I had very high hopes for this, but it wasn't that great:



I think Victory at Sea is a great beer, so I was thrilled to try the barrel-aged version. But the barrel is barely noticeable, and the vanilla flavor is a little overwhelming and artificial tasting.

Seems like a great value at $15/4-pack, but I'm not super excited to drink the other 3.

spider,

Bummer, I love Victory at Sea.

I'm a big fan of those Wine Skins - very handy. Still doesn't stop me wrapping everything in a towel just in case, though.

last time I went to Cantillon I came prepared. brought an extra bag (easy to do) and some packing materials. combined with minor theft of hotel towels, I was able to bring back close to 20 bottles. (you can get about 12 per suitcase, and I packed light otherwise)

packing is not that hard, old sweatshirts work fine. you just need to make sure everything is tight and not clanging around

Yeah I just bought 12 bottles of jester king home in a normal suitcase - just went to Target and bought a roll of bubble wrap and some tape for like $14, wrapped each bottle and filled in spaces with towels and stuff. I agree the limit is about 12 per suitcase - y bag was exactly at the weight limit of the airline (delta)

The bag I listed is the same one as Cantillon's, but if you call/E-mail Cantillon before you go, they will let you know if they have any in stock. They didn't when I went this year and I didn't want to risk it. Yeah it's great for keeping bottles safe and being easy, but I would not treat it as a roller bag... it sucks to go further than like through the airport.

Also useful: 3F will also ship for you including other bottles, but I believe they ask that 2/3 bottles are 3F.

sad to hear as i was looking forward to this one.

Willetized Coffee stout from Lagunitas is fantastic if you have access to any. I know its super common on the west coast, but its rare here in Indy. for $14/6pack, its the best bang for the buck i've had in a long time.

Haven't kept up with 2p2 lately but gotta throw in a humble brag celebrating our 3 year anniversary at my bar/restaurant. Here's our taplist for the event:

BCS '15
CBS
Avery Coconut Porter
Avery Amicitia
TG XHOPS Emerald
TG XHOPS Gold
TG Fandango Dragon
'15 Backwoods Bastard
FW Velvet Merkin
FW Agrestic
FW XXI
Avery Uncle Jacobs Stout
Surly '16 BA Darkness
Surly Pentagram

Might be worth a trip if any 2p2ers are in the upper Midwest.

We pay $300 for a quarter barrel. 7.75 gallons

Portland, ME is the goat beer town

Where's that? I'm in the upper midwest. Though, it's not quite worth a trip - tap lists and beer distribution has gotten ape**** recently.

But man, '15 BWB is an alltimer for me. Nobody pays it any attention, but I really like that vintage and BWB in general I think is one of those beers like BCBS. I don't think any other bb scotch ales can really touch it.

NW IA. Feel like you're also from IA if I recall correctly. We have some other local stuff going on I didn't list such as a red wine barrel aged cranberry sour that's super dope and some free stuff from Marto who's not open yet but knocks it out of the park.

Regardless, it's a great time to be a drinker. Cheers.

Madison, WI. That is an incredible tap list, don't get me wrong. We get great TG distro out here (even better than Des Moines, from last I recall), but it's more rare to get a keg from those guys.

I like the depth of that tap list, and the quality of lower ABV beers. That's one thing with a lot of sick taplists or tap takeovers with multiple breweries is it can be hard to find a beer under 8% or whatever.

One thing I like a lot about TG is their hoppy beers mostly are pretty sessionable. Of course, it's amusing that like 5.7% or whatever is considered sessionable now. That wasn't the case 11 years ago.

Ya we'll have other mainstays on tap for the week such as hell, 90 shilling, EZ ST, sue, but wanted to list the exclusive offerings. Now that TGs new brewery is done kegs should be readily available.

I recently had two very good German beers [Ayinger Weisse; Hacker-Pschorr Hefeweisse] on tap at a local restaurant. I enjoyed the sharp and crisp flavors of both and they went well with the Rabbit Stew I was having as a main course. The stew was good but on the heavy side so these crisp tasting beers cut through that and cleansed out the mouth and throat so the more easy shovel in more stew. Beers linked below:

ayinger-urweisse

hacker-pschorr-hefe-weisse

Someone up thread mentioned Founders IPA (which I like and posted about before), I was surprised that it is offered on tap at this London Pub britannia Kensington uk. They also have an English IPA, Young's London IPA by Charles Wells Brewery, I think it was. It is good with a clean crisp taste but a bit on the lighter side, certainly not in the vein of the usual American Northwest Style IPA that I'm used to and think the best.

I really enjoyed the Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest

...I've only lurked the last few pages, what is CBS? Y'all seem to be very high on that, why?

This is CBS. I️ thought it was gonna have way more maple but it’s awesomely coffee, chocolate, and a little vanilla. Not at all boozy. Perfect for this snowy New England Saturday. Maybe it was too cold?

Really is. Bachelor weekend there was do elite this summer. Want to go back

I’m planning my bachelor party right now and was planning on going to San Diego, you have me questioning that. Care to give a quick trip report and maybe I’ll change my destination.


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Congrats on 3 years. Great looking taplist. What's the name of your bar? My bar just celebrated our 1yr in Sept.

I'll start by saying I went with 5 guys total. 3 of whom are married with kids, 1 is my brother in law, and myself. I am extremely into beer, my brother in law and 1 other guy think they're into beer, and the other 2 want Budweiser and Yuengling with a lime. So we 1) weren't looking for a crazy time with strip clubs and all that. We all went to college together and haven't seen each other in a while and just wanted to be funny *******s together. 2) Beer was not everyone's priority.

This is all a blur so names, places, time may be backwards but you'll get the gist.


Night 1
So the first night we got there fairly late and the best man was dead set on going to Porthole. Not my scene at all but I can see why he had heard about it as a place to go. It's on a dock sort of with boats docking and coming and going. Beautiful view. But I was excited to drink Maine beer and this place had Shipyard (which isn't good) and generic **** wasn't my scene. However, anywhere when you're with your best friends who you haven't been together in forever and literally anywhere is good. I kind of took control of the next place and from Porthole we went to Novare Res which is an awesome place. It was really really hard to find, so we had to enlist the help of some 40-something women who were extremely happy to walk us to the bar (which to be fair we probably would never have found without them) and they were flirting hard along the way. We all had a laugh though and they were harmless. Novare Res had almost a Belgian/medieval feel to the place and they had a big patio/deck with cornhole outside. Hipster central, but fairly quiet when we were there. The tap list was great with beers from all over the world represented. I remember having a pretty standard pilsner but it was from Slovakia with Italian hops. Really great place to go with some friends though and it was especially perfect on night 1 to catch up, laugh, play cornhole and catch up.

Day 2
By far the highlight of the trip. We can drink, but as a group, we don't go college-level blackout hard much these days and nevermind back to back so we knew we had one crazy day as a group in us and this is was the day. We started the day at Liquid Riot which was a short walk from our hotel, in fact, everything was a short walk from our hotel (Mariott) but this was super short. They make their own beer, which was good, and had great food. The place had a huge couch and wood stove and it was a cold, rainy day so it was really perfect.

We had a really nice dinner planned this night at Street and Co.. Street and Co was right next to a simple bar Mash Tun which had 20+ beers on tap from Maine, Vermont, and a few random New England places. Plenty of Bissell, Oxbow, Austin St. Maine Beer Co, Hill Farmstead, Lawson's etc. Loved the vibe too. It's the kind of place you start or end a night, not a place you hang out all night. The seafood at Street and Co. was absolutely fantastic. The beer there was only bottles and cans that were nothing remarkable, but they did have something from Maine Beer Co, just can't remember what I had. But you are going for the food, not beer, if you choose to go here.

I think we had some places in mind to go after but after leaving the restaurant there was a divey, country-themed bar that looks like a ****ty bar you'd see near a college that advertised pickle back shots. One of our guys was from Kansas and loves picklebacks so we ended up going in here on a whim. They give you bacon in a red solo cup everytime you order a beer. The beer wasn't great here, but by this point I had a solid buzz on off good beer and was more about having a good time with my friends. We ended up leaving and when we went to go back in they wouldn't let us. And no one really knows why. The memory was already fuzzy. So not being allowed to go back in we had no plan and there was a "club" type place across the street. Again, not a fancy club or anything, just something you'd find more in college. We went in here and I don't remember a thing after.

Day 3
This was brewery day. I woke up feeling absolutely awful but I was obviously not going to Maine and missing breweries. But before the breweries my brother and law decided to go on a random adventure. A band we love, The Ballroom Thieves, and have gotten to know pretty well frequent Maine and told us we must go to a bar called Ruski's and order a Joe Moran. They said do not ask any questions just do it. So at around 11am we ubered to Ruski's knowing nothing about where we were going or what we were doing. It was the ultimate New England dive bar, like something our of A Perfect Storm. About 6 people in there, and you could tell these were 6 people who go there everyday. When we ordered the Joe Moran we were asked if we wanted it hot or cold. Should have just stopped there. Don't get a Joe Moran, or do, idk. It makes for a great story but boy was it rough going down.

The first brewery we hit was Bissell . They had a Baby Genius/Substance release so the plan was always to go that day at noon. No one was in the mood but everyone rallied. Our hotel gave free shuttles to all the breweries which was awesome. The release was actually so painless and we got there just in time because the line was 5x as long by time we left. I had a flight and the beers were spectacular. It's also right next to a high end wine place apparently, where some of the guys got **** for their wives, a chicken place, and a distillery. It's in it's own part of town that they are pretty much developing as they go. There's a music venue right there too, which you could probably time a good show around.

From there we went to Foundation. I'd had some of their stuff before, and I know Epiphany is hyped, but their stuff was a little underwhelming imo. Their Cosmic Bloom was pretty good but the IPAs were more malty and west coast than what I prefer, especially coming from Bissell. Another really cool place to hang out though. Right behind (literally in the same complex) from Foundation was the hidden gem of the weekend. Austin St is run by a female brewer (I think) and only had 3 beers on tap and 1 in cans but I really liked all 3 and again such a cool place with cool people. This day ended with another trip to Mash Tun and then gradually hitting random bars on the way back to the hotel.

The next day guys had early flights and we checked out and got on the road for the 6 hour drive home. But we had an amazing amazing time. We also had a lobster roll at Gilbert's everyday. I know the stereotype about lobster rolls so was suspect but damn if it wasn't the best lobster roll I ever had. Highly recommend it as a hungover lunch spot.

So in all it completely depends on what you're looking for. I had researched places and there were a ton of things I wanted to do and places I wanted to go, but the weekend just kind of took on a plan of its own, and I ended up loving every minute of it. Definitely left me wanting to go back like I said in the post above. If you want strip clubs and crazy **** like that Maine might not be the place, but for awesome beer, awesome food, and stuff that is all relatively close to one another and walkable (or a $10 uber "out of town") then I can't recommend Maine enough. I realize that is extremely long, so if you have any specific questions I'd be happy to answer them


tl;dr

- easy access to great breweries
- something for everybody, beer lovers and non beer lovers alike
- no need for an itinerary if you just want to let the night take you
- awesome restaurants

Thanks so much for the write up. Sounds like a great trip. I'm pretty convinced to change my trip. None of us are major partiers, we just love to eat good food, drinks lots of good beer, and **** around. Love the idea of having everything in walking distance. Going to send the messages out and head Northeast. Thanks again!

Yea that's pretty much who Portland is perfect for

Portland is amazing. Tons of good beer with new breweries popping up daily. I also really like the Sweetgrass tasting room in the Old Port. I really like their spirits. There is obviously loads of fresh seafood and if you've never been, Honey Paw is one of the best meals of my life.


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I would just drink at Bissell all day