My wife has to travel locally as part of her job, and we’ve started to do a little research to see if there are any brewery stops that are out of the way normally but on her travel route. This is the place where you can rave about how awesome my wife is, you know it’s love […]
Author: ryanbrawn
Barrel House Z RR#23
I’ve mentioned before on the blog that as more breweries open and move into the state it becomes increasingly important for a new brewery to stand out from the pack in some way. A great way to do this is to focus on a specific subset of style of beers to start, like Mystic does with saisons or […]
Aeronaut Robot Crush
I am a sucker for any kind of beer awards, if I see a listing of best beers I’ll definitely browse through and search for local recipients. I know that there can be issues with these types of awards. The crowd-sourced best beer awards tend to favor whalez, there is a selection bias where the reviewers give higher ratings to […]
Kelsen Draken Robust Porter
In the increasingly crowded shelves of a local bottle shop the way you market your beer, including the beer names and artwork, can make a huge difference in sales. Some breweries unfortunately still use sexist art and names, I for one refuse to drink any beer by a brewery that has offensive beer names/labels. I […]
HoppyBoston Best Beers-Winter 2016
One of my New Years resolutions for Hoppy Boston was to make an active effort to buy, drink and showcase more non-IPAs. This was partially motivated by the hype machine that is so IPA-centric, but it was also influenced by how hop-heavy the My Favorite Beers page on HoppyBoston has become. While it has been my goal from […]
Cambridge Brewing Co. Arquebus
It probably won’t surprise regular readers to find out that I am a pretty big nerd. I have a bunch of geeky interests beyond just beer, including science (which is also my job), video games, Star Wars, fantasy novels and board games. So it should come as no surprise that the first time I saw […]
Random Beer Thoughts: February 2017
The Mass Brew Brothers hosted a blind tasting on New England style IPAs and wrote up the results, which included a few surprises. Funny what happens when you judge beer entirely on flavor and not the brand. I was planning on attending this event but had to cancel when my son and I both got horribly ill. […]
Banded Horn Vertumnus
Most breweries tend to stick to a rotation of classic styles for their flagship beers, usually an IPA (or a couple), a dark beer like a porter or a stout, and a lighter offering like a blond ale or a pilsner. These are tried and true styles and it makes sense to introduce the brewery to […]
Deciduous Mosaic Sylph
The decision to focus my reviews on non-IPA styles this year leaves some significant grey areas. Many different beer styles have “hoppy” forms, and some of these have been given the “IPA’ designation (usually for marketing purposes). For example some beers are labeled as hoppy amber ales while others are called red IPAs, even though they are essentially the same style. I think the […]
Relic Spectral Beast
My goal of focusing my drinking and reviewing on non-IPAs in 2017 is much easier in the winter, I love porters and stouts and tend to drink a ton of them this time of year. I know some people drink stouts in the summer and pilsner in the winter, but I’ve always been a fan […]
Hoppy Boston 