March 31, 2015

Brewery Tour: Harpoon Brewing - Boston stop 4

March 31, 2015/ Evan

On our final day in Boston we managed to squeeze in a trip to the aquarium, a brewery tour, and seeking out one last lobster roll before catching our flight. I'm not sure we were prepared for how epic the Harpoon Brewery is. Through the front doors and up to the next level is the beer hall.

The bar runs the entire length of the beer hall, with a register at the entry way. The tickets for the tour are a little booklet about the brewery. We grabbed a few tasters and pretzels while waiting for our tour to start. The pretzels are made fresh and also made with spent grain. We got a plain one with two mustards and a cinnamon and sugar one with two different amazing dipping sauces.

The kegging line and the canning lines can be seen through the windows that make up the one wall of the beer hall. The tour starts at the far end of the bar. After donning a pair of safety glasses you are lead onto the catwalk where our one tour guide is hanging the sign. In the first few steps of the tour you start to see how large Harpoon really is, which isn't too difficult when you are two stories up on a walkway.

The entire facility used to be a Navy dry dock and Harpoon has outfitted it well for their needs. Above you can see the kegging line. They have elevators to raise empty kegs and lower filled kegs. This is just the first 5 steps on the tour before heading into the actual brewery.

The tour walkway leads into the tasting room and the brewers office, but you can see that there is a walkway to all of the fermenters and bright tanks. The tour goes through the tasting room and out onto the brew deck for the traditional ingredients talk.

After checking out the brew deck, it's back to the tasting room for the fun part. Being the first tour on a Monday at noon, the brewery was pretty quiet and our tour group was fairly small. For the tasting, you could choose anything they had on tap. Their radler was fantastic and not overly sweet. They also had a cider made with their house ale yeast.

Behind the tasting bar they have all of the bottles from their 100 Barrel Series. These are typically small one off batches. One from this series was on tap for our visit, the Braggot Rights- a braggot blend of a double IPA with wildflower honey. It is a very well balanced 8% braggot, doesn't taste heavy or alcoholic making it go down a little too easy.

At the end of the tasting portion you have to leave the glasses you were using in the tasting room, because you can't carry them back across the walkway. We were told we'd get "fancier" glasses back out in the bar area. On the way out you get to checkout the bottle packaging line, where you can also see quality control taking place. After that you are lead back to the entrance and return your safety glasses. Here we were told, by both tour guides, to get our booklet/ticket stamped at the register and to get our tasting glasses from the gift shop. Harpoon has another brewery in Vermont, where if you tour both in a year they give you an IPA glass. We got our stamp, then really confused the girl at the gift shop asking about tasting glasses. I was in no way trying to stir things up, and if anything we need to start getting rid of all of the glasses we have. I felt really bad when the girl at the register called her manager about how they don't give tasting glasses out but you can buy them. The manager, who's name I did not catch, was very nice about everything and still gave us a tasting glass. That's just how awesome everyone at Harpoon is. Thank you for the fantastic tour and putting up with my ridiculous questions.

On an unrelated note, If you need a few pint glasses I might be able to help you out.

March 30, 2015

Brewery Tour: Boston Beer Works - Boston stop 3

March 30, 2015/ Evan

If you search for breweries in Boston, Boston Beer Works ends up being listed a few times. I figured it was a local bar chain and wasn't actively seeking it out. While wandering to a T station near Fenway Park, we stumbled across a little brewery in the window. Putting a brewery across from a baseball stadium makes perfect sense.

Our bartender Andrew gave us the low down on the place, and actually gave us a little tour. They have a fascinating business model for a brewery. They have six locations, each with their own brewery, and they each help make sure all core beers are on tap at all locations. During baseball season the Fenway location brews their Hub Light almost around the clock to keep up with demand.

Their fermenters line the far wall from the entrance and the bright tanks are in a walk-in cooler behind the bar. For the most part, the beers served on tap are directly from the bright tanks.

The Hub Light is a good light beer with almost zero hops. The Back Bay IPA is a nice east coast IPA, a little fruity with a solid hop bite upfront. They have a Rosemary wit, which we were both wary of, but it is very well balanced between the yeast character and the rosemary. We really wanted to try the Golden Road which is a Golden ale made with Mosaic and Sorachi ace, but it was unfortunately out. All of their beers are very accessible and not too outlandish. It was an interesting place. I can only imagine how slammed they get during games.

March 25, 2015

Brewery Tour: Sam Adams - Boston stop 1

March 25, 2015/ Evan

This past weekend we ventured up to Boston. Winter still wasn't over, but we didn't let the weather deter our plans. We woke up early on Saturday for the morning mash in tour at the Sam Adams Brewery.

This is their only tour you can book tickets for, but keep in mind that it starts at 9:40am. None of the tours cost money, instead they take donations for local charities. Your ticket is a fresh label and you walk through a gutted tank to the brewhouse.

The group was lead to a small room next to the barrel room. Here our tour guide Jessica gave us the background of the brewery and the usual ingredient show and smell. This was the first brewery tour I have been on where they tell everyone to take a few hop pellets and crush them by rubbing your hands together. After everyone is covered in hops we are lead back into the brew house. This is the smallest of their three breweries, the other two being in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The tour group seemed rather large for such a small brewery. In Boston they do more experimental beers, especially the collection stored in the Barrel Room.

After the brewing process overview, the fun begins: day drinking at 10am in a brewery. The tour group is lead into the tasting room pictured below. On one wall they have a frame with a bunch of their Great American Beer Festival medals, on the other pictures of Jim Koch and other brewers. Jessica described the process for evaluating beers as pitchers of Boston Lager were passed around to the group. Boston Lager is definitely not a corn-infused macro brew, but it will never be the first beer I reach for. The second of the three tastings was Cold Snap, a belgian wit. Middle of the road yeast profile for a wit with a lot of spices thrown at it. It ends up a little all over the place, but is still an approachable beer.

The morning mash in tour is known to have special beers at the tasting portion. For our third and final tasting we got to try the 26.2, a gose brewed for the Boston Marathon. Jessica described it as a gatorade beer. For the style it wasn't too salty, very smooth and mellow. I have to say it surprised me. I think it's one of the best beers they have made, aside from their sour line (and the utopias).

Unfortunately the tour does not include going into the barrel room. You only get to view it through the window overlooking barrels and foeders. The tasting ends and you exit through the gift shop. They also point out that you can take your beer label down to a bar called Doyle's Cafe where if you order a Sam Adams pint, you get to keep the glass.

All in all the early morning trip was worth it. The brewery is a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but they still make it clear that they are a giant in the craft industry.

March 16, 2015

Brewery Tour: Mad Fox Brewing Company

March 16, 2015/ Evan

Located almost in our back yard is a nice little brewery, Mad Fox. It has been about two years since we first visited, but only last week did we manage to make it to a brewery tour. Every first Saturday of the month they hold a few brewery tours open to the public. No reservation required but there are only about 15 spots. There is not a lot of room in the brewery itself.

If these photos don't illustrate it well enough, we were packed wall to wall. Its a little cramped but very clean. They use a 15-barrel system and "brew to gravity" for their beers. They have 6 30-barrel fermenters and each beer is brewed one half at a time; giving them a chance to fix anything that may go wrong in the first half.

On our tour we got to hear about the sour beer we reviewed previously. As the story goes, one of their barrels went sour and they blended it with the rest of the batch to make the sour Diabolik.

It was nice to finally see the brewery up close. As you walk into the building, behind the welcome desk, you are greeted by the bright tanks. In the dining room you are able to see the brewery through the windows. Along another wall of the dining room there are a few racks of barrels.

The bar is a little different than most bars in the area as they have up to 6 cask ales. The cask ales are usually a little different than their normal line-up of beers, for example dry-hopped IPAs or traditional English ales. They typically have about 10 house beers on draft, advertised by the blackboards on the walls. Most drafts are available in growlers and we've been known to use them as gifts.

Both the normal drafts and casks change fairly frequently as the place gets packed at times. The restaurant side makes great food, almost all from scratch. They even make their own ketchup. It's hard to go wrong with anything on their menu, I highly recommend brunch. They occasionally hold special events, such as the annual barleywine festival. Mad Fox is definitely worth checking out.

February 16, 2015

Brewery Tour: Troegs Brewery

February 16, 2015/ Evan

It was a very chilly weekend; the roads were treacherous and temperatures were so cold that the the wiper fluid lines on our car froze. After having to stop a few times to manually, clear off the windshield, we made it to Hershey, Pennsylvania, the current home of Troegs Brewery.

Founded in '96 in Harrisburg, Troegs expanded to the current brewery in Hershey in 2011. Walking into the compound, the store is to your right and the tasting room is straight ahead. You check in to your tour at a desk in the store. You can also see their original homebrew set up in the store.

We grabbed a drink before our tour started in the tasting room. The main brewing kettles are situated behind the bar. The opposite side opens up to a deck overlooking the parking lot, which is obviously not open in the winter.

The tour starts outside of the lab. Right off the bat you see how interconnected the brewing side is to the customer/drinking side. The brewery is part of the tasting room, and everything else in the process is able to be seen through the "self guided tour". This is the only brewery with two tours I've been to.

John, our tour guide, led us behind the bar into the grain room. They do a good job with keeping the dust down. John mentioned they spray the grains down to prevent dust from getting kicked up.

John gave a nice brief overview of grain and how they impart different flavors, even passed around a few containers of grain. Munich malt seemed to be the main base malt used from the way John discussed everything. From here we are lead up a few steps in the grain room to the brew deck, overlooking the tasting room.

Brew deck with self tour in the background

The brew deck is where the magic happens. The main brewhouse is a 100 barrel system with the biggest hop back I've seen.

Towards the end of the brew deck is the boil kettle and the tool for hops. Here we got the normal spiel about bittering hops and aroma hops and how those contribute to flavor. We had a sample of citra pellets and cascade leafs passed around for people to smell. From the brew deck we walked down a flight of steps, through a door into the fermentation area.

The tasting tour (as this is called) has the lovely opportunity to taste beers straight out of the fermenter.

After a talk about the differences between ale and lager yeast and the importance of temperature during the fermentation process, we arrive at a tasting table in front of three giant foeders.

John our tour guide and I believe flying mouflan fermenting in foeders

We got to taste Cultivator helles bock, Troegenator double bock, Jovial dubbel (out of primary), and Nugget Nectar ale.

After the tasting we are led around to the first bottling line for corks and caging. Past this you can see the bright tanks which lead to the kegging line and the bottling and canning line.

The tasting tour ends back in the gift shop and you exchange your lanyard and safety glasses for souvenir pint glasses.

We went back to the tasting room to grab some food and drink before hitting the road to go back home. The tasting room has a bunch of long tables which is very german biergarten-like. Food is available at the far end of the tasting room. A variety of different dishes are available. They have the standard pretzel and brats, as well as substantial sandwiches, soups, and popcorn. We got a bratwurst and a venison open faced sandwich to split, which were both very good.

The tasting room is also home to the scratch beer series, experimental small batches of beer only available at the tasting room. On tap for our visit was #172 Chocolate Stout.

From the tasting room you can walk through a set of doors to go on the "self guided tour", which is a glass-lined hallway with information about the process of making beer. The self guided tour ends at the barrel room, which was closed with the lights off.

The beers

Cultivator

Evan: Light bodied, light flavored, easy drinking lager. We were in a bit of a rush when we first got there and ordered. This through me for a loop until I realized it had 25 ibu and was a lager. A clean and unoffending beer.

Lisa: A light, refreshing beer.

Troegenator

Evan: A much more robust lager. A bit on the dark side and clocking in over 7% with a nice malty backbone.

Lisa: Mahogany in color with a malty sweetness, a delicious American double bock beer.

Nugget Nectar

Evan: Hard to beat a fresh hoppy beer straight from the source. Almost juicy from the hops, it is full bodied and full flavored.

Lisa: This is my favorite beer that Troegs makes. A hoppy amber ale that is amazing.

Jovial

Evan: I had no idea they were making Belgian corked beer until this trip. Off of the primary it just tastes young. It was under carbonated but rather mediocre. We got a few bottles to take home, which were way better. Out of the bottle it has a fantastic belgian yeast character smell and flavor. Surprisingly though is has almost no body at all, easy to drink and not too filling.

Lisa: The Jovial we had from the fermenter on the tour tasted very young, very bland and not very Belgian. The bottle we had later tasted a lot more flavorful and Belgian. It still tasted light for a 7% Belgian Dubbel, but it was tasty.

Scratch #172 Chocolate Stout

Evan: Easy drinking and less filling than youngs double chocolate stout. Decent chocolate flavor without being overly sweet, still lets the roast from the stout through.

LaGrave

We opened a bottle of LaGrave we got at the Troegs' store while writing this post.

Evan: Light belgian yeast nose and a nice clear golden color. Doesn't drink like a true belgian tripel, more like an american triple pilsner. Tastes very light for 8% which is great but dangerous. It is a nice clean beer but not very belgian, though it has more body than Jovial.

Lisa: This is good, but has less body than I prefer my Belgian tripels to have. Tastes lighter than 8%.