Fair. I think we mostly agree. I don't doubt that you could tell the difference (and many people could) between world class beers in the same style.

I just doubt the average brewery dude could.

Had a Brut Lager today at Highland Park. Never had anything Brut besides an IPA (just hitting LA in the last couple months). I quite enjoyed it.

Deja Vu, mentioned above by Goofballer, instigated an hypothesis that that would be a good name for a beer. So, Google being the new God of the universe, a simple few key strokes brings up the following for verification:

beeradvocate.com/beer/profile


Never drink it. I would have remembered.

Been a while since I've been around. I did a trip a couple of weeks back with my wife and her parents. It was great fun and I will now recount the story for you. For background my wife and I got engaged in the NE 3 years back, hitting up Boston + Portsmouth + Burlington before driving to Buffalo for a wedding. We got to try some really good beer, but learned more about the beer scene kind of right as we were getting ready to leave. I'll try to include some local color for people planning such a trip as I assume others will do this trip and I also assume part of why we're all beer snobs is we enjoy putting in the extra effort to try the best of something.

Saturday - Fly into Boston. At seafood at Legal Harbor while waiting for my wife to fly in who was flying in separately from a work trip. Had a Sip of Sunshine. It'd been 3 years since I had this and it was one of my favorite beers the first time around. It's good, but was more malty/resiny/bitter than I remember. Still good, but it tasted more like a WC IPA than NEIPA. Food was just fine. Saturday evening we drove to Durham/Portsmouth. Went to Deciduous Brewing. It was very good, got there about 45 minutes before close. Chill vibe. Very good beer, in the top half of the breweries we hit. Had 2 different hazy IPAs that were both good, and a coffee stout that was really good. The other beers folks got were all enjoyed, including the kettle sours. Really a hell of a brewery. Dinner was at a place called The Franklin in downtown Portsmouth which had James Beard nominations but it was just ok in terms of food and ambiance and I wouldn't recommend.

Sunday - After watching the World Cup final in the basement of Portsmouth Brewery drinking unremarkable beers, we drove up to Portland. On the way we stopped at Bite Into Maine, which is a must if you're going to do the lobster roll thing. One is in a park called Fort Williams which has a pretty beautiful view out into the bay and you get to see the rocky coastline and all. After that, we drove to Bissell Brothers. Their tap room is beautiful and huge and they're Tottenham Hotspur fans, which I also am, so I had an immediate connection. It was quite busy and the taproom was so large it didn't feel crowded. Beer was very good but their hazy IPAs that we had (Nothing Gold, Substance, one other) weren't better than the Deciduous beers. Had Umbra which was a strong but not life-changing stout. Dinner was at Duck Fat and got some pre-dinner drinks at East Ender in Portland. East Ender had an amazing vibe and tap/bottle list and is worth a stop for folks passing through. Had Maine Lunch since I've never had it before. Similar to Sip it was more malty/WC style than I was expecting. Tasty but don't need to revisit. Dinner I had an Oxbow saison that was solid but I wish I'd seeked out more of their top shelf saison beers.

Monday - Did a lobster boat tour which was fun. Lunch at HighRoller in Portland which was very good lobster + craft beer. Dinner was at Fore Street which seems to be well regarded as the best non-Boston restaurant in the Northeast. It was pretty damn good and not stupid expensive either. They also have a sick taplist including **** like Austin Street on tap because why the **** not when you're right there. That was the great thing about the NE is you walk in anywhere and it's just there's gonna be a killer 2-3 beers on tap. Almost all were IPAs though. We went to Novare Res on someone's recommendation here after dinner and we all got nice and proper toasted. I remember when the initial order was 2 tallboys of IPA, cognac, and a blueberry mead, the bartender said "You guys are doing Monday proud". Austin Street Offset was one of my favorite beers of the trip, which I had here.

Tuesday - Drove to Burlington. Took the long route through the White Mountains which is a must. Very pretty. Ended up stopping at The Alchemist on the way in. It was good but not worth the detour. I’d not really had their beers the first time in town. The taproom is beautiful on the outside and pretty nice on the inside - they don’t offer full pours, just like 3 oz tastes for free. I think I liked Focal > Crusher > Heady. But really, I feel like your local best IPA place is better than these guys now. Their beers are quite bitter, which isn’t necessarily bad, and they are good. But nothing special in today’s hyper competitive market. Dinner was at El Corjito and was pretty good. We night capped at Foam which I saw recommended here. They make some of the best IPAs we had on the trip. A fun vibe and it was maybe my favorite or second favorite brewery more in terms of vibe than beer.

Wednesday - After doing a boat tour on Lake Champlain drove to Hill Farmstead. It wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. There’s only like 1-2 miles of gravel road after all. And the service out there is spotty as **** but if you just punch it into your phone when you’re in civilization it’ll tell you how to get there. My wife couldn’t go because pre-trip I’d miscalculated how long it takes to get there. That’s the annoying thing about Vermont is it takes so ****ing long to drive everywhere because there are no high ways and everything is 1 lane roads with like 30-40 mph speed limits. So it was just my FIL and me. We split a bottle of Sue (just edged out over GoM 2018) and each had a full pour of an IPA. I got the Mosaic IPA which is pretty much a perfect iPA. Sue was also pretty much perfect. These guys are the best brewery in the world by a large margin imo. Place is pretty big. The beer line was super slow but was down to the workers really trying to make some small talk with the people in line. I really enjoyed it here. Bought 10 bottles of HF to-go, a 6 pack of S&S #9 (which is also ****ing amazing), and 2 bottles of 3F Oude Gauze which was their guest to-go for the day. Went back to Foam later this evening because of course. It’s also right on the water and has a beautiful, beautiful view of the sunset.

Thursday-Saturday - Drove back to Boston. Didn’t stop at TH because I wanted to just drop off the car as soon as possible. This will be quick since this write up is already super long. I don’t know if I just put more effort into finding good beer bars this time or if the beer landscape has changed dramatically in the last 3 years. I heavily leveraged recommendations here. But I had a couple of Trill beers including my first dark one of their (Pot & Kettle Chocolate) and Galaxy Fort Point. They were both quite good, I preferred Pot and Kettle. Had a beer at Notch and a cider at Far side of the Tree in Salem. Both were good. All in all, a great trip.

Also, if there could only be one beer that you could drink ever, I think HF Anna would be that beer for me. I mostly identify as a hop head, but man this beer is just perfect.

Edit: I meant to add. The trip was a blast. But, I also found that generally TG, Brewing Projekt, and Mikerphone (who I'd probably consider the 3 best IPA makers in the upper midwest) do stuff just as good as the IPAs I had in the NE. I agree you can pick out a lot of the flavors of many of them, but in terms of just quality I think they're all pretty even.

Just that one dude is a Tottenham fan and **** that guy.

Spivey how was the drive from NE to Buffalo?

Good trip report. Got your alchemist ratings as wack but I've also only had Heady once and the Crusher once. Found the crusher unremarkable. Heady was awesome. But I'm a big fan of the midground between new school NEIPAs and old school west coast ipas. My current goat IPA is second fiddle by fiddlehead which is a bitter resinous hop bomb while also incorporating more tropical flavors. Love it.

Think you made a major faux pas by hitting up Portland and not hitting up Alagash.

Def need to get to HF at some point. Kinda spoiled as they're always on tap at armsby abbey. In general I'm in the drinking at bars >> drinking at breweries camp.

Great TR, but as kc said you missed out by not hitting Allagash (and Austin St. but at least you got a bunch of their stuff) Also Central Provisions >> Fore Street (tho Fore Street is v good)

Id rank The Alchemist beers Focal >>> Heady >> Crusher. Really didn’t think much of Crusher when I had it and we get drops of all the cans here regularly in NYC.

MIL doesn’t drink beer so was already trying not to push it. I prob would have hit Oxbow first anyways but only so much time. Heady I only had the sample, cans were out by when I got there. There were plenty of cans of Heady around Burlington but I couldn’t take it over HF on tap. So it’s ranking may be a bit unfair.

Drive from NE to Buffalo depends where you go from I expect. Burlington we went through the Adirondacks which was really nice but still 4-5 hours of nothing after.

Yeah just think allagash is one of the great American breweries. Truth is, they could just pump out nothing but Allagash White and they'd be make a lot of money (I've read that's like 80% of their revenue). Instead they keep expanding their wild ales and coolship programs and give really generous tours and hand out free donuts and coffee when they do bottle releases.

Spivey, solid TR.

-Sorry to hear about The Franklin. Makes me feel fine about never going.

-Glad you liked Novare. A beer snobs dream imo.

-So happy to read your thoughts on Deciduous and I can't wait to tell my cousin. They really are killing it.

-The drive to/from VT is indeed gorgeous, which helps immensely with the time it takes to get anywhere. I have also never been to HF and need to rectify that ASAP.

Anyone had Narrow Gauge in STL? Got a 4 pack variety being shipped to me. I hear great things.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

most of their stuff is great. OJ Run, Cloud City, Fallen Flag are all very good. They do DDH versions of each that are universally better. Only one i've had that I didn't love was No Stems which was a more resinous west coast ipa.

Had DDH OJ Run last night. Good god was it good. Up there with Treehouse and Bissell in my opinion.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah I've had most as well. I agree with this. I guess this shouldn't be shocking, but I found the gap between their normal beers and the ddh versions to be way larger than most breweries. DDH Fallen Flag is my favorite of theirs I've had, but yeah generally they're up there with the best. The brewery is kind of weird as it's in this pizza restaurant in the middle of a suburban strip mall. Confused me the first time I went there.

The Franklin had good service and some of the food was good. The fried chicken was pretty good. But my seafood fried rice was not very good, though there was a brussels sprouts appetizer that was good. It was solid but more up and down than I expected. The cocktails and beer list were both kind of weak.

Deciduous really was excellent and they seem like they're one of those breweries that don't have much hype around them so they're flying a bit under the radar but their stuff is legit. I really liked the coffee stout too, and it's nice when a brewery can make something other than a NEIPA really well these days.

Sorry we weren't able to meet up, but my wife was flying in from Italy from work and we were only able to spend 30 minutes at Deciduous as is, the timing was really in flux and hard to make plans around.

No worries, man. Maybe next time. Glad you enjoyed your trip.

Hardly le connoisseur but I got to go to Tree House today, overall very positive experience.

Traffic - 1/10 Until about 1 mile from this place there's basically nothing around but nice homes with huge yards.

Parking was a breeze. We parked in the sattelite lot but there's a shuttle.

Architecture of the building is off the walls nice. Imagine Tony Stark's getaway house, that's basically what it is. Beautiful, modern architecture, tons of really nice flowers, bright green grass. Just nuts.

The energy is really positive. We weren't sure about a few things but the people from Maine in front of us had been there a few times and knew all the little details. Overall it's not really that confusing, the website could be better about this.

Line. 45 minutes from when we got to the back of the line to when we got to the register or whatever.

The bar was closed and it was a bit of a letdown that after arriving to this mecca and spending all this time in line we couldn't find much of a reason to stay. There's a huge pavilion, a bar, tables, lots of outdoor seating, but you can't really do much if they aren't serving drafts.

It was fun looking at the people leaving and you could easily tell who lived close and who lived far. Some people had four beers and were texting on their way out. One couple had six cases (144 beers!) and were taking pics like they just robbed a bank.

The staff seems super happy and positive and didn't make us feel the least bit uncomfortable for not knowing certain stuff.

Tree House:
All That Is And All That Will Be. Disappointingly, without marshmallows. ****ING MARSHMALLOWS

Hidden - Doubleganger. I mentioned I only want six of these (max 8) and the dude behind me jumped at me like Batman and said he'd buy the last 2 cans. Anyone broke? Pretty sure you could make money as a "stand in line at Tree Houser"

Tornado
Bright w/ Galaxy
Bright
Haze
Eureka
Alter Ego

It probably sounds lame but the cans are ****ing beautiful. I usually don't like fully labeled cans but something about these I just found them so appealing. They even offer high-res photos of their labels.

Anyways, I'm done acting like I'm the first person in history that's gone to this brewery that's open every day. time to crack open #1

I’ve been there a bunch for too long Charlton/Monson/Brimfield. They know how to handle the crowds which is their biggest issue. Never had anything but a positive interaction with a TH employee there.

Someone mentioned above about Allagash (which I’m an admitted fanboy of). When TH starts handing out free donuts they’ll get on Allagash’s level.

We should all met in Prague:

For someone living in Madison, this is one of the best weekends of the year. Great Taste of the Midwest, and the pre-parties which are just as great. Tomorrow will consist of going to New Glarus for their R&D release of a 3yr spontaneous blend and a kriek. Then go to Funk Factory for a pre-party that will have 5-10 outstanding breweries pouring. Ones I’m most excited about are Angry Chair (not in Midwest but I guess guy went to college here), Hailstorm, and Pulpit Rock.

Then dinner at my favorite bar which has a Perinneal takeover including BA Vermillion. I’m not a barleywine guy but I understand it’s worth trying. Then Saturday is the event, 1-6 all you can drink right on the lake. A tradition unlike any others. The masters, on cbs.

Edit: also there’s pre-pre events tonight. I got some ridiculous 125 bottle count method traditionelleeee from FFG and got to have Jester King SPON on tap, which was a bit disappointing but I got to have it. Funk Factory brings it with the guest taps and bottles.

Nice haul KPowers.

Recently went to Portland, OREGON for the first time for a wedding and was pretty pumped to check out Great Notion. Stayed fairly close to the brewery on Alberta with some friends who live there. Landed super late on a Wednesday and had about a day there on Thursday before we had to drive up to the mountains for the wedding.

Ate at Proud Mary for brunch beforehand - super hipster (they were sold out of their $8 cold brew so I had to settle for the $4.50 version. It was k) but really good. Had some short rib grilled cheese thing with an egg on top that was unreal. Started drinking at GN right when they opened. First flight was Blueberry Muffin, GOAT IPA, Space Invaders, Super Ripe, and Double Stack wowwwwwww. Blueberry Muffin was pretty incredible, one of the most interesting sours I've had. They really nailed this style. GOAT IPA was good but nothing memorable. Space Invaders was their galaxy IPA and it was unbelievable. Prob the best IPA I've ever had, straight galaxy bomb. Then I tasted Super Ripe, OK, this is the best IPA I've ever had. Double Stack - gonna super hot take this - really disliked it. Felt it was too sweet/cloying and would probably call it bad actually. Also had an artificial maple syrup pancake thing going on as well. Really disappointed with that one. Tried a whole bunch of other beers (a key lime sour, Juice Jr, Ripe, some mochi IPA thing), all quite good and super impressed overall with the brewery. Also charging $5 for ~14 oz pours of big IPAs is quite the change of pace from scumbag Other Half in NYC that charges $5 for 4oz pours of their quadruple dry hopped super-collabs that all taste the same. Anyway, grabbed a full case of Space Invaders and a couple t shirts like a good sheeple and moved on for the day.

Got more hipster fare at some ice cream place Salt & Straw. Best ice cream I've ever had in my life. Portland's got some pretty sick food. Also hit Cascade at some point. They had some real great stuff but a bit overpriced. I liked their cherry sour the best. Had a bunch of miscellaneous food and a Breakside IPA later that was way above average but can't remember the name.

Wedding on the mountain was great. Our group crushed all the Space Invader over the course of the weekend, and there was a Fort George IPA on draft at the wedding - 3 Way IPA. Actually thought this was on par with some of the Great Notion IPAs I had.

Got back to Portland Sunday night and we went back to GN again bc I'm an alcoholic. Got more Space Invaders cans to bring home and they had a new sour IPA on tap Luminous with strawberries. Sour IPAs are all the rage now and I'm normally not a huge fan but thought this was really well done. It was more tart and not overly an sweet/vanilla like some of the stuff I've had from Hudson Valley. Also tried Double Stack again to give it a second chance. Nope, still didn't like it, oh well. Sorry Malice.

Anyway, Portland was pretty dope, wish I had more time there.

Fort George brewery and Buoy Brewery are worth visiting in Astoria, Oregon if you ever get the chance. There are other breweries in and near Astoria also that make for a worthwhile excursion.

Sampler from Chetco Brewing, Brookings, Oregon. Now in new location.




Of the three IPA's listed, I rate Summer Salmon the best (excellent light hop, citrus, and piney) then the Hop Duster. Lily Brew is Ok. The Red had a sweetish tinge but I liked it. The amber was very good. The brown ale was very good. It had a hint of hoppy flavor and was not too heavy for my taste; I dislike heavy ales and/or syrupy type brews.

Overall all the brews were good with a personal rating of the Summer Salmon as top notch for a west coast IPA.

I was pretty underwhelmed by the Tree House stuff. Most of it was a touch too haute for me. That stout was damn good though. I really like the Tornado which is a single IPA.

Mullen,

All good, I understand the sweet/artificial arguments against double stack. I'm just glad you loved the ipas, space invader is actually my personal favorite. Blueberry muffin is also ridiculous, so glad you enjoyed that.

I'm 99% confident the 3-way is only that good because great notion made it for them last year. It's never been like that in past years, and 2017 version >>> 2018, when great notion actually made it. That being said, you can't find a better shelfie than 3-way.