Throwback posted last night the official details regarding their highly anticipated Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout, Fat Alberta. Very few have tasted it (this guy included!) and have been raving it about it. Here are the details:

• Sunday August 20
• 10am – 1pm
• Throwback Brewery- 121 Lafayette Road, #3 North Hampton, NH 03870
• Only 400 bottle available
• 2 bottles per person limit
• $15/bottle

While this may not be as big an event as Kate Day or Darkness day, this could be the newest “day” people will be lining up at a brewery early to get their hands on a bottle of beer. Take it from someone who has had a 3oz sample, come and get in line. From more information check out Throwback’s blog post (link).

If you see me in line say hey, I will definitely be there.

Cheers,
B

Maine Beer week continues! From Nov 10 to Nov 17 Maine is celebrating their breweries by doing events all across the state. I figured I would have my own little celebration as well as travel to some locations. Here is a photo journal of what I’ve done to recognize Maine so far this week.

I tried out Maine’s all lager brewery, Bull Jagger. This beer has a very unique taste that is malty and crisp. You will want to grab a couple of these in the store because after finishing one you will want another.

I managed to get a bottle of Polaris, one for me and one for Doreen (@BeerZenGirl). Polaris comes from Rising Tide which is becoming one of my favorite breweries in the area. Polaris is their Ursa Minor stout aged in bourbon barrels.

I picked up some other brews at Tullys to keep me busy during Maine Beer Week. Maine Beer Company Zoe and newly released Mean Old Tom, Baxter Brewing Amber Road and Sebago Local Hrvest.

We visited Sebago in Portland on Saturday. What is really cool about a brewery like Sebago is that they put other Maine brewery taps in their brewery. This was a good site to see, breweries working together. They had such a great response, that all the guest taps were kicked the night they were out on!

I opted for the Sebago Slick Nick, their winter seasonal, delicious!

Saturday, Novare Res was featuring the beers of Rising Tide

Amongst their epic taplist was their Polaris (which I picked up earlier in a bottle) and I had i have it on draft. It is the best from Rising Tide’s already excellent selection of beer. I highly recommend tracking it down soon!

Maine beer week continues! How are you celebrating?

Cheers,
B

Yet another beer-centric Kickstarter project (see the post on “Community Beer Works” for more info about Kickstarter), I watched the trailer video for his project, called “American Beer Blogger” and decided, yep, I could definitely watch Lew talk about beer. All day. His goal is to go to breweries and talk to the brewers, really get into the meat of what it is like to be a craft brewer and what is going on in Craft beer in the US.

AMERICAN BEER BLOGGER is a half hour television series dedicated to all facets of the ever growing craft beer market. From home brewing, to micro beer; viewers will experience the very best of the craft beer culture. In each episode, Lew will visit a different brewer, each of which has their own sets of quirks and ways of doing things. Lew will talk to these brewers, get to know them, will show us first hand the various methods and techniques used in creating a craft beer. From the tiniest bottler to the largest manufacturer, Lew will get his hands dirty.

Lew has been an inspiration to me as a beer blogger for some time, and I really hope that this succeeds, and that he is able to raise the capital needed to create his first few episodes. I encourage you to visit the Kickstarter page and just watch the video – I think you might come to the same conclusion that I did.

Boston has always has a place in my heart. My Alma Mater is there. With the recent influx of beer events in Boston, and with the only the occasional goings on in New Hampshire I feel like I could become obsolete if I don’t start getting down to Boston and meeting some of the Brewers and Bloggers I follow and talk to on a daily basis. So I did.

Monday night seemed to be the night to visit beantown, as they hosted a Baxter Brewing event, a Northwest Beer Fest and a launch party for Idle Hands Craft Ales. I chose the latter two and drove down with Sean and Amber from @2beerguys to check it out. Boy was I glad I did. We first stopped at Atwoods in Cambridge to raise a glass to one of the newest breweries in town, Everett, MA based Idle Hands Craft Ales. To me this was like the who’s who event to be at. I was looking around the room seeing the big names in beer. The Beer Advocate brothers sitting over here, the Yankee Brew News and Ale Street News guys over there and brewers from the local breweries Cambridge Brewing Company and Notch, Becca from MA Girls Pint Out, among others.

It was great to finally meet those who I converse with on twitter a lot and read about in books,blogs,papers all the time. Idle Hands is a Belgian beer focused brewery and, while Belgians are not my favorite beer, I had to support the local brewery and grab one of their offerings. I went with their Cognition Abbey Style Session Brown, a great choice. Their other offerings included Pandora (Belgian Pale Ale / IPA), Patriarch (Patersbier) and an Amarillo hopped Pandora. The place was packed with everyone showing tremendous support for the Idle Hands crew. I look forward to seeing them grow.

After that we rushed off to Redbones for their NW Beer Fest. How Redbones managed to get an elite line up of gets from the Pacific I’ll never know but all the big breweries such as Deschutes, Lompoc, Elysian, Pike, Rogue were on tap and for some East Coast beer lovers this was their first taste of their beer. Not for us. When we went to Portland, OR for the Beer Bloggers Conference we had a chance to go to THE Deschutes and THE New Old Lompoc and have the beers. It was a great way to reflect on that trip. I had a Lompoc C’Sons Greetings Double IPA which, in a word or two, 5 stars. I also went back to an old (3 month) favorite, Deschutes Obsidian Stout, ridiculously good. Events like this should be a good gauge for West Coast brewers to see how in love we are with their beer. A big congrats to Redbones for bringing some great beer to the event, which lasts all week!

In conclusion, I am going to make an effort to get to Boston when I can for events. It is feasible and if it weren’t for the last stop at Spikes for a hot dog, a Portsmouth resident like myself would be home at a very reasonable hour. It’s worth making the trip down once in a while to catch up with people you chat back and forth with during the day too. For more infomation on Idle Hands Craft Ales check out their website (link) and check out Redbones site (link)

Til next time Boston…

Cheers,
B

theprofdrinks:

Met up with some friends in Portsmouth for a birthday dinner at Flatbreads Pizza.  They had a great beer selection!  We were taking pictures and had some fun lining up our drinks from lightest to darkest.

I enjoyed a Moat Mountain Czech Pilsner and a Peak Organic Maple Collaboration.  The pilsner had a slight bite to it and a subtle bitterness.  The Maple tasted like an amber ale.  I didn’t really taste a lot of maple flavor but it was delicious none-the-less.

theprofdrinks:

My house was without power after the Halloween weekend storms that hit the northeast.  So I went north to stay in Maine and decided to stop by JTG for a few beers.  I was excited to see that they had Portland Lager bottles on hand.  It’s brewed by Bull Jagger which is a new brewery in Maine which follows the Purity Laws of 1516.  I had heard good things about the beer but hadn’t had a chance to taste it before that night.

The beer was hella good!  There was a great balance of hops and malt.  It was both slightly sweet and slightly bitter.  I will definitely have more of this in the future!

This morning I was visiting Joshua Bernstein’s web page. I am only about 50 pages into his book, Brewed Awakening (review to come when I finish the book), and I wanted to make sure I added his feed to my blog roll to keep up to date on his writing. What I found was a great website that was formatted like Flipboard for iPad. Check his site out here (link).

After a quick search I found it was a great WordPress plugin called OnSwipe (link) and it turns your page into a magazine style site on all touch devices. If you have an iPad or other touch device give it a try. You can always revert back to the original view if you hate it. I think all blogs should apply this as it is a great way to view a page.

If you haven’t already, pick up Josh’s book today!

Cheers,
B

For those not familiar with crowd-sourced funding models, here’s the basics. Normally, when you open a small business or embark on a creative project, you have to find either a)investors to donate the money for you to start in hopes that they will get a good return on their investment b)a bank to give you loans. However, there’s a third option to get some amazing projects going – seeking small amounts of backing from many people – from “the crowd” to fund what would otherwise be a risk to an investor. Have an idea for a project? Let people donate anywhere from $1 to $100,000 to see it succeed. With media being generated by the masses now, why shouldn’t good ideas be shared among the many that want to see it happen?

I first heard about Kickstarter last year, when I “backed” my first beer-related project- a microbrewery known as “Mystery Brewing” after meeting Erik (the brewer) on a beer related social network. Now successfully on their feet, I am hoping that at some point I’ll get to taste some of what my contribution allowed to come to fruition.

So without further ado, I introduce to you, “Community Beer Works” – a Kickstarter project that’s close to my heart because its in Upstate NY, and I’ve been tweeting and talking to one of the founders for… I dunno… ever.

Their goal?

The founders of CBW all have roots in Buffalo and we want our brewery to be an integral part of our city and the neighborhood our brewery is located in. We are planning partnerships with local urban farmers and gardeners to create a network of hop gardens that can be used in specialty beers as well as to dispose of our grain in ecologically friendly, mutually beneficial manner.

I really think that this type of entrepreneurship, responsibility and attitude is *exactly* what an area like Buffalo needs.

Check them out on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1141062595/community-beer-works-a-buffalo-ny-nanobrewery
Visit the Community Beer Works Webpage: http://www.communitybeerworks.com/

With today being the first (annual?) International Stout Day, I thought I would take the time to provide a commentary on the subject of made up holidays.

When International IPA Day was first announced I was skeptical. As a stout fan and general craft beer lover I did not see the point in celebration one style of beer, I still don’t. I didn’t and won’t let my inner hater come out and leave bad comments about it because while I didn’t agree with the holiday I did applaud the efforts of those who took the time to create an event that had a lot of the big name breweries and bloggers backing the effort.

It goes back to the “why didn’t I think of that” state of mind. Anyone could’ve made up a holiday celebrating one style of beer, but the ones who did made it HAPPEN. Congratulations to Ashley aka Beer Wench on creating and annual beer holiday for lovers of IPAs. (A little of my inner hater came out there, I’ll settle)

Along comes Stout Day, and all of a sudden I am pumped. My feelings for Stouts far outweigh my feelings for IPAs. However, I was a little more frustrated about this holiday because now someone is actually strolling on my turf, my favorite style, my beer. What makes this person think they can make a holiday out of the blue? There goes my inner hater again.

My opinion is simple. Let’s not make a holiday for any other beer style. I am not looking forward to a Hef Day or a Sour Day or a Lambic Day. There is already an International Beer Day (the day after IPA Day) and a National Beer Day (April 7) so let’s keep the holidays on the minimum.

We don’t need holidays for everyday activities, such as beer drinking, but I will back the efforts of those who work hard at it and do it really well (Ashley and Erin). Does this sound flip floppy? I do enjoy the results of these grass roots efforts though. For example, tonight I will be at the Portsmouth Brewery Celebrating this made up holiday to socialize with fellow stout lovers and then ending my night at another bar where they put 8 stouts on tap in honor of the holiday. I will be celebrating effort by enjoying stouts on this day, but I will be having stouts and enjoying them just the same outside of November 3.

For those celebrating today, raise a Stout and congratulate Erin (@TheBeerGoddess) on her great work in turning Stout Day into a holiday. My November Christmas.

Cheers and Happy International Stout Day,
B