Road Trip

Brewery: People’s Pint
Location: Greenfield, MA
Style: Blonde ale

People’s Pint Natural Blonde is a lovely clear gold ale with a bright thick foamy head. Excellent carbonation brings up a solid ale scent with a nice balance of hops. That balance shows up nicely in the taste. Great sweet malt ale balanced out by a hop bitterness. The flowery hops add just enough bitter to be there but not a hop bomb. The light body and 4.6% ABV make this a great summer deck beer. We had it with grilled pizza and the combo was perfect. Our only regret is not getting more. Now we’ll need to roadtrip back to Massachusetts.

Brewery: Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project
Location: Cambridge, MA
Style: Belgian Quad

When it comes to beer buying, the OAB HQ can be real suckers for a couple of things. Call it “artisanal” and we’re probably going to buy it. Have a strange or interesting or bold label, and we’re probably buying it. Have both – we’re definitely buying.

So, we ended up bring back two bottles from the Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project on our Western Mass. road trip. The first up is Pretty Things Baby Tree Quad brewed with dried plums.

This is a majorly dark beer. Deep ruby color with a medium amount of carbonation. The head was a bit thin and fell rather quickly. A big Belgian malty/sugary/fruity scent leaps from the glass. This is a big sweet ale with a solid fruitiness. It’s not exactly plummy – more like the plum adds a fruitiness to the overall flavor. There is a slight bitterness under the big sweetness that is a welcome change from many purely sweet quads. You can certainly taste the 8.6% ABV – a little harsh at times but it mellows as the ale breathes. This is a lovely artisanal ale and one I look forward to trying again sometime.

One note on the use of the term “artisanal” as opposed to the usual “craft”. I believe all artisanal beers are craft but only some craft beers are artisanal. It’s mostly a matter of production scale and techniques. A home brewer is working the artisanal side of brewing. A company like Dogfish Head may employ the experimentation of an artisan brewery, but their scale places them in a craft category. I know it’s a hair split, but one I might explore further some other time. What is important here is Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project demonstrates a devotion to the art of brewing that places them in world of artisanal brewing.

After starting out our Friday evening at the Northampton Brewery with a tasting of many beers, we (slightly) staggered out in search of some food to soak up the brews. On our scenic route side trip (read: getting lost) we came across edible Pioneer Valley a magazine focusing on locally produced food. This would be one of the guides we would use for the rest of the trip. An ad for Local Burger in Northampton made up our minds as to what dinner would be.

We are big fans of locally produced beef. Some of our best friends in the Catskills are beef farmers and there is truly nothing better than a great burger made with excellent beef. The Local Burger mission is to provide fresh, delicious, and well-priced food, while supporting the community through the use of local produce, products and services. Definitely an admirable mission. Mrs. Ohabeer went with a simple cheeseburger. I opted for the Westhampton Burger (all-natural Angus beef burger with bacon, cheddar cheese, bbq sauce, and ranch dressing). After having seen a basket on the tble next to me, I decided to get a side of onion rings as well. Unfortunately, drinks were only of the soft variety – and sadly I noticed only when leaving that we could have BYOB.

As to the burgers? Well, let me start by saying I have had very few burgers better than the ones I make at the OAB HQ. The burgers at Local Burger are good but not great. A little on the “eh” side when it came to flavor and actually a touch dry. I also felt the bacon on mine was a tad skimpy. On the other hand – see that picture on the right? The onion rings were excellent. Hot crispy oniony goodness served with a bit of spicy ketchup for dripping. I sort of wished I did not have to share with Mrs. Ohabeer. Thankfully, she left the majority for me. I do not think I would rush back to Local Burger, but at the same time if I wanted a decent burger, happened to be near Local Burger and it was open…sure why not.

Having re-fuelled with meat and deep fried onion, we struck out to find a bar recommended by the bartender at Northampton Brewery. The Tunnel Bar is located under the old Union Street Station in a rail tunnel. It is – without a doubt – one of the most gorgeous bars I’ve visited. The photo above does absolutely no justice. Low dark curved ceiling with just the right lighting accent and a beautiful dark wood bar. They are not really a beer bar – specializing more in the cocktail realm – but they do carry a fair amount of brews. When we visited, they has a Harpoon Leviathan Imperial IPA and Harpoon Summer Ale on tap. Mrs. Ohabeer went with the Summer Ale; I chose the Leviathan IPA. I had been wanting to try the Leviathan series, but at $10 a four pack, it was out of my current beer buying price range. I may have to break that range restriction. The Leviathan IPA is a big cloudy hop bomb. Great flowery hop scent and massive hop taste. Just enough malt on the back end to keep the hop in check. At 10% ABV – and after the many samples at Northampton – this IPA was starting to kick my butt a little. Definitely a big beer. The Summer Ale is a very nice simple wheat beer with a solid light body. Mrs. Ohabeer liked it more than I did.

After the beer at the Tunnel – and a mental note to return the next evening for a cocktail – we realized the day (and the beer) was starting ot catch up to us. One more stop – we said – and then back to the hotel. Mrs. Ohabeer is currently working on her ice cream making skills. As such, any chance we have to go to artisanal ice cream shops can be written off as “research”. We had read about Herrell’s on the way in and decided to end the evening with a bit of frozen goodness.

Approaching the shop, we’re struck by the fact it is 10pm and there is a line out the door. THAT’S a good sign. I was glad for thewait as there was a fair amount of flavors to choose. I decided to go with the slightly odd sounding “Burnt Sugar & Butter”; Mrs. Ohabeer went with “Cinnamon & Nutmeg”. (It should be stated one of Mrs. Ohabeer’s best ice creams is a Vietnamese cinnamon ice cream.)

Brewery: Berkshire Brewing Co.
Location: South Deerfield, MA
Style: Coffee porter

This is the second Berkshire we brought back on the Western Mass. Beer Run Road Trip. As Berkshire recommends refrigerating all of the ales, we decided to drink these first as they were taking up space in the fridge. I only wish we had bought more than a bottle.

I tend to prefer porters in the winter. I think they are a perfect lighter alternative to a big stout when sitting by the fireplace. I rarely ever consider a porter in the summer – though I often find them in sampler packs. If one thing can be said about Berkshire Brewing Coffeehouse Porter it is this: it’s a great summer porter. It’s not too thick or heavy but still packs a big dark ale flavor. I had this with steaks on the deck and it was a perfect match.

It pours a deep brown with a light brown creamy head. The head falls a bit too quickly for my tastes, but that’s nothing major really. The scent is thoroughly malt with a subtle coffee undertone. It’s not the big blast many coffee porters usually have. More like Berkshire is using a medium roast coffee than the typical dark roast or espresso. This is a fairly light bodied poret (as porters go). There a good malt flavor balanced nicely with the coffee. No bitterness but also none of the sweet cloyness some porters can have. Actually quite a refreshing porter for a summer evening. At 6.2% ABV it is not exactly a butt-kicker, but if drinking a bomber alone I suggest caution. It does sneak up on you a bit.

A bit about the coffee used. Turns out it is an extract (well I guess Berkshire can’t be cold brewing hundreds of gallons of actual coffee) made by New Salem, MA roasters Dean’s Beans. As coincidence would have it, I picked up some of Dean’s Beans Ahab’s Revenge on the same day we attempted to visit Berkshire Brewing. Dean’s Beans makes some excellent coffee and it shows in the extract they made for this porter. One of the few times I’ve felt an extract actually worked in a beer.

In our haste to escape Holyoke, we apparently headed east when we wanted to go west. Worse still – we were perhaps a half hour from Northampton via expressway, but we wanted to “experience” of traveling the country roads. Wrong direction and – admittedly beautiful – winding country roads added up to about three hours of wasted time. Time that should’ve been spent drinking and eating in Northampton.

Ah well…such are the pitfalls of spontaneous road tripping. (Of course, once we found a gas station with a map we sorted things out quickly. Yes – we should have gotten the map earlier…)

ANYWAY…finally pulled into Northampton, MA around 5pm. Found ourselves a Comfort Inn down the road in Hadley, cleaned up a bit and struck out for an evening on the town. First stop: Northampton Brewery. I am a fan of brewpubs. Always love the vibe and the crowd generally tends to be friendly. we always find ourselves striking up conversations with complete strangers. Thankfully – after the way our trip had started and getting lost – Northampton Brewery continued the tradition of friendly brewpubs.

While on the scenic route to Northampton from Holyoke via Ware (yes – those of you familiar will see our error), we had read about a burger place called Local Burger that did all local beef. So, we decided not to eat at Northampton Brewery and instead just go for a few beer flights. As luck would have it, there are exactly enough beers on the menu for two flights without duplication.

That’s my flight on the left; Mrs. Ohabeer’s on the right. I really hate taking photos in bars and restaurants – seriously don;t know how food bloggas do it – so these would bascially be the only flights we photographed all weekend. Turns out, I’d rather be drinking the beer than photographing it.

I also do not take massively detailed review notes. I’m there to be social, experience the pub and have (hopefully) some great craft beer. Hence the infrequent feature on OAB: Random Beers In Various Bars. I pretty much decided early on to use the Random Beers method for reviewing the many many road trip samplers.

NORTHAMPTON BREWERY FLIGHT
Four 6oz. glasses – personally that’s more than needed for a flight, but good when sharing.
Uncommon Ale
Northampton Pale Ale
Sand Shovel ESB
Imperial Stout
Nonotuck IPA
Weizenheimer
Weizen Berry
Wild Blue Funk

Uncommon Ale: Nice gold ale. Some what sweet. Wantsto be a honey amber but really does not make it. Doesn’t go big enough.

Northampton Pale Ale: Dark gold. Nice hop to malt balance. Solid bite on the back of the tongue. A crisp pale ale.

Sand Shovel ESB: It’s a nice reddish brown color with a malty hoppy scent. Not as bitter as I would like it to be. Just sort of there…until it warms a bit. Then it opens up nicely. Still not that bitter but gets a bit more caramely.

Imperial Stout: Mmmmm – big coffee raisin roasted malt goodness. Not incredibly thick but very delicious. This was the evening’s winner.

Nonotuck IPA: Definitely better than the Northampton Pale Ale. A bit of spiciness and a solid hop flavor. To this IPA’s credit, even hop-hating Mrs. Ohabeer was digging it.

Weizenheimer: This is an ok wheat. Fairly light with a bit of citrus in the aroma. Clearer than most wheats I like. Definitely an American wheat. Nice and clean.

Weizen Berry: The bartender confirms our suspicions: the berry here is extract. That makes this much like drinking a craft wheat downwind from an artificial flavor factory (to paraphrase Stephen Colbert). Not pleasant at all…

Wild Blue Funk: We got the final glass out of the keg and it showed. This had turned and turned badly. We ended up swapping it out for an Allagash (one of the guest beers not brewed in-house).

Allagash White: this is an OAB fave. A great yeasty wheaty white with a subtle spice.

After finishing the flights, we discovered they replaced the spent Wild Blue Funk with Maggie’s Wee Heavy Scottish Ale. As I usually cannot avoid a Scottish Ale, I decided to get a 12oz. glass to finish the night at Northamptom before heading to dinner.

Maggie’s Wee Heavy Scottish Ale: Beautiful dark brown ale. Big big malt with a ton of caramel. The big malt gets balanced with a slight hops edge in the after taste. This one made me quite buzzy, and yet I still had to sample one more thing…

Berkshire Mountain Distillers Ragged Mountain Rum:While aving the Wee Heavy, we asked the bartender if they carried any local spirits. She showed us a bottle of Berkshire Mountain Distillers Rum and we asked of a side neat. This is a beautiful rum. Light brown with a slightly oak scent. No alcohol harshness at all. Just a nice warm sweetness. We ended up bringing a botle back with us.

ROAD TRIP TOTALS
Beers Sampled: 13
Rum drank: 1
Towns visited: 3
Breweries visited: 2
Breweries open: 1

Next up: We slight sway out of the brewery and head out for local beer, a bar in a tunnel and the best.ice cream.evah.

Brewery: Berkshire Brewing Co.
Location: South Deerfield, MA
Style: Hefeweizen

On the label for Berkshire Brewing Hefeweizen Ale it states:

“Locally produced. Keep refrigerated.”

We were asked by the folks at Ryan and Casey Liquors if we had a way to keep the Berkshire brews cold on our trip as they arrive in refrigerated trucks. Luckily we had a cooler.

I have to say, I’ve never seen a beer specifically state it should be kept in the fridge. I somewhat understand – heat hurts beer – especially good beer. The “Keep refrigerated” label – however – was something new to me. If it makes the beer taste this good – though – I certainly am not going to one to question.

This is a lovely pale yellow slightly cloud beer with solid carbonation and a nice foamy head. There is a great yeasty wheat scent as you pour. That yeastiness carries over into the flavor balancing nicely with the wheat to give a fruity banana spice. There a touch of citrus in the aftertaste. A medium light body beer with 4.5% ABV, this is about as good a summer hefeweizen as you can get.

I now understand “Keep refrigerated”.

Brennan’s Pub
173 High St
Holyoke, MA 01040

We decided to essentially start at the bottom of I-91 on the Yankee Brew News beer map. That meant Holyoke, MA. Specifically, we were headed for Paper City Brewing. Unfortunately – due to the spontaneous nature of this road trip – we did not do proper research into when the brewery would be open or even really where it was in town. (Well – we did have a street address.) Our journey took us into the High Street area of Holyoke. My mother always said if you do not have something nice to say – say nothing at all.

“Ahem…Nothing at all.”

Look – I know many urban breweries are pioneers. They spring up in industrial areas and often lead to a renaissance. I pray Paper City does this for Holyoke because there are some serious dodgy areas in route to the brewery – and I used to live in downtown Detroit. Sadly, we could not determine if the brewery was actually open – we arrived around noon – so we decided to bail and try to find a bit of food and drink.

Once again…“Nothing at all.” I mean REALLY?!?! Aren’t there a couple of colleges around this town? I know the economy has hit everyone hard, but DAMN! This was not a great start to our road trip.

Then – after turning back on to High St. to head for our car and get the hell out of Holyoke – we spotted Brennan’s Pub. While I found the Bud logos next to the clovers on an Irish pub sign a bit off-putting, I was encouraged by the Sierra Nevada and Guinness neon. At this point, we were more than hungry, thirsty and frazzled so we gave it a shot.

We are certainly glad we did. This is one of those great local Irish pubs where the folks are friendly, the pints are proper and the walls are filled with a variety of photos, beer mirrors, neon and ephemera. The menu is of the solid pub grub/sandwiches variety. The televisons were playing an array of sports and CNN coverage. We decided we couldn’t possibly do better from what we had seen of Holyoke.

We settled in and ordered opur first beer of the trip: Berkshire Brewing Steel Rail. It’s a clean crisp extra pale ale with a nice slightly barley malt edge and good hoppiness. Running 5.3% ABV, it’s a great bar session beer and went well with our lunch. Brennan’s served it in 14 oz. pints very cold. We would discover through the course of the road trip almost every bar had Steel Rail on tap. It became the fall back if look for a simple light bodied beer.

As for the food, I had a Mexsteak sandwich. Essentially a kicked up cheesesteak with big fresh jalapenos and a nicely spicy chipotle sauce. Mrs. Ohabeer had some sort of wrap with a ton of sour cream, but I was enjoying the Mexsteak too much to care about her lunch. Oh yes – and the lunch with curly fries only cost $5. Gotta love a good pub grub bargain!

We decided to have a second round after lunch choosing to try the two Wachusett beers they had in bottles. The Wachusett Blueberry Ale was a simple pale ale with a subtle blueberry scent but not much in the way of blueberry flavor. Mrs. Ohabeer thought is was ok, but not really all that impressive. We also got a bottle of the Wachusett Green Monsta Ale. This is a nice big pale ale with a bunch of hops. As is usually the case, Mres. Ohabeer thought it too hoppy. I thought it was quite nice. Not really a hop bomb, but definitely hoppier than your usual pale. A nice flowery scent with a good malt balance. I could easily see this as a favorite session if available anywhere near me.

While at Brennan’s, we discovered Paper City does a Friday evening open house/tasting starting at 6pm. Unfortunately it was only 2pm and really we could not take hanging out in Holyoke for another 4 hours. So with the Wachusetts finished, we paid the bill – thanked the bartender – and headed out for far greener and hopefully more fruitful pastures.

We now know if heading into Holyoke on a Friday, get there around 3pm. Head over to Brennan’s for a bit of afternoon snack and beer. Then drive – do not walk – over to Paper City for their Friday night open house.

Beers Sampled: 3
Towns visited: 1
Breweries visited: 1
Breweries open: 0

Up next: We’re off to Northampton as soon as we point the car in the right direction.

Sometimes you just need to get away.

It had been years since we had gotten away from work and the house (foamyindustries is located on the upper floor of our Catskill compound) and the stress was building. We needed to take some time off – get away for a couple of days – and leave work behind. De-stress in a major way.

Enter The Yankee Brew News…

We pick up The Yankee Brew News whenever we find it in our local brew pubs. We enjoy the read and have spent more than a few drinking session thinking: “We should strike out and follow one of their beer maps.”

So the weekend of July 24th that’s exactly what we did.

We decided to head for the closest area (the I-91 corridor in Massachusetts) in order to minimize travel time. We based the trip planning solely on the Brew News map, a bit of road trip whim and whatever came our way. I would say the success rate was about 60%, but what was great was REALLY great.

So, over the next few days I’m going to attempt to put all the notes and tasting and experiences together in a series of articles. A few opening statistics:

Number of touring hours: 52
Number of different beers sampled: 37
Number of breweries visited: 6
Number of breweries open: 3
Number of craft ice cream shops visited: 2
Number of incredible ice cream experiences: 2
Number of cocktails drank: 2
Number of kielbasa omlets ate: 1

Up next: I thank Brennan’s Pub for slightly rescuing a bad start in Holyoke.