Posts Tagged ‘Massachusetts’

After a rather crazed Labor Day weekend (wherein the Cha Cha Hut made its official commercial debut), we decided to journey to Oliver’s Discount Beverage in Albany to restock a quickly dwindling cellar. I once stated the selection here is much smaller than Half Time in Poughkeepsie, but what is there is truly amazing. I always find a ton of interesting new brews when dropping into Oliver’s So much so, I can’t remember the last time we made the trip to Half Time. Plus – the Oliver’s staff seem to be really excited to be selling something other than the endless stream of BMC we see going out the door.

Bombers
Southern Tier Imperial Pumking Ale
Southern Tier Imperial Mokah (chocolate & coffee stout)
Southern Tier Imperial Cherry Saison
Southern Tier Imperial Heavy Weizen
Dogfish Head Fort (brewed with pureed raspberries)
The Bruery Black Orchard
Brown’s Whiskey Barrel Aged Porter
He’Brew Rejewvenator Harvest Ale
Avery Fifteen Anniversary Ale
Avery Collaboration Not Litigation Ale
Red Hook DB Double Black Stout with Coffee

40 oz.
People’s Pint Tap & Die Malt Liquor

6 Pack
Wolaver’s Certified Organic Will Stevens’ Pumpkin Ale
Brown’s Oatmeal Stout
Sierra Nevada Kellerweis
Atwater Block Brewery Vanilla Java Porter
Boulder Beer Mojo IPA

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.

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.

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.

I’m calling this the “Western Mass. Edition” due to a weekend OAB roadtrip to the I-91 corridor of Massachusetts. We decided we needed to get out of town for the weekend and decided to use the beer map in Yankee Brew News as our guide. There are many upcoming articles about the trip, but I decided to kick things off with a beerventory update that is now decidedly Massachusetts heavy.

As we were staying in the Northampton area, we THOUGHT we would do the beer run at Spirit Haus in Amherst on our way out. No such luck. We’ve see great reviews for this place, but the selection on a Sunday morning pretty much sucked. Perhaps we missed something other than the weak selection of bombers and 6/12 packs on the floor near the register. Perhaps it had been a heavy Saturday night – though to me most of the shelves looked stocked.

Thankfully, we had gone to Greenfield, MA on Saturday and looked around in Ryan and Casey Liquors. So after the Spirit Haus disappointment, we hit the highway, headed up to Greenfield and stocked up before heading back to OAB HQ. Looking forward to the coming weeks and drinking these. (Also looking forward to another beer run to Massachusetts.

Bombers
Berkshire Brewing Hefeweizen Ale
Berkshire Brewing Coffeehouse Porter
People’s Pint Pied pIPA
People’s Pint shWheat Ale
People’s Pint Natural Blonde
High & Mighty Two-Headed Beast Chocolate Stout
High & Mighty St. Hubbins Abbey
High & Mighty Purity Of Essence Lager
High & Mighty Beer of the Gods
Pretty Things Baby Tree Quad with Dried Plums
Pretty Things St. Botoisph’s Town Rustic Dark Ale
McNeill’s Ruby Ale
Southern Tier Mokah Stout
Southern Tier Creme Brulee Stout
Jolly Pumpkin La Roja Amber Ale
Arcadia Ales Cocoa Loco
Arcadia Ales Cereal Killer
Southern Tier Jah-Va Imperial Coffee Stout
Ommegang Biere de Mars
Flying Dog Wild Dog Weizenbock

40 oz.
People’s Pint Tap & Die Malt Liquor

12 Pack
Opa Opa Sampler featuring Opa Opa Light, Red Rock Amber Ale and Opa Opa IPA

6 packs : cans
21st Amendment Brew Free! or Die IPA
21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon Wheat

6 packs : bottle
Saranac Summer Brew

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.

Brewery: Sherwood Brewers
Location: Marlborough, MA
Style: Belgian white

One more session brew before we head back into the big beers…

It’s no secret the OAB HQ is big on Belgians. In the winter, we loves us the big spicy Belgian ales. In the summer, we turn our love to the Belgian Whites. There are few things better than a great summer day (or evening) on the deck with a crisp clean white ale. So it should come as no surprise when we found a six pack of Sherwood Forest Friar’s Belgian-style White on a recent beer run, we had to pick it up.

There is a faint haze in the lovely gold color of this ale. Very light (almost non-existant) head. The aroma is a nice blend of spices with a touch of citrus. It has all the familiar Wit flavors – clove, coriander and orange balanced nicely in a solid wheat base.There is nothing particularly challenging here. It’s just a great light bodied ale excellent for a session on the deck. Very crisp and clean – it’s goes perfectly with grilled chicken and fish.

It will certainly be making a return appearance to the OAB deck this summer.

I haven’t really done much of a restock lately to the cellar. We’ve been a bit too busy around OAB HQ drinking various foamybeers – our own line of brews. A recent trip to pick up more brewing supplies lead us to drop by Oliver’s discount Beverage in Albany. so, the latest beerventory…

Growlers
Cave Mountain Hefeweizen (bought at the brewery on $8 browler Sundays)

6 packs
Widmer Drop Top Amber Ale
Widmer Drifter Pale Ale
Saranac Summer Brew
Wolaver Ben Gleason’s White Ale
Sherwood forest Friar’s Belgian White ale
Boulder Brewing Hazed & Infused
Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA

12 Pack
Smutty Nose Sampler featuring Shoals Pale Ale, Old Brown Dog, IPA and Robust Porter

Bombers
Long Trail Brewmasters Series Double IPA
Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere
Jolly Pumpkin La Roja Amber Ale
Arcadia Ales Cocoa Loco
Arcadia Ales Cereal Killer
Southern Tier Jah-Va Imperial Coffee Stout
Southern Tier Iniquity Black Ale
Smuttynose Really Old Brown Dog Ale
Smuttynose Gravitation Belgian Quad
Ommegang Biere de Mars
He’Brew Jewbelation 12
Elysian Bifrost Winter Ale
Flying Dog Wild Dog Weizenbock