Sometimes it makes sense for me to ramble on as I recap a travel experiences and other times I have pictures that will do a much better job.  Also since this is a post holiday Monday, I suspect that most people could do without excessive reading today.

On the second day of our visit to Baltimore, The Wife and I took the train down to Washington D.C. to stroll around a bit and meet up with my good friend, Mr. Wilson.  The day after that, Mr. Wilson took a train up to Baltimore to keep me company (a.k.a. bar hop with me) while The Wife was in her conference all day.  That pretty much explains the string of pictures below.

Union Station has some beautiful spaces

A different view of The Capitol

Not bad for behind thick glass

Stopped for a moment to smell the flowers

Finally some shade for a moment

Head just inside the door and go to your right . . .

and bring your reading glasses for the beer list!

I must pause to make a more prominent mention of The Brickskeller, where we stopped in D.C. for lunch (and beer).  Having a list of 1000 bottles of beer to choose from can be a very difficult situation.  Usually I gravitate towards the draft list, which will narrow my selection down a bit before I really put any effort into a decision.  I did not have that option, so that day I focused on American breweries.  I do enjoy beer from many other places, but there is so much good craft beer in the United States to choose from that I have much work to do just to try half of it.  So after that, I looked for breweries that I don’t see here in Florida.  It just so happened that I landed at what was actually the first beer on the list and a 21^st Amendment Brew Free or Die.  It was a pretty IPA heavy weekend all in all.

21st Amendment - Brew Free or Die

How would you tackle such a big list of beer options?

Mr. Wilson come to Baltimore via Penn Station

Keeping me company at Koopers

I do love me some good beer in a can.

How sad . . . no really.

There are so many more pictures to get to.  Maybe I will give Baltimore and D.C. another feature sometime soon.

Until then . . .

After taking last Thursday off  from passing along beer news to celebrate the anniversary of this site, it is time to get back at it.  I might even throw in a few more stories than usual as The Wife and Seattle Jeff (my Pacific Northwest Beer Correspondent) gave me a bunch along the way and I feel a little bad for not providing a venue to showcase that information last week.

Here we go . . .

• Staring off easy I will give a few links that are not as much news as they are interesting uses for beer cans.  This first group seems pretty reasonable for an individual to drink enough beer to create while I am hoping that this guy did not have to drink all of the Bud necessary for his sculpture.
• I suppose plans for brewery expansion change when people catch on to  how great your beer is and fortunately this Colorado brewery is being responsible about the whole process while adding capacity very fast.  Even bars in Colorado are adjusting to keep up with the growing desire for craft beer.
• Apparently we now know what the new television craze is going to be after all of those damn cake and cupcake shows fade away.  After the announcement of Sam Calagione’s show in June, it seems that other networks are jumping in with beer shows as well.  I am just sorry I missed my shot at being one of the hosts.
• Surely this acquisition will only further the already heated discussion of what this means as far as the true definition of craft beer.  I know they all have to do what they have to do, but I hope that the merger bug does not infect the entire craft beer community going forward.
• Knowing that Dogfish Head used this method to create one of their brews, it is interesting to see playing with hot rocks catch on a bit.
• As one of my favorite beer styles that is not actually a recognized style, the Black IPA is certainly gaining momentum everywhere.  More and more breweries are coming out with examples and the article gives some very good options of brews to try if you haven’t yet tried one.
• Lastly is a shout out to a great brewery here in (nearby) Tampa.  I just hope they don’t get too popular right away as it is already difficult to get your hands on their brews sometimes.  Fortunately there is always going straight to the source as an option for me.

West End Tavern in Boulder (via http://www.dailycamera.com)

Cheers!

A vacation is always well complimented by a brewery tour and I was lucky enough to visit Allagash Brewing Company when we visited Portland during our stay in Maine a few weeks ago.  It took us an hour and a half or so from where we were staying but it was so much fun that there were no complaints during the car ride back.

The location of the brewery is far from downtown Portland and is nowhere near the water, but is definitely worth a visit when you are there.  The location is basically next door to their original building, which they now use mostly for storage.

The home of Allagash

The tours take place Monday through Friday at 11am, 1pm, and 3pm.  We were fortunate to be the only ones at the 11am tour that day.  Maybe most people have something against drinking before noon, but it was also well after the busy summer season.  We were able to sample the White, Dubbel, Tripel, Grand Cru, and Four Ale (four malts, four hops, and fermented four times).  Since The Wife volunteered to drive that day I ended up with the bonus of a second tasting of basically everything!  They were all very good, but I became partial to the Dubbel and the Four Ale.

The wife modeling some apparel

All in a line

Hard at work

Kate gave us a ton of information both during the tasting and while on the tour.  It is great when the person doing the tour is so knowledgeable about everything going on at the brewery.  It is amazing what only 19 employees are able to do.  A big thank you to Kate for a great time at Allagash!

Here are a few of the many pictures from our visit.

Me lagging behind

Bottling area

Just making the safety glasses look good

Big bottles . . . compare to the keg behind

Some of the good stuff hiding

Just yesterday, since I was wearing the apparel, I took the opportunity to pose with some Allagash brews pulled from the shelves here in Florida.  I am officially a fan!

Showing off the goods

As a continuation of my grieving for Allagash no longer being distributed in Florida, I thought this video was a good one to share today.  The Wife and I visited the brewery just before they finished building the koelschip addition to the facility, so this I found this to be pretty interesting.  Chances are that I would push for another visit next time we are in Maine anyway, but using that feature as an excuse certainly helps my case.

Enjoy seeing the lead up to spontaneous fermentation . . .

Almost every time that I compile and put into writing a list of my personal guidelines regarding a certain topic, I almost immediately make exceptions to those rules.  I  have come to accept it as inevitable since the only way for me to completely avoid the issue is to never write down any of these lists to begin with.  That is just not going to happen because it is too much fun (at least right now).

In this case I have already made exceptions to the general parameters that I recently stated were my filter to choosing brewery tour videos to post here on the site.  There are good reasons behind straying from the initial list a bit and maybe this will ultimately help me build a true, bulletproof list of guidelines for video selection.  With a little tweaking, the videos will almost pick themselves.

Here is where I have gone slightly astray from my self-imposed rules:

• The length of this video nears eight minutes and I said previously five or six was the threshold of my attention span and what would make a video initially appealing.  Varying from my rule by roughly thirty percent is quite a lot.
• The video is not at all humorous.  However, I do think that it was nicely edited and produced, so that makes up for not being funny (at least a little).  Having shiny copper vessels and talk of sustainable energy helps some too.

That was not so bad, was it?

Mostly I picked this video because I have a scheme to visit this brewery sometime relatively soon and I wanted to put some positive mojo out there.  I have no idea if my plan will work (it sounds really good in my head), but I will let you know how it turns out regardless.

Now on to the show for today . . .