Beer in Boston

Jeff and I started watching the TV show Fringe on Netflix. The show is based in Boston, and seeing the landmarks makes me think of our trip to Boston a few years ago.

We saw Boston Common, ate some seafood and visited Harvard and MIT, but because I'm blogging about it, you know we also had some beer.

Actually, we had a lot of beer.

We visited John Harvard's Brewery and Ale House first and discovered a pretty normal brew pub near the Harvard campus. The pub had some regular beers, like their pale ale, but it also boasts a "cookbook" of more than 250 recipes, and specialty taps that change every two weeks.

Samuel Adams is probably the most well-known beer out of Boston. The tour of the brewery is pretty average - you stand in a room and listen to the tour guide, then you move a few feet over to see the brewing area. If you've been on a beer tour before, you won't learn anything new from the tour (unless you want to ask specific Samuel Adams questions).

But it's the final step - the tasting portion of the day - that makes it worth the trip out to this brewery. You will get to try beers you cannot get in Canada. And they're not stingy with the samples, either (just make sure you don't have a neighbour who tries to hog the pitcher). For a $2 suggested donation, it's a good stop.

We went to the Cambridge Brewing Company - which is really just a restaurant. This was my lease favourite stop on the trip (so much so, I didn't even bother to take a picture of the place). But the cool thing here is they use hops they grow on their own patio.

I loved that they gave you paper so you could take notes.

There's more than one, but do stop at a Boston Beer Works. This is very, very important. They have your typical sports bar fare (get the onion rings!), but they also have a lot of beers. There are several locations - we went to the one outside Fenway Park. There are at least 10 beers on tap at any given time and they're all made locally.

Jeff and I had a really good time at this pub and probably could have spent the day there. We tried every beer they had (some more than once) and probably should have gone there for dinner (then taken a cab back to the hotel) instead of going there for lunch and then continuing to be tourists that afternoon - not the easiest when you're a tad tipsy. Or a lot tipsy. Or falling down drunk.

If you have time to stop at only one place though, make it Harpoon Brewery and go for a tour. You will get to try multiple samples during a tour. The "tour" consists of staying in one room, or maybe wandering onto a "deck" where you can overlook the brewery (this may have changed - I have noticed on Harpoon's Twitter account, there have been some renovations at the brewery since we were there in 2010).

We loved Harpoon - these guys knew their beers and enjoyed talking about their beers. When we were there, they had some UFO (unfiltered offerings) along with several seasonal beers we got to try.

The best thing for us about Harpoon - our hotel was a five-minute walk away!

Inside Harpoon - look at all those taps!

Matt's Sleepy Time Belgian Imperial Stout from Beau's

He drank it before I got a picture of the beer.

We lucked out before Christmas when we went into Toronto for the day and made a pit stop at the LCBO on the Queen's Quay - because they had a number of beers there that never made it to Guelph.

Like the Best of Beau's four-pack, which had Patio Saison, Farm Table: Belgian Pale Ale, Screamin' Beaver Oak Aged Double IPA, and Matt's Sleepy Time Beligun Imperial Stout.

Jeff was iffy on the Screamin' Beaver - although admitted it tasted better the warmer it got. I was surprised that I really liked this beer.

But the Matt's Sleepy Time Belgian Imperial Stout was Jeff's favourite of the bunch.

"There's a lot going on in this beer: Mocha, berry jam, burnt toast, herbal hops, licorice ... so much flavour. But it all comes together in harmony," Jeff said.

"I wish I had picked up a couple of these four packs just for this beer - although the other beers in the pack are solid as well. I really wish Beau's standard LCBO offerings (i.e. Lug Tread Lager) were this interesting."

Garrison Winter Warmer

Jeff's sister is going to school in Nova Scotia, so when she came home over the holidays, she was kind enough to bring her brother some beer from Garrison Brewery in Halifax.

In the past, we've raved about the Martello Stout and the Baltic Porter (apparently not on the blog, though) from these guys and Jeff was hoping for more of either beer.

Instead, he got a couple of bottles of the Winter Warmer. The beer has won silver at the national and international level and the website says it's a "strong dark amber beer" that is "brewed with spices evocative of the holiday season."

Jeff isn't a fan of the winter/holiday beers, so he wasn't super stoked about it - although he is always happy to try a new beer.

But those Garrison folks sure surprised him.

"I wasn't overly excited about this beer. I was afraid it would be overly spiced - like hot apple cider full of cinnamon and nutmeg," Jeff said. "But the spiciness is restrained - the cinnamon melds quite well with the demerara sugar in the beer."

Three wins from the U.S.

Jeff had to go to Virginia for work before Christmas and came home with three beers, one of which he raved about.

Bell's Two Hearted Ale

He called this a "good and cheap" beer, with a six-pack retailing for just $8. He said it was hoppy, "but not super aggressive."

Bell's Brewery is in Michigan and says this beer is defined by its intense hop aroma and malt balance.

Sierre Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA

Jeff called this one "another good, cheap beer." It retailed for $7.50 for six. He didn't like it as much as the Bell's Two Hearted Ale, though.

The Sierre Nevada brewery, which is located in California, calls this their "hop bomb."

Stone Ruination Double IPA

This is the beer Jeff raved about when he got home.

"Ho-ly crap. That was awesome," he said when I asked him to reflect back on when he drank this one. "It's a great beer, but it's not one you can have a couple of."

It has an alcohol content of 7.7%. Jeff said this beer is all about the hops, but also has a little caramel malt. There is a floral, pine and citrus hops aroma and it's "plenty bitter."

The California-based Stone Brewing Co. calls this beer a "hop monster" and says the name comes from "the 'ruinous' effect on your palate."

Beers for the holidays

The holidays are coming to a close and my apologies for not blogging more - it's a busy time of year!

Jeff and I had a few beers over the past couple of weeks while out and about. At the Wooly in Guelph, Jeff tried the Audrey Hopburn from Great Lakes Brewing, as well as Beau's Koru BPA. Unfortunately, we didn't take notes and when I asked Jeff to comment on them now, he said it wasn't fair to "review" them now because he couldn't really remember the experience.

He also had Twice As Mad Tom Double IPA from Muskoka Brewery - a beer he has quite enjoyed. He said it's hoppy with a decent malt backbone. He'd better like it - he got some for Christmas!

As well, he had the Dray Horse Ale from Black Creek. He said the malt in this beer reminded him of whole wheat bread. He called it "very bready" and said it had pretty much no carbonation.

He also got a few beers from Winnipeg, including the Half Pints Brewing Co.'s Stirstick Stout, but we'll discuss that one in a later post (mostly because Jeff thinks he drank the last one when it wasn't warm enough, so he didn't get the coffee flavour he was expecting).

It's New Year's, so some of you might expect me to resolve to blog more. I won't do that because I'm really kind of terrible at a) keeping resolutions and b) blogging - but I will resolve that we'll continue to enjoy some good beer in 2013.

Cheers!