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 […]
When you think of winter beers most people immediately jump to big, dark and boozy stouts, barleywines and porters. All of these styles are great and perfect for cold weather, but there are other styles that can also provide rich roasted malt flavor. I am also a big fan of dark lagers, I drink them […]
New England breweries that established themselves before the haze-craze took full effect have interesting decisions to make; do they stick to the hoppy beers that established their brand or do they make the juice-bombs that many drinkers are craving? The decision is probably a little easier for breweries that brew English style or even West […]
I am finally finishing up the reviews of the beers I bought on my trip to Industrial Way in Portland at the end of August! My writing schedule has been a little crazy, so it has taken me a while to get through all of the different beers I grabbed on that trip. While I […]
Today I am going to attempt to coin a new beer term, Blue Chip beer styles. Blue Chip Beer styles are the few styles of beer that are most sought out by beer geeks, and making an amazing version of a Blue Chip beer can put a newer or less renowned brewery on the map, locally or even nationally. It […]
When you ask a beer nerd to name the best breweries in Maine there are a few that will inevitably come up. Hopheads will immediately cite Maine Beer Company and Bissell Brothers, while fans of Belgian styles would point to Allagash and Oxbow. There are many others that would also be mentioned, it’s an incredibly vibrant scene […]
When you travel with a group you always need to make compromises when it comes to an itinerary. I recently took a trip to Portland with a group of 10 friends from college, we had guys travel from 5 different states to attend, and a number of us contributed to the plan for the weekend. A […]
When I make my semi-annual trips up to Maine I try to grab some Maine beers that aren’t distributed in Massachusetts yet. One of the breweries I find myself consistently gravitating towards is Foundation Brewing Company out of Portland. When I first visited Foundation a couple years ago they were just getting started and benefitting from being sandwiched between […]
There is a gas station/convenience store in the center of the small town where I grew up. It was a place where I pumped my first tank of gas after passing my driver’s test, where I would stop to grab a soda or a candy bar in high school and where I bought scratch tickets and Swisher Sweets […]
During my recent trip to Maine I was able to visit an array of breweries, but there were a few I was disappointed to miss. The sheer number of breweries that line the Maine coastline is impressive, and it is hard to balance visits to old favorites along with checking out new spots. One favorite that […]
Hoppy Boston 