At one point in my life I really wanted to be a sports writer. I have always loved professional sports, and while my dreams of playing in the NBA flamed out when I got cut from the middle school basketball team in 7th and 8th grade, I thought it would be awesome to cover the […]
Author: ryanbrawn
Foulmouthed Communist Synthesizer
As much as I love the Boston area beer scene, and as much fun as I’ve had tasting beers in some other US cities, my favorite beer city by far is Portland (the one in Maine, not the pretender on the West Coast). There are a crazy number of great breweries right in the city […]
Random Beer Thoughts: January 2021
After exclamations of joy about surviving 2020 we got into 2021 and January was more of the same in many ways (and even worse in a few). I didn’t really expect life to dramatically change from an arbitrary flip of the calendar, but was hoping there would be a little clearer light at the end […]
Bog Iron Bold Move and Swiss Mistress
I’ve always enjoyed my visits to Bog Iron Brewing in Norton, excellent beer, great people, fun place to hang out or grab some beers to go, just a quintessential local brewery. A trip to visit had been long overdue for a while, my life is crazy with a demanding job and two young kiddos, so […]
Amory’s Tomb Barrel-Aged Saison Ella
Every November I travel up to Vermont with a group of my college buddies, we’ve been doing this trip for many years but it has evolved over time. For one thing, now we each get our own hotel room instead of sleeping 4-5 guys to a room like we did in our early 20’s. I’ve […]
Idle Hands Brunhilda
I have a pretty extensive collection of beer glasses. My workhorse glasses are all custom made and Hoppy Boston branded, but I have an entire shelf full of glasses from my favorite local breweries. Usually by the second time I visit a brewery, or the first visit if it’s a place that distributes and I […]
Foley Brothers Long Beards
We’ve hit the toughest stretch of the year, the holidays are over but we still have 2-3 months of cold and dark weather before things start moving towards spring. One positive note, it’s stout season! I love rich, dark and malty beers. While I enjoy the imperial and bourbon barrel aged varieties of stout, and […]
The Best Beers I Reviewed in 2020: Ranked!
With all of the crap that happened in 2020 I struggled to write diverse content on Hoppy Boston, my goal to write more features and fewer beer reviews failed miserably. Fortunately I still drank a ton of new-to-me beers, and many of the best and most interesting beers I reviewed on the blog. I thought […]
Random Beer Thoughts: December 2020
The combination of some time off from work, so more time to look at social media, and a bunch of year-end pieces means much more content for my (slightly late) beer thoughts and links column in December. Look forward to some year-end stuff from me in the next week or so, I have a couple […]
Bent Water Strange Brew 7
As the popularity of craft beer has grown so has the rise in beer pairings. The most common is food and beer, from fancy multi-course beer dinners to pairings of beer with Halloween candy. While food is an obvious choice there are also beer pairings to go with the seasons, specific weather, special events or […]