Category: Uncategorized

Our livers just gave us a dirty look. Our normal limit of breweries in one afternoon is four but now that we are drinking flights, we can sometimes do five. So here we are, the fifth brewery of the day and things seemed to be going pretty good. The reason our livers are giving us dirty looks is because this is the 3rd brewery that doesn’t do flights so we are at three pints and two flights. Ignoring our livers, we ordered a couple of pints of Patina pale ale and Proximal session ale. The pale ale was pretty tasty but the session was a bit dank – even with an order of spicy tuna crisps from the food truck outside.

Everyone loves a block party and that is what’s going on here. Streets closed, people walking, live music – the time to party here in Maine is short so you have to take advantage when the weather is nice. We ordered a mixed bag flight of Promenade pale ale, Ishmael copper ale, Zephyr IPA and Leeway nitro pub ale along with a beer-cheese pretzel. Pretty light lunch!

Not really sure what to make of this place. Is it a brewery or is it not? They offer over 30 fermented concoctions but none are made with hops, malt or barley. The closest thing to beer is their gruit which is brewed with botonicles but not your traditional ingredients of hops, malt or barley. Their flights come 5 at a time and there was only 4 gruits on the menu so we picked a 10% ABV mead hoping it would either taste like beer or at least liquior. We choked down the IPA, Forest Ale, Strawberry Amber, Elderflower and of course the Hopped mead. And if the “beers” aren’t weird enough for you, the bathrooms are “gender neutral” so everyone goes in the same, multi-stall bathroom and does their business. I peed in a urinal next to a girl in the stall…..

America truly is the land of plenty. This place is the 2nd of 4 breweries within a one block area. The owner/brew master/cook/artist/musician is a Carhart overall wearing, one-man show doing everything from noon to 1:00a Thursday – Sunday. His niche is low ABV beers but low is a relative term if you consider 3.8 low. When we arrived, he was working on his newest masterpiece of art between pouring one of his 4 beers and cooking red beans & rice. We drank a pint of Crack A Bone rye IPA (4.0 abv) and Left Brain Knows (3.8 abv) which were actually pretty flavorful considering the alcohol content. Good second stop for a full day of breweries!

Happy Saturday! The weather is perfect for some day-drinking in the northeast. After circling the block a few times, we finally found a park and headed in to check things out. This place is another one of those true tasting rooms that are simply a roped off area of the beer production floor. Serving up 10 beers but not flights, we started the day off with a couple of easy-drinking pints of Chime pils and Iota hoppy blonde ale. Yum.

Boy does place love their donuts. Several of their beers are donut-inspired recipes but we stuck with the traditional beer like their Portland Pale Ale, Soft Side NEIPA, Amber Ale and Daddy-Oh milkshake IPA. We were surprised to be the only patrons for a Friday afternoon in this nice little brewery. The milkshake was the clear winner since we don’t get that type of beer very often.

TGIF. After a quick stop at the local Moose, which is our Friday afternoon ritual, we found the closest brewery that serves real beer. And after a 30 minute drive of only 8 miles due to a malfunctioning traffic light, we arrived to find a selection of over 20 beers ready and willing to quench our thirst and wash away our traffic frustrations. With 11 of the 21 beers being IPa’s, we kicked off the weekend with a Little Victories session IPA, Champ Lager, Neon Sails american IPA and a Homemade Jorts cream ale. All in all nothing too fancy but a great compliment to the Dot’s Pretzels.

Do one thing and do it good. OK, do two things and do them both good. This brewery only makes 5 or 6 beers at a time which qualifies them as a brewery and they have quite a large menu of food. They do offer flights of six beers but were out of two and of the remaining 4, only two sounded good to compliment our crab cake appetizer. You know its the real deal when you find shells in your crab cakes. The Bug Lager and the Milleni-ale hazy IPA paired well not only with the crab cakes but also the sheppards pie and chicken -chorizo wrap however the wrap was a little weird.

Impressionism art meets craft beer. This unusually decorated brewery just a stones-throw from the last one serves up 13 beers and a healthy variety of art ranging from naked ladies to robot cartoons. We sipped on a flight of Milltown american lager, Greenwarden spruce tip ale, The Count english stock ale and Not For Distro west coast rye IPA. The spruce was most interesting: if a pine tree could pee, this might be what it tastes like.

The beers server said: “follow the pigeon to being gluten-free”. Surprisingly enough, we could only taste a slight difference between their gluten-free beer and regular beer. We would say its somewhere in between regular and NA beer in taste, not ABV. We arrived shortly after they opened the tasting room for the day but the adjacent brewing operations were still in full swing so we got to see the brewmaster in action. We ordered a flight of their Eclectus bl(a)nde ale, Columbidae pale ale, Little Brown Job brown ale and their just-released Pink session IPA. All beers weren’t too shabby for being GF.