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 […]
Author: ryanbrawn
Lost Shoe Dunkel
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 […]
Lamplighter Profesor Lupulin
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 Park Ave Porter
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 […]
Random Beer Thoughts: October 2020
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 […]
Aeronaut Tiny Moons
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 […]
How I Evaluate A New-To-Me Brewery
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 […]
Gneiss Rocktoberfest
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. […]
Zero Gravity Oktoberfest
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 […]
Schilling Erastus
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 […]