I evaluate breweries recently. I think some of it comes with the pandemic and the struggles that breweries are facing right now. I am trying to support my favorite local places as much as I can, which means I need to think about which places belong on that […]
I’ve visited more breweries in Maine than any state other than Massachusetts, and it isn’t even close. While Massachusetts is home now, I spent the first 22 years of my life in Vacationland and during normal times I make frequent trips up north to visit friends, family and for alumni events at my alma mater. […]
For a while it seemed like the Oktoberfest/marzen style was losing a lot of steam in American craft beer. Pumpkin beers were all the rage and wet-hopped beers were appealing to hop-heads, so many breweries were passing the idea of brewing Oktoberfests as their fall seasonals. Fortunately for all of us who love the marzen […]
When you ask beer fans about their go-to fall beer styles you’ll probably get 3 major answers; marzen/Oktoberfest, pumpkin beers, and IPAs (from the hop heads who drink only IPA all year long). A couple other styles might trickle in, brown/copper/amber ales or lagers, maybe porters/stouts/dark lagers as the weather gets chilly, and the wet-hopped […]
