Brewery Tour: Cambridge Beer Company - Boston stop 2

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After Sam Adams and visiting friends, we headed up to Cambridge. Our first stop in Cambridge wasn't the brewery, but rather Lord Hobo. 

The Epic Beer Festival in town brought a bunch of beer enthusiasts together, as well as bringing many interesting beers to local bars. Lord Hobo is well known for having an impressive line up of drafts and bottles. They also were featuring a few lines that would rotate through the weekend with beers from the festival. We got to try the Meadowlark IPA from Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project, and a few things from Enlightenment Ales that were fantastic and I completely forget the name of. 

We got to talk to a few people working at Lord Hobo about their upcoming brewery in Wobern and their Boom Sauce IPA that has been advertised for a while now in Beer Advocate. They are still setting up the brewery, so it will probably be another two months or so before the first release.

After finishing our drinks, we headed down to the Cambridge Brewing Company. CBC came on my radar after reading about their Banryu Ichi, a sake beer hybrid. 

We made dinner reservations and didn't get a chance to actually tour their facility. The bar and restaurant are built around their brewery, so you can view parts of it from just about anywhere inside.

We started off with some sweet potato fries and apple cider aoli while we went over their beer list. We got a few tasters to stretch dinner out and to experience as much of CBC as we could. Our flights included the following:

Belgian Blonde- Pepper and almost a green grassy nose. Well balanced between the hops and yeast spices.

Machinery of the night- A 6.5% barrel aged and blended sour. Had an light oxidized oaky aroma, not a puckering sour, and finishes with roasted malt on the back end.

Kafka's Hat- A Simcoe hopped IPA 6%. A nice and very fresh IPA. Light but not quite floral hop character, that I thought would pair very well with onion dishes. 

Tripel Threat- 10% Belgian tripel. Very bready nose. Nice smooth malt texture that was almost creamy. A very solid example of the style.

Vienna Secession- 5.2% Vienna lager. This beer was all malt. The batch may have had a handful of hops in it and it finishes like a floral bread. Not a bad beer but not entirely what I expected from a vienna style lager.

The Grantchester Meadows- 4.9% gruit. Very herbal aroma with a malt backbone and a chocolate nuance.

Blunderbuss Barleywine- 13%. Smells slightly oxidized but still with a lot of hot alcohol. Malty upfront but finishes a bit hot. This would age well in a bottle but feels a little aggressive and young.

I had a nice pork chop for dinner and Lisa got the lobster ramen. Our tiny table could barely hold all the beers and our dinners.

They have a solid offering of food and beers. I could easily see us coming back here. Their experimental beers sound fascinating, I just wish we could have tried a few more of them. The Banryu Ichi hasn't been brewed "in a few years," according to our waiter. I think I will have to attempt one myself this summer.