A Portland Day Pass

Jenn gave me a day pass on Thanksgiving weekend, letting me take off on Saturday for a beer trip to Portland, ME. Portland is a great town, and I was looking forward to visiting some old favorite beer spots, as well as discovering a couple of new ones.  So I drove north to my first stop, Allagash brewing (http://www.allagash.com/).

Allagash is one of the premier Belgian style brewers in the US, and they had just expanded to provide an awesome tasting room.  They have an outdoor beer garden that I’ll definitely have to bring Jenn to in the summer.  I skipped the tour, concentrating on the 4 drafts that they had to offer, my favorite being the Midnight Brett, a chocolate malt wild ale.  I liked it so much I got a bottle, as well as a bottle of Coolship Resurgam, a recent medal winner in the Gueuze category at the GABF.

My next destination is one of the best regional beer bars in the country, the Great Lost Bear (http://www.greatlostbear.com/).  If you want to find the best beers from Maine, this is a must stop.  The food menu is diverse and has huge portions, and they offer 4oz samplers of their huge draft menu.  I got a bowl of chili to go with my IPA beer selections, including Sebago’s Frye Leap and Rising Tide’s Zephyr IPA.  The GLB is consistently rated as one of the nation’s top beer bars by Draft magazine, and the food, beer and atmosphere keeps me coming back.  The GLB waitress recommended that we check out the Rising Tide (http://www.risingtidebrewing.com/) taproom.  It was close by so I stopped in.  Rising Tide offered samples of their beers on draft, and bottles to go.  I enjoyed the Hesperus Strong Ale (bottle and draft) and Ursa Minor Stout (bottle, draft, and nitro).  I’ll need to look for this brewery in the future at the bottle shops.

The other beer bar that is a must stop is Novare Res (http://novareresbiercafe.com/), located in the Old Port section of town.  While GLB focuses on Maine microbrews and large food portions, Novare Res’ specialty are imports and small plates.  The selection was impressive, but I chose the Robinson’s Iron Maiden Trooper on draft.  Bruce Dickinson helped brew the beer, and it was sold with the Trooper logo.  I had that poster on my wall for 3 years in high school, and was excited to finally find the brew (I found the bottles on a later day, lucky me!).  It was a good stop, and in walking distance of two other stops.  The first was Gritty McDuff’s where I tried their Black IPA on cask.  I even stopped at a beer shop called Downeast Beverage for a bottle of Maine Brewing Lil One, and American Strong Ale that was 9.1% ABV.

My last stop was another beer shop right off the highway called the Bier Cellar (http://biercellar.com/).  I found a pair of painful beers from Stone brewing, Crime and Punishment.  Crime is their Double Dry Hopped Lukcy Basartd Ale, brewed with half of head brewer’s garden of ghost peppers (a crime to ruin that beautiful beer).  Punishment is their Double Bastard Ale brewed with the other half of peppers, producing a pain inducing level of capsicum that makes drinking the beer a punishment.  I found another pair of less intimidating but outstanding imperial stouts from Norway’s Nogne O.  The first was their Dark Horizon, 4^th Edition, an inky black beverage that smelled of roasted malt, burnt coffee, and provided a boozy warmth.  The second was their Horizon Tokyo Black, their collaboration with Brew Dog and Mikkeller, which I already had the Brew Dog version.  Now if I can find the one bottled by Mikkeller, I’ll be ready for a monumental tasting.

Lots of beer and lots of fun.  I made some new friends while visiting some old haunts and discovering some new ones. I can’t wait to go back. – 6327/14991

 
“You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.” – Colonel Adolphus Busch